a chub date to remember...

I'm a regular listener to NPR, and yesterday on the business program "Marketplace", they had a segment on Dungeons & Dragons and the tumultuous history of TSR. It made me nostalgic, especially when they mentioned that today, October 16, would mark the 30th anniversary of D&D.

I remember my first game store that carried RPGs. It was called, appropriately enough, the Games Store. It was located in Hundred Oaks Mall, THE mall of its day in Nashville. Phil and I would get dropped at the mall for a few hours, allowing for one and sometimes two visits to the shop. We first got into wargames. Avalon Hill's D-Day, Kriegspiel, then onto SPI games and GDW games. I remember the store had more SPI & GDW games in-stock than anything, and the meek teenager in me never thought to ask about special orders.

By modern standards, the RPG selection at the Games Store was paltry; in total it would have encompassed 1/2 of one rack at GamesEx. But it was nonetheless a magical display of possibility. And it was so cool, the slightly underground feel of perusing the RPGs. Like any good soul I got the 'white box' edition of D&D with the three booklets, horrible dice and a crayon, ostensibly for coloring the numerals on the monochromatic dice. And polyhedral dice! What a concept. They truly seemed like modern day runestones.

And then the clouds parted, the sun appeared, and white doves flew into jet engines...there was Steve Jackson Games. The appeal of SJG to me was the pocket box games, games that bridged the gap between wargames on hex maps, and fantasy roleplay. Chitin, Ogre, Sticks&Stones, Ice Age... the list was endless, culminating in Melee and Wizard which of course led to the Fantasy Trip, the ancestor to GURPS. And did I mention they were cheap? The other great thing was the mag Space Gamer, which prior to Epic Illustrated and Omni Magazine elicited an excitement not unlike looking at girlie mags. Phil had a subscription to Space Gamer for a couple of years, but he was first and foremost a wargamer. I was left to forge my own RPG alliances, leading to high school, meeting Gav and others, and the rest is history.

In this day and age, when fantasy genre gaming, be it RPG, card, boardgame or XBox, is arguably mainstream, I appreciate the fact that the Chubsquad is around - not lost in the past nor mired in the present. We're somehow corfortably in the middle, hopefully carrying the torch for the essence of gaming, like it was in the day...

So today, October 16, hoist your tankard of grog, make a saving roll, and belch a happy birthday to D&D. Huzzah!
--stu