Today's Community piece comes from Home Regiment's newest member, King Arthur! He wanted to share a little about himself to our members, as he is also our youngest member and his experience with games is a little different. A bit of a writer himself, it's likely that he will continue to contribute material here.
My favorite was traveling thru dark and stormy skies, mounted upon the beast of flame himself, Asminoth, as I purge the world of the wicked spider-born and claim my title as a true Dragon Rider Hero. I lived countless adventures in the free-roaming imagination of my young worry free life. Consistently diving into novel after novel, to gain further inspiration for my own delicious tales. The day did come though, and sad it was, that I lost the drive for the free and careless structure of my fantasies and I began to crave a more adequate design.
I began to write small stories, an aspiration to achieve the ability to let my stories unfold into something more, to give them the same pull and allure that so many authors writings had done for me. Not only that though, I wanted to also employ a way to play the stories, and delve more into the deep universe I would eventually create around them. My knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons and other similar table top games at this time was limited. Merely that is was a roleplaying game, played with dice.
At this time I had established a small group of friends with an interest in roleplaying great fantasies. So to entertain our ridiculous drivel, I bought a set of dice, and with that we commenced a journey into a small universe we had been expanding on. We rolled some characters to undertake the feat of exploring our new world. Rolling entailed of us describing our character, and what fantastic powers he/she might of had, then rolling to see if we qualify for our pick. If the roll was too low to satisfy the majority of the group, the group would then harshly mitigate the roller's character, allowing him/her to keep their looks and origins, but attacking any special abilities they might of given themselves. From their we would run random roleplaying scenarios, battles, and other random higlibliggs, with one of us deciding the general foes we faced and towns we encountered, or what really happened in the tale at all.
I should note ,that member was still part of our party, and had his own character in the tale. I encountered my first actual game of Dungeons & Dragons at the ripe age of 14 and don't recall much enjoyment from the endeavor. The DM wasn't terrible, (an uncle of one of my compadres and of a much older generation of gamers), but perhaps due to the youth of his group, carried a look of boredom and presented our surroundings in a lack-luster fashion. Though disappointing, the experience did introduce me to a way to add a slight bit of structure to our fantasies.
We introduced stats, as well as a fighting and interaction system that relied more on the dice rolls. This was thus dubbed Role Playing with dice… Life moved forward and to my dismay, I lost my inspiration, distracted by the social overflow of our youth, my group of friends and I lost interest in our distinguished hobby. I suffered a terrible lag in my world of fantasy as the old group of friends went there separate ways.
Years have passed now, and I find myself in a new town, a new state even. The hills must have connected with my desire to lose myself in a world of fantasy, for the glorious pass known as The Wargate has thrown open it's barriers and let me have a peek inside. A peek that turned into being served at the Warlords own table, and inducted into his personal regiment! Among this regiment, I at last encountered a real taste of table-top games.
I have seen a beautiful display of structure, made true by adventurers with many years of experience, and a good Warden of the games to boot! I will journey with these adventurers as I seek my fantasies once again, and given time, perhaps I will break my own barriers and show these experienced hounds a torrent of youthful vigor. The bud of my inspiration has been found, and with this, combined with my own desires for a fantastic world, I will allow it to blossom into something fulfilling, I hope. All in all, this is the best introduction I have received to table-top dice slinging, and has me eagerly awaiting what other inspirations I can find beyond the Wargate!