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Games and RPG's of My Mis-spent Youth
John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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So I was thinking about the Card and Board Games and RPG's I played or at least dabbled in when I was in junior high and high school and decided to put together a list of myself reminiscing....
My original "game group" was just myself and my two younger brothers (Bill and Joe). It eventually evolved to include my friend Tim (who badgered me mercilessly to get included) and later opened up to a lot of other kids in the small town I grew up in.
I originally thought I'd put everything in chronological order, but, after seeing the number of games I wanted to include, I couldn't remember (beyond the first few) what order I got into them.
Interestingly enough, of the RPG's I've listed, I believe I've only actually PLAYED one of the following games as a player during this time (Twilight: 2000), and it was only once. In my entire life, I've probably played the role of a player maybe 5-10 times, with all other plays being as the Gamemaster or Dungeonmaster.
I've locked down additions to the list because this is my misspent youth, but please feel free to add comments!
So, without further ado, here are the games of my mispent youth!
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1.
Board Game: Risk
[Average Rating:5.62 Overall Rank:6468]
John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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I originally learned this game at my grandparent's house in Cleveland. I remember two things about it. One was that we played with my uncle Tim and his cousin Eddie. The other was that my brother's strategy was "Attack! Attack! Attack!". This is the earliest game I remember playing.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Played this a little. Didn't play by the right rules (auctioning properties). It was pretty boring for us.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Played this some, too. I loved board games, but the games we had just weren't this interesting....
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4.
Board Game: Chess
[Average Rating:7.10 Overall Rank:251]
John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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I was taught this game by my stepfather around age 10. I played it a ton at school and sometimes on lazy Sundays with my stepfather at home. We quit playing at home when he realized I was going to win and he "accidentally" knocked the board over....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Got this one for Christmas. I thought it looked cool from watching all the commericals on TV, but it turned out to be pretty lame....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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I had a friend who rode the "late bus" in 6th grade. Late bus meant that our town didn't have enough busses for all the kids, so a few would run its route, then come back to the school for a second load. That meant we had 30 minutes to play Mad Uno (the Mad Magazine Card Game mixed with a deck of Uno cards). The Mad cards made the game even more cutthroat. We had a blast!
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Got this game on the recommendation of the local hobby store. Several of us would get together in the children's library section of the local library. We'd usually have 4 to 5 players. It was a bit of an obsession for a while.
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8.
Board Game: UNO
[Average Rating:5.31 Overall Rank:7788]
John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Our "family game" of choice. We used to spend Wednesday nights playing Uno after my mother and step-father divorced. We'd go to his house, he'd order pizza, and we'd play cards over the course of the evening.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Sometime around the time I was in 7th grade, my aunt bought my brother (Bill) a copy of the D&D Basic Set. He was ambivalent about it, but I REALLY, REALLY thought it was cool. As soon as the dust settled from Christmas, I cracked open the game, revelled in the weird dice and crayons, and started reading the rulebook. Unfortunately, my lack of experience with games (and rulebooks) and my imperfect reading comprehension, I found the game confusing and gave up on it. I eventually got Recon (see below) and after getting the rules down for it, it helped me conquer the D&D Basic Set.
We eventually picked up the Expert and Intermediate set and finally completed the collection later on....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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I've always been interested in the Vietnam War. I got a recommendation from the hobby store for this game and went with it. My mom stopped by and picked it up (it was in a different town than the one I lived in) and brought it home. It was fantastic. Relatively easy to understand, somewhat miniatures based, and easy to play.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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So one summer I spent a lot of time hanging out at the Chrysler Dealership my step-father owned. He had hired his secretary's son, Fred, to work in the shop. Fred was about 8-9 years older than me, discharged from the 82nd Airborne after breaking his ankle on a jump, and a HUGE RPG fan. That summer began my formal education as a role-player....
Fred gave me my first AD&D Players Handbook. It was an awakening, especially after playing basic D&D for a while. One of Bill's friends had an older brother who was clearing out his AD&D books, so we bought them one or two at a time.... DMG, MM, FF, MM2. We bought Unearthed Arcana, the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide and the Wilderness Survival Guide from the bookstore at the mall (B. Dalton's). We got our Dragon magazines and supplements and photocopies of everything we thought was cool.
And then, at some point, it seemed like our games were just unmanageable.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Fred taught me this game and then loaned it to me, along with Nuclear Escalation. It was raucous fun.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Added more fun and merriment to Nuclear War, including spies to steal those secrets!
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Picked this up from my brother's friend's brother, too. Got the boxed set, a bunch of adventures, photocopied character sheets. It was pretty cool, but we never played. I think I still have it sitting around here somewhere....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Another game we picked up in our TSR phase. It looked really cool and we even made characters, but I don't think we ever ended up playing....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Picked up the rulebook and a map from my brother's friend's brother, too. Looked like fun and it must be good because it was TSR. Never played it either. Not even sure I read the book.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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One of our alternatives we looked at to replace AD&D. I don't think I made it halfway through the rulebook. I kept thinking, "Wow, that's a lot of tables!". There were rumors of someone in town playing MERP, but I never tracked them down....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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This one had potential as a replacement for Palladium and D&D, with the added bonus of being applicable to every genre. It had rules for everything! Unfortunately, it had rules for everything. I tried to commit the rules to memory and run with it, but it didn't happen. We made a few characters for the Fantasy genre, but ultimately it didn't play out....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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We made a clean break from AD&D by moving to the Palladium FRPG (1st Edition). More classes, skills, easier spell system, and still a bunch of variety. The experience system wasn't based simply on killing monsters and collecting treasure, either, which was much more interesting....
It also didn't have tons of supplements.... In fact, I think, for a good long time, it only had one. We got a lot of mileage from PFRPG.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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PFRPG opened us up to non-TSR games, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Of course, we didn't call it that, it sounded silly, we called it TMNT. We got into it before it got silly with merchandising and cartoons, but we kept playing afterwards....
Our regular play really took off once we picked up the After the Bomb supplement. I really liked the post-apocalyptic settings for RPG's, and still do to this day!
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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We were into the Palladium "Megaverse", so I picked up this one on a lark. It was, and probably still is, my favorite RPG of all team. It didn't see as much play as I wanted, primarily because my brother Bill didn't care for it much. We reached an unspoken agreement that he'd play it now and again in return for me running other RPG's that he liked.
I still wonder what he didn't like about it. What's not to like?
- Desperate times
- Sci-Fi setting
- Particle Beam Rifles
- Evil cyborg robots
- Psionics
- Rovers
It had it all.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Part of our Palladium Books phase. We played this some, but not nearly as much as PFRPG, TMNT, and the Mechanoids. Interestingly, I don't think any of us had seen the cartoons. I think I bought it because it was giant robots with cannons and missiles. I had no idea who Rick Hunter was....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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I think Joe picked this up after we'd passed through our TMNT phase. It looked good, and maybe even experimented with making characters, but I don't think we ever played.
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Palladium picked up the rights to my old favorite, so I bought it as soon as I saw it on the shelf. There was A LOT more to digest and I liked it for the most part. I didn't care for the fictious mercenary countries and setting at the end of the book. It was the 1980's! We just had to pick up the newspaper to see mercenary settings in Central America....
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John Peterson
United States
Normal
Illinois
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Picked it up because it looked cool. I was a teenager, did I need a better reason?
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Posted Sun Feb 5, 2012 4:55 pm