I can remember that day in 1988 during a Science class when I decided that I was going to go to the local Virgin Megastore and buy a packet of the cool metal miniature figures they had there. It turned out that my mate had been wanting to get some of them as well as he was fed up using the cardboard tokens for his Talismen board game we’d played all summer. Anyway I wandered down there after school and stood staring at all the games in front of me. I picked up the Bloodbowl box and wondered if it was any good and lusted after Car Wars but I didn’t actually buy any of these or for that matter any of the figures I was going for originally. Instead I walked away with a copy of Dragon magazine and I’ve never looked back as they say.

I sat during registration at school the next day reading the magazine again after devouring it the night before when another of my friends happened to remember that his cousin played those games and if I wanted he could try and get him to let us play the next time he was up visiting from London. Three months later I went round to his cousins flat not quite knowing what to expect. I was twelve and didn’t have a clue what a crit table was and yet here we were sitting in a strangers house waiting on him to finish rolling his joint. I spent the next 5 hours inside Frank’s cousins drug fuelled head playing what I was soon to learn was the original version of Rolemaster. In fact it’s quite possible we were using the Space Master rules for a fantasy roleplay. Either way I was rolling dice when told to and playing a barbarian cleric as if I was tiny monk rather than a six foot tall muscled barbarian. It was a start and we ran with it.

Over the years we’ve played many different systems and had uncountable adventures. I’m now getting to the stage where campaigns from yesteryear are starting to roll into one another so I thought if I get them down in writing I’ll be able to read over them and remember them in the years to come as well as hopefully giving you guys an idea for your own games.

You can find my other blogs which I update whenever I can here and here. My Flickr account is here although you need to be a friend to see most of the photos.

I also occasionally contribute to to Wired magazine’s GeekDad blog