Have you ever played D&D?

[Dave]

Games Workshop basically turned it into a Warhammer franchise monthly expanded rulebook.

The Games Workshop High Street stores also used to have AD&D Traveller and Runequest and many other different games back in the 1980's. I have a game called Cosmic Encounter that I bought there. When my son was interested in the figures and saw people there were painting them, around about 2000, we went inside and I was surprised to see that it was now totally Warhammer 4000 gaming.

I actually thought that everyone had stopped playing AD&D and that the recent interest was just nostalgia brought upon by Stranger Things.

 

[Lacedaemonian]

Games Workshop didn't start out all bad, though the writing was on the wall when they erased other games from White Dwarf at the earliest opportunity.

 

[AllanR]

Cosmic Encounter

the Mayfair version (with expansion) of Cosmic Encounter is one of my favourite board games out there.

 

[THX1138]

I have played D&D, Tunnels and Troll and Role Master. Not so much now anymore. But I did quite a bit in my younger days.

 

[reiver33]

Oh, oh, and Paranoia!

The computer is your friend.
Trust no-one.
Keep your laser handy.

 

[Hex]

I played DnD in the 80s, and Tunnels and Trolls (by mail!). I found T&T advertised in the back of a White Dwarf and I think I must have stopped buying it in time to avoid the descent into only Warhammer. I was surprised when my kids got into 40K to discover White Dwarf had turned into something so unexciting. In my memories it was full of interesting stories and fascinating adverts.

I DM DnD now for the kids in question, plus friends. I'm hoping they put up with me doing it for another year or two.

My memory of Tunnels and Trolls was it was quite strategic, but all I really remember is the tunnels and the people I met. I'm sure things were more exciting in the 80s...

 

[Vince W]

I started playing D&D in 1979 with this edition:

I still think Traveller was my favourite since you could die in character creation.

 

[HareBrain]

My memory of Tunnels and Trolls was it was quite strategic, but all I really remember is the tunnels and the people I met.

Those people would have been the Trolls, one assumes.

 

[hitmouse]

Played D&D in the late 70s. It was a pretty niche word-of-mouth nerdy thing back then. The books were expensive and hard to find. The dice were badly moulded. If you were lucky you might pick up a copy of White Dwarf or Imagine at Beatties.
One of the early metal figurine makers, Minifigs, was based in my home town of Southampton. They branched out into fantasy from their main line for wargamers. We used to spend our pocket money in their shop in St Mary’s.

 

[hitmouse]

There is an interesting doco on either Netflix or Prime, on the original artists and illustrators of D&D.

 

[Berlyn]

I started playing D&D in 1979 with this edition:


View attachment 110007
I still think Traveller was my favourite since you could die in character creation.

God, I love this old school artwork. It just does something good to my brain when I look at it.

 

[Hex]

Those people would have been the Trolls, one assumes.

It meant something different in those far off days, HB. We hadn't yet learned to be scared of them (except the ones that ate mutton)

 

[Toby Frost]

I think reading White Dwarf is like being a hardcore fan of punk, goth, Bob Dylan or Leftist politics: it's not if they sold out and betrayed the fans, but exactly when...

 

[HareBrain]

I still have quite a few copies of WD (and of Dragon, and Imagine) from the mid-80s, and I flicked through them all a couple of years back. Made me all misty-eyed. I loved the ads for suppliers/shops with their mail-order price lists and terrible artwork.

 

[Toby Frost]

For me, a lot of the WD nostalgia comes from the mid-90s, when I was first getting into it. The old metal models have a lot of charm. I remember seeing their old Eldar and skaven, and wanting to build little buildings like they did.

Anyhow, to me D&D depends hugely on the GM and players. I've known people who fixate on the numbers and mechanics of it, and others who play it as almost amateur dramatics. I tend to find that the sheer width of the setting and the super-powered characters make it feel a bit light and silly at times, but I have enjoyed it a lot. I'd like to try some games where you're basically just people, if odd and highly-trained ones.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I played D&D enthusiastically for several months (perhaps it might have been as much as a year) back in the early 1970s.

But it was such a time-sink that I finally resolved to abandon it. I'd sit down with my husband and my friends in the early evening and the next thing I knew it was five o'clock in the morning. The same sort of thing happens to me fairly often when I am reading a book, but it was worse with D&D. ( It's easier to put down a book and go to sleep if you are already in your bed. If you are at a friend's house or they are at yours, and others are keen to continue with the game when your energy flags, it is hard to leave off. Then you get your second wind and you are the one who doesn't want to call it a night. I admire those who have the discipline to stop when the adventure is at its most exciting, but that has never been—nor would it ever be—me.)

 

[SaintJzearuth]

Starting at age 12, I used to engage in freeform role-playing in an online fantasy environment called the "Green Dragon Inn." Many of the characters there were based upon D&D, and the players expected you to know something about D&D rules. Back in those days, I was reading a lot of free AD&D online supplements for inspiration.

I moved on to various other ffrping games, over the years. ffrping seemed to me like a bunch of guys getting together and writing stories together, in part because of the minimal number of rules. The experience was very influential on my writing style.

I never actually played D&D, and mostly only ever purchased tabletop rule books for the World of Darkness setting.

 

[thaddeus6th]

I started playing a few months ago. Nobody else wanted to be DM so I got that job, but I've enjoyed it quite a lot. Played six sessions so far, with three different party compositions (an original player dropped out, then a couple of sessions later we got two more for a total of five). Homebrewed the whole thing, in a Norse-flavoured realm I made up. Next session's this weekend.

Liking it quite a lot, especially the improv stuff. In a recent massive battle, the party occupied a tower in a fort held by orcs, and were shooting the enemy as they tried to reclaim it. Because a giant weasel was sitting on the trapdoor leading up to the tower, the orcs had to try and climb the outside of the tower (only 10' from the walkway). Cue the war chief doing just that and about to cause them major problems. But the bard threw some cutting words which meant the war chief failed the check to climb up, fell 10' to the walkway, failed his dexterity check (because it was crowded) and then fell another 20' to the courtyard below. It was a most amusing parkour failure.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I never played as such, but between 1984 and 1988 I was the DM of an epic series of imaginary cities and fantasy landscapes, some of which made it into my early (crap) fiction. I still have the maps! (Anybody want to see them? It might explain a few things about my SF novels...) For a while I wrote for White Dwarf - in the '80s, iirc. Great times. I met Ian Livingstone once or twice. When I gave up in 1988 to concentrate on writing, my players were devastated. I have many fond memories of being a DM.

 

[CupofJoe]

Not for 35 years.
In the UK I've just seen a TV add for a part-work of How to play D & D [complete with dice and figures].