Day 12 of #RPGaDay2022 brings out the proper navel-gazing, "Why Did You Start Role-Playing?"
Let's be honest, we really start role-playing at an early age. It's called playing pretend.
And while I had played with plenty of kids, there was also long stretches (in a kid's mind) where I had to play by myself. Being a child of the 80's meant I had Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe. and a host of Fisher-Price and generic action figures. Heck, I can still picture the different tiny bases were around my house, and where the water was for boats and amphibious crafts. There was a lot more storytelling and role-playing with those figures than tactics (that was saved for the green army guys).
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| Low-Light from GI Joe |
Let's be completely honest, trying to figure out my first D&D Red Box Characters, Leif Bloodblade and Bilbo Definitely-Not-Baggins, with dice was the indoor equivalent of me wandering the backyard with a wiffleball bat lightsaber, figuring out new stories for Star Wars, like what the heck the Clone Wars actually were. I'm still trying to do that sort of stuff today (although a middle aged man running through a suburban neighborhood with a wiffle-ball bat light saber is still frowned upon.... a Disney replica on the other hand...)
It was totally the miniatures for me. I was feeling like I was "too old" to be playing with my GI Joes and Star Wars figures and the lead miniatures that seemed inherently part of dungeons and dragons looked like a more "grown up" version of playing with toys!
ReplyDeleteI have seen some pretty kick-ass games involving Stalingrad with the old-school 12-inch GI Joes from the 60s/70s, and I do have a massive pipe dream of a 3 3/4" GI Joe scenario using Drednoks and B-list Joes using table as ground, the space inbetween as water and move the hydrofoils and hovercraft around on giant flight stands.
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