hrsegovia

Check out My D&D 5e (Next) Character sheet! The most downloaded character sheet on EnWorld! -- Download/Comment/Rate!
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South Texas is not the arid wasteland it is made out to be. Much of the Rio Grande Valley is laden with green rolling hills of mesquite and cactus. It is not a hospitable place, but it is certainly not a barren one. My weekends were spent with my cousin Alex in Hebbronville: a once bustling train depot, now in near ghost town status with a population of 4,500 for the entire county of Jim Hogg. At night – dominated only by the isolation of darkness, the white noise of cicadas, and the occasional circle of yellow light from old lampposts – the village looks much like a place abandoned by God. Houses lay in shambles with caved-in roofs and rotting wood. Trees grow through old living rooms and sporadic acres of monte (mesquite woods) make it difficult to discern any cohesion that could be referred to as “neighborhoods.” Ironically, it is a peaceful fear that comforts the lone wanderer of Hebbronville. It is a time and place in time and space where the imagination can run wild – where mythology and wonder are born. In a modern era where fantasy is dying and gives way to reason and science, Hebbronville, at night, is the last bastion of the imagination.

It was there that I spent my weekends with my cousin Alex, and - in 1983-84-ish - he introduced me to a new experience to which he, in turn, had just been introduced. It was Dungeons and Dragons, and played it only once every few months. At the age we were, we had no idea what we were doing. We didn't have the rulebooks and played from the memory of what little experience we had with his friends. So we grabbed a sheet of paper, wrote some arbitrary stats and numbers and rolled whatever dice we could find (usually a pair of d6's). We paid little attention to the numbers and just got excited if we rolled very high. As we grew a little older, we understood a little better and developed story and actually learned the rules. We felt like we were doing something wrong and secretive and loved it. It was like learning, growing, and getting better in a secret society. We felt like we were privvy to secret, underground knowledge - you got to remember the era it was in: the 80's satanic scare and I was only 6-12 years old). All this occurred in the tiny, creepy, po-dunk town of Hebbronville, Texas. Then my parents divorced and I parted ways with my cousin which threw me out of the gaming loop for 3 years.

Years later (age 15-19), I played a random-ass assortment of games like Chill, Call of Cthulhu, Battletech, Warhammer Fantasy, Harnmaster, and Shadowrun. Bought the final release of D&D, but it was weeks before the release of 2nd Ed Advanced so it remained unplayed and eventually lost. We mostly played 2nd Ed Advanced after that. From there, I ran my first game which was Cyberpunk 2020 (a huge success).

Then I joined the Air Force (age 19-23). I found it difficult to join a game and much easier to run one. While in tech-school I found a new (at the time) game called Deadlands. Ran that one to a phenomenal success as well and spent my entire 9 months in tech school running it. AF brought me to Cannon AFB (Clovis, NM) where my Deadlands stint ran until my divorce and exit from the AF.

After that (age 23-present) 3rd ed was released, but it's been a whirlwind of various games since the gaming scene pretty much EXPLODED after that from the handful of fantasy games in the 70's, to the variety of games in a handful of genres in the 80's, to the virtual cornucopia of games and their unique systems in the 90's, to the uncountable games and genres that now exist with the number of systems reduced to a handful. This is largely due to the Open Gaming Licence pioneered by Wizards and their d20 system. Ideamen no longer had to muddle around with the math to make their imaginary world work. They just plug-in d20 and voila: you have Fast Forward Entertainment and Engel. Everything went d20, including Star Wars, Deadlands, and Call of Cthulhu. But one cannot help but consider that perhaps the explosion of the internet had a lot to do with it as well. Growing up, Dragon Magazine (and a few Dungeon Magazines) were my inside scoop on gaming. Remember the Rifts Ad? Remember getting your "extras" and "fun mods" from there? Remember the 101 Beans and "Flight of the Wyvern?" Yeah, there were cool stuff, stories and comics in these things.

My goal in gaming used to be to open other players to new experiences by playing "new" or "obscure" games. But we now have a new generation of players; the generation of Magic: the Gathering; the generation of Min/Maxers and Power Gamers that are all about learning to Tetrisize the rules to make the most effective character/deck they can right out of the gate (paper still hot from the printer and can solo a carefully crafted adventure - to hell with the story). So now my focus has turned to introducing players to the old-school way of thinking - the way 5th ed seems to be going (and I'm loving it), where the characters are primarily modulated with some customization, and the rules are more freeform to give the GM simpler tools for complex situations. The skills introduced in d20 have disappeared back into the Proficiencies of 2nd Ed advanced. The tetris'ed power-monger feed of feats of d20 have disappeared back into optional focal points for characters. Combat is reduced to a few rounds to encourage (and open time for) more story and role-play.

I hate calling myself old - I'm only 36 - but I am an old-school gamer, and this - Fabletop - is my kind of game.