You’ve probably played a role-playing game. Who hasn’t? They’ve been around for almost 50 years, and have been winning Origins Awards for 45 years. They’re everything from Dungeons & Dragons to Deadlands, Traveller to Twilight: 2000, Star Trek to Star Wars, Ghostbusters to GURPS, Paranoia to Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
(OK, so maybe that last one didn’t win an Origins Award. And isn’t exactly a role-playing game. But, you know, I needed something that started with “P.”)
But have you ever wondered if you’ve played RPGs long enough to be considered a true veteran? Well, wonder no more! With this handy guide handily below, you can learn if you qualify as a Role-Playing Old-Timer! To unmask your role-playing status, put down your boxed set of Vampire: The Masquerade, or Mazes and Monsters, or whatever amazing game you’re playing, and check your clues!
Top 12 Clues You’re a Role-Playing Old-Timer
- 12 — You remember when a gaming convention was 20 guys in the back room of a hobby store.
- 11 — That wargamer who once told you that roleplaying would be a flash in the pan is now retired and on Medicare. And so is his son.
- 10 — You recall a friend saying, “Hey, I just realized — we could adventure someplace other than in a dungeon!”
- 9 — You keep confusing the current rules of a game with the ones from five editions ago.
- 8 — You remember deciding, after seeing the movie Wizards, that a game with both magic and technology could never work.
- 7 — You recall exclaiming, “Wow! This latest edition actually has an index!”
- 6 — You find yourself saying, “Yep, if we wanted a fighter, rolled three six-sided dice and got a Strength of 7, by golly we played a fighter with a Strength of 7.”
- 5 — You remember debating the hit points of Saturday Night Live’s Mr. Bill.
- 4 — Your old gaming buddy from high school just bought a set of glow-in-the-dark dice for his granddaughter. Who’s in high school.
- 3 — You once could hide your collection of every role-playing game in existence behind your 8-track player.
- 2 — You remember when an “old-timer” was anyone who had roleplayed longer than 12 months.
- 1 — Your new players keep calling you “Grandpa.”
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Alden Loveshade first thought of emself as a writer when in 3rd grade. E first wrote professionally when e was 16 years old, and later did professional photography and art/graphic design. Alden has professionally published news/sports/humorous/and feature articles, poems, columns, reviews, stories, scripts, books, and school lunch menus.
http://AldenLoveshade.com
Six or seven of them apply to me. I remember when it was Chainmail, D&D, Empire of the Petal Throne.
And I was the guy who did no. 10!
I’m glad no. 10 got going so thanks! Roleplaying has expanded tremendously since the early days.
Not that I would remember the early days. I won’t say how many of these apply to me. (But, well, I am the one who made the list….)
Definitely #2, #4, #6, #7, #9, and #12, so I’m only halfway to being a geezer. On the other hand, I started gaming in 1979 and I’m in my mid-50s, so I still have time to . . . uh, mature. Like fine wine.
More seriously, #7 was the thing that impressed me the most about SJ Games back in the day. Consequently, I kept on playing their games and eventually ended up working for them. Then I started to create indexes and realized why so many publishers don’t bother . . . it isn’t easy!
I like the “fine wine” way of thinking!
I appreciate you as an editor and must admit I appreciate that I wasn’t assigned to do my own index. That’s one of those things that’s a whole lot of work for one or two people but makes things a whole lot easier for a whole lot of people!
I started RPGing about five years ago so none of these are me! I did play on my birthday weekend. But nobody’s called me Grandpa yet maybe in 40 years they’ll call me Grandma!
Forty years ago, those five years would have qualified you for no. 2!
I used “Grandpa” because, in the early days of tabletop role-playing, the players were overwhelmingly male. That likely seems odd by today’s standards, and, frankly, could have seemed odd even back then.
But many of the early roleplayers had been wargamers. In those days, war games were a “male domain.” Societies have changed a lot in the last 40 to 50 years!
Number 9 for me. You’d think they would keep the rules consistent between editions, but there’s always some detail.
Heh, speaking as the line developer of a game that has had four editions, a major revision, and several spinoff games: You don’t create a new edition unless the changes you want to make are so profound that the rules won’t be consistent. That’s how you lose fans (“What?!? I bought a whole new edition for this?!?”). Most gamers want new editions to be new, partly to address what they saw as problems with old editions and partly as a social maneuver to be on a more equal footing with rules-quoting veterans.
Things do change!
I have more than one character I’ve carried over from one edition to another. That took some redesigning and a patient game master!
Gene Turnbow here – my son marvels at the the fact that I have dice twice as old as he is. I think I must be one of the guys in the header photo.