Now when I have gotten this blog going, and have posted some stuff I hope have at least some value as entertainment, I'm going to do the classic first post. Who am I? What are my intentions with this blog?
I first encountered rpg blogging in a style I enjoyed on Grognardia by James Maliszewski. He has a very personal style and he so prolific that I sometime wonder if he does it for a living! About a year ago I also happned to encounter Trollgod's Trollhalla and these two sites together gave me the idea to start a blog. The latter site, a hangout for friends and fans of Ken St Andre (and T&T), and my copy of the new edition of Tunnels & Trolls made me think that the world needed more blogs about T&T. At the same time I had enjoyed what James were doing at Grognardia, and wanted to be able to write about a broader theme, like the history of the hobby.
My history as a gamer harkens back to the middle 1980-ies (I don't think the rest of my personal history is that interesting. If you really want to know, post a comment to the effect!). Back then a Swedish company published a game, Drakar & Demoner, which was a translation of the fantasy game based on Basic Roleplaying, and specifically the Worlds of Wonder boxed set, that Chaosium had put out. It became very successful and spawned the hobby in Sweden. I played that one and their translation of Pacesetter's Chill and most importantly the translation of Iron Crown Enterprice's Middle Earth Roleplaying. The first session we played I felt the treasure was kind of cheap, so I added a mithril chain shirt and a couple of thousand gold pieces. After that we almost never adventured for monetary reasons, since I had made the characters so rich they didn't need it!
After this me and my friends bought a lot of games, sold them to each others or on convention auctions and then bought something new again. If we didn't have anything else to do, we would make up character for a new game system. I never understood how people could be content to only play one game, say D&D, all the time! This have shaped my attitude toward gaming a lot. My tastes are very eclectic and I love getting new games.
Nowadays I read a lot about how gaming was done before, and also about the latest developments in the indie scheme from e.g. The Forge. In between those two ends of the gaming spectrum, where some tries to re-create a old way of doing things and those who tries to do things nobody have did before, a lot of interesting stuff gets done. I reads and plays both ways.
This blog is intended to be my explorations of what can be done, and what I like and don't like. Since every comparison needs a foundation, I'm going to compare a lot of things to Tunnels & Trolls. It's one of the first RPG ever (some say it's the second oldest game ever) and it's also still in print and plays a lot like it always did even in its latest edition. I like it because it's both old school and new school at the same time! Perfect as a comparison to everything.