For whatever reason, when I first started getting into Dungeons and Dragons it was the AD&D Books that caught my eye. I remember using my allowance to pick up all of the old yellow spined 1st Edition AD&D books. My first experience with the original Red Box (which came out at the same time as 1st Ed AD&D according to Wikipedia) was when my next door neighbor inherited it. I remember that it was used because whoever had had it before had created a whole bunch of index cards for each of the rooms of their dungeons all in pencil.

When Wizards of the Coast moved Dungeons and Dragons from version 3.5 to 4th Edition the licensing of 3rd edition 3rd party products went away. For Green Ronin, the solution they came up with was to rebrand those old products as '3rd Era' and re-release them as PDF documents. One of the first I've seen advertised was 'The Psychic's Handbook', an alternate set of Psionics Rules for D&D. Seeing this come through put me in mind of psionics in general. I've always been a fan and if I play another D&D game (unlikely right now) I will definitely lobby to play a psion or related class.

My first encounter with Darkhawk was back in 1991 when he appeared in Issue #171 of of Dragon Magazine. Back then there was an almost monthly article called 'The Marvel-Phile' running in Dragon where they would talk about various Marvel characters and Darkhawk was brand new, having only been introduced in March of that same year. I remember thinking he was a pretty cool character but as I was neither playing a supers game nor reading comic books at the time my interest was fleeting at best. This was about two years before I took the on-line handle of Darktouch so how much influence was there I can't really say.

Back in 5th grade, I got it into my head that I wanted to buy myself a Nintendo. My parents made me a deal where they would match the money I made mowing lawns if rather than an NES, I bought a computer. The Christmas after my big purchase I received King's Quest III as my first computer game. I later went back to the first two King's Quest games but I didn't go much further back than that.

That's not to say I was completely unaware of prior games. I have a vague memory of playing Zork (Not to be confused with Jean Batiste Emmanuel Zorg) on a friend's Commodor 64 computer but it wasn't one of those moments that was seared into my memory banks. Even worse was the 'Science Fair' where I stayed up late several nights trying to build one of these things only to half-ass the presentation with a 'Find the Bugs' sign. Not my most shining moment and best forgotten. Even so, I found myself strangely elated when I discovered Inform 7 and Interactive Fiction in general.

For those of you who don't remember or just didn't exist at the time... there was a time when computers didn't have super fancy graphics and weren't connected to each other. The games created for these computers were text based where in you walked your character through the world by typing 'Go North' and 'Open Door'. They could be frustrating when trying to find just the right phrasing to do what you wanted to do. Though I haven't played with it yet, Inform seems designed to mitigate this by adding in some fuzzy logic to the parsing.

By the late 80s, Text Adventure Games had gone their way only to move their way onto the internet in the form of MUDs where you would play these games with other players. As with so many things that have become outdated (remind me to make a post about the retro-gaming movement) the business of Text Adventure Games became the hobby of Interactive Fiction. In the hands of 'the people' creativity flourished leading the way for experimental works that were as much art as they were 'games'. Interactive Fiction will never be big business again but it is amazing to see the the evolution of the medium.

Yet another little piece of awesome that I was previously unaware of.

This post is actually going to be very self indulgent. Recently the Atomic think tank upgraded and given that I'd been on there since 2003 I wanted to go through and document some of the ideas that have come out of my head and seen decent discussion. There is at least one item on this list where no one cared even a little. It is here because I want to delve into that item for some specific inspiration. If you're just passing through, no need to worry about a list of links but if you're curious to see what I get up to from time to time, well then here you go.

In taking a look at converting Aberrant to the 'Storytelling' rules, the first thing I wanted to do is to do is make a listing of the 'core' parts of of the nWoD system and write out some notes as to where the Aberrant bits would fit in there. Not sure I'll ever run this game, but White Wolf has one of the easier character creation systems so a 'write up yourself as a character/here lets add some powers' might make for a fun time at a Con game. (Down side: 15d10 per player)

In the late 90s I was a big fan of the games put out by White Wolf Publishing. My game of choice was the Mind's Eye Theatre. At the time I had a main game that I played (Vampire) in and a couple of games that I would make the occasional appearance at (Changeling, Hunter, and Cyberpunk). Despite my current obsession with Superheroes, the last time I had any experience was nearly a decade earlier in a Marvel Superheroes one-shot game.

It was then that White Wolf released a game called Aberrant.

Back in 2002, Wizards of the Coast had a contest in which they invited players of the game to create a new setting for the Dungeons and Dragons game. In 2004, this resulted in the Eberron Campaign Setting. The contest was the chance of a lifetime and even if you didn't have something BRILLIANT to submit, there was a sense that you'd be missing out if you didn't at least submit something. In retrospect, my submission wasn't particularly fabulous.. what hurts me the most is my overuse of hyperbole. For those of you interested in a read, here is what I came up with:

Well, lets put it this way, I have a general tendency to want to keep 'things'. There is that part of my brain that knows that the moment I get rid of something, I'm going to want/need it for some reason. So I keep/hold on to it.

Having shared living space with Alyson over the past 6 or so years now has slowly been breaking me of the habit. She gives me one of those 'Do you really need to keep that?' looks and I think about it. On top of that, cleaning out the old house for the baby and then moving has helped remove a lot of things as well. Last night I went searching for a piece for a Hero-clix I'm planning to mod (couldn't find it) and realized that perhaps its time for another purge.

I am posting this on Halloween as I'm not sure that I'll get the chance to do so on the actual day. Tomorrow Alyson and I celebrate our 5 year wedding anniversary. Presents for 5 years are either wood or silverwear. I don't think I'll be getting her either of those things. What DO you get for the woman whose very existence has reshaped your life? Will anything really express what you're feeling?