Wednesday, September 8, 2010

First Generation Grognards

The main reason I went to SoCal Smackdown last weekend was to play in Brunomac's OD&D Dungeon Crawl on Saturday afternoon. This was a continuation of a game he started at the SoCal Mini-Con III, but that I wasn't able to participate in at the time. It sounded like too much fun, so I didn't want to miss out this time around.

Besides being a fun fast-moving low-level dungeon stomp, it was also kind of a remarkable game because most of the players at the table, 4 or 5 of them, were first-generation D&D players who started with the little brown books back in the 1970s. It struck me that I've never really been at the table with a whole group of grognard players like this before. Before we started the game, it was interesting hearing them chatting about the big Orange County D&D group that used to meet at Cal State Fullerton back in the late 70s. It also turns out that a couple of these guys started the first O.C. gaming convention back in the day (OrcCon - which was bought out by Strategicon and moved to L.A. - long story, yawn).


So I pulled out my little Collector's Edition whitebox thinking I was all cool and maybe could hang, and one of the guys jokingly says "I don't know what this whitebox stuff is all about, I always played this..." and he pulls out his original battered woodgrain OD&D set. He also had a clipboard with notes and tables he used at the original Dundracon 35 years ago. Awesome...


Anyway, it was a raucous and jolly game led by Brunomac, a hilarious loudmouthed DM. We were boozing it up while our characters were massacring kobolds, slipping in goblin poop, and hacking at gelatinous cubes. Beautiful afternoon!

7 comments:

  1. As I mentioned on Brunomac's blog, you guys have combined to completely blow my elaborate cover ... Good Lord, my picture up on a website! But no matter, it was all worth it, as Brunomac's game was a great one, which brought back a lot of memories. Such as that summer of 1976 when I first experienced D&D -- and also, along with several other people, assisted a fellow named James John Meyers in putting together the first Orccon convention, held in January 1977 at Cal State Fullerton. An eventful summer! I can only hope we will have more such summers, and will be able to get together for another game soon!

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  2. @Fred: Don't worry, I won't reveal your true name! It was fun gaming with you - I hope we can do it again soon! Sorry I had to miss out on your evening game!

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  3. Nice, man. Looked like a fine time. :)

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  4. Fred, I removed your last name! Sorry bro.

    Thanx Cyc, and thanks for the rum and coke! Heh heh, for sure a loudmouth DM when it;s boozy time.

    It did feel like history, didn;t it? Just awesome to DM for this great old timer group!

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  5. Oh, by the way bro, your page comes up adult content at my work now. What are you hiding in here?

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  6. @Brunomac: Adult content...? Hmmm, that kind of sucks. I tried retroactively censoring out the s-words from this last post, so maybe that will help. Also, I know there are two illustrations hidden away in older posts that have BOOBS in them (oh no!), but I don't see how the Google Overlord Censorship Authority would have detected those so easily.

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  7. Wow, that sounds awesome. My wife and I have a running joke about how I will be in my 60s and still getting together with some friends to play a little game of D&D instead of a game of shuffleboard or something.

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