Game Origins
I’m 8 years old and I’m sitting on my brothers bed. His friends are there. They’re teenagers but older teenagers who’ve finished school and haven’t got jobs yet. They all have perms, or mohawks, or dirty homemade dreads. The room smells like cheap cologne and the cigarettes they keep going out for. On the little coffee table in front of us are books filled with monsters and words and numbers. There are funny looking dice and paper and pencils laying around the place. Usually I can follow what my brother and his friends are saying, sort of, but tonight I have no idea what they’re doing. My brother said they are playing a game but it doesn’t look like any game I’ve ever seen.
Mum told my brother he has to let me be in the room until my bed time. But I have strict rules. I have to sit on the bed and I can only look at the books no one is using. I have a strange magazine that has a woolly mammoth on it. Inside it’s head are these dudes with bows and arrows. I look through the book but nothing makes sense to me. One of my brothers friends gives a Minty and then I have to go to bed.
I’m 17 years old and I’ve just returned to my old high school. I was asked to leave 18 months prior as a result of prolonged scallywag behaviour. I had spent that time at a senior finishing school hanging out with other delinquents like me. But I’m back at the old stomping grounds and repeating my final year.
I stand on the edge of the oval and look for the plume of smoke that usually hovers above the other misfits. The Smokers Crew had been a staple of my high school experience and now it is gone.
I make my way upstairs to the senior study space and sit by myself. I listen to a group of kids talking about vampires who live in the area. They’ve been busy, apparently, but busy in the same ways that gangsters are busy. Not in the way Dracula is. I sit in the same spot for a week and listen to their stories. I am confused and intrigued. I listen for another week and then aske them what they are talking about.
It’s Friday night and I have a piece of people in my hand with Sakhr: Follower of Set written at the top.
My new friends older brother is in his second year at uni and is in some Vampire club. I don’t know it’s official title but based on what he says it’s a big deal. He says he’s been playing for a year and now he wants to run games.
Our game is set in the local area and the he’s leaning into local legends. Local gossip. Our haven is the abandoned house on the sea front. The place has been empty for 30 years. Now it’s ours. Tomorrow we have to go there and scout it out for real.
I’m 31 years old and my old brother is running a game of AD&D for me and my two nephews. We investigate the giants, kill a farmer, and save the town. Sort of. I go online buy the latest edition of this game and read it back to front. I think that it’s going to be my new teaching resource.
I’m 34 years old and I am running Fifth Edition for my four closest friends on our podcast.
I’m 37 years old and I am running the best games of my life in the west marches.
I am 40 years old and I am too tired to run games.