Welcome; and My RPGing Story

Welcome!

Thanks for looking at this blog. Thanks even more if you stay a while! Thanks even even more for nice feedback! Thanks a gajillion if you read this whole post!

I've been encouraged to start, and like the idea of starting, a TTRPG-focused blog. I'm a scientist in my other life (hence the blog's playfully nerdy title) and vigorously active on social media, so I've got that experience to lean on. I prefer not being anonymous online but still have some separation between my personal and professional lives. But since it's easy to find me online either way, I'm including some links in this blog to my other online presences, for better or worse. This is my non-science, recreational creative outlet.

About me gaming-wise: my Dad brought the boxed set of Basic D&D home for us three kids ca. 1980 after he travelled to Japan. We tried to figure it out but were a bit baffled; we were young and the rules weren't basic. I loved the pictures, though. I grew up preternaturally in love with mythology and monsters. My Mom used to tell me how my first grade/kindergarten teacher claimed I was too young for some books about those topics, but the librarian valiantly stood up for me and said let him read. Big thanks to them! I also grew up in love with monster movies like King Kong, and anything Harryhausen. So that explains a lot.

Advanced D&D came out and I saw a spread of the books at a mall, I think Spencer's Gifts shop, and begged my Mom to buy a book. That began my obsession with TTRPGs. I played a first game of AD&D as player in fourth/fifth grade, with another friend DMing and four other players. I think it was the Bone Hill module. Early on, two more experienced players turned against me and my friend Sean and killed our PCs. We cried. It was an awful introduction.

But I stuck with it throughout middle and high school, endured some bullying for nerdiness, stayed with that core group of five or so main gaming friends, and began branching out, experimenting with the explosion of diversity of other 1980s games. We tried much of what came out that we could afford. From fantasy to sci-fi (a fantastic, laughter and betrayal-filled campaign of Paranoia) to superheroes (Champions), Car Wars/GURPS Autoduel, an amazing run of the Lords of Creation RPG campaign, James Bond, horror like Chill, and so much more. I tragically tried running 2 RPGs I absolutely loved, Call of Cthulhu and the then-new 3rd edition of Runequest but my friends hated it and mocked me and I was devastated.

That gaming group continued until near the end of high school where I had a personality shift and didn't want to hang with them anymore, feeling mocked too often and not willing to deal with such crap from anyone anymore. I largely ceased gaming until midway through my university years, when people in my fraternity started running AD&D 2nd ed. I was thrilled that the "cool people" were playing AD&D and I could join in. College dispensed with so much of the schooldays bullshit metrics of coolness. It has been liberating since. I even ran a long, passionate campaign of Runequest with my uni group; one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I've had, with beloved PCs and stories.

I went to grad school and was over the moon that I was able to start gaming with 4-5 Bay Area, California guys (most from a soon-defunct video gaming company, Spectrum Holobyte) in 1995. I ran a new Runequest campaign that is still going after >30 years, same people! I love that. And I am privileged that I moved to the UK in 2003 and by 2010, once I'd settled in, started co-raising a kid, and found a gaming crew (two of them indie game developers that are still active). I began GMing another Runequest/Glorantha (using what became the indie game system Mythras) campaign; still running with those people too after ~15 years!

So here I am. Now I have switched from solely doing Runequest as GM to trying new things. But as GM, sticking to a few main games, and mostly GMing but glad to be a player once in a while. I'm going to tabletop gaming conventions much more often than I ever have. This has become regular recreation (and holiday) for me. Plenty of one-shots of Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green RPGs. And, at a Cambridge UK (Blue Moon pub) Monday night gaming group, a new Mothership RPG campaign (sci-fi horror). We already played one campaign ending in a tragic TPK (Orphans module, very deadly). Now it's a more grounded campaign based on Prospero's Dream ("A Pound of Flesh") space station. And that's part of what I'll be posting about when I can. 

So, yeah. Summary: I'm old. I've been around the block gaming-wise and I love gaming.

Off we go!