I was first introduced to D&D the night I graduated high school. (I know, strange thing to do after graduating, but that's what us geeks do!) I spent the summer getting to know the system, buy and play modules, and collect dice. I still have some of them from way back when. Most didn't survive as they were really cheap quality.
Then I did something brave/stupid at the time: I introduced D&D to my dorm mates at college. OK, that doesn't sound too bad but it was the fall of 1979 and the college was a Southern Baptist institution. This was just before the controversy hit about D&D and devil worship. You can imagine what happened! Actually, not much. The people I gathered treated it as a game, nothing more. I found it rather funny that people were so up in arms about a game, so we kept it up. I ended up changing majors after a couple of years and left that college. I visited for a few years afterwards and found that the gaming group was still active.
I then tried to start a D&D group at my new college, which is more liberal in its outlook. I also met another gamer in my home town and we started yet another group to play during the summer and holidays. The hometown group grew to five players, with a core of three: myself, Jeff (who is no longer with us), and Keith. Robert and Jen were added later.
After I graduated, I stayed in my home town a couple of years as the job market was tight for my field. So we gamed more. Then Jeff and Jen moved away to Chicago area and got married. I then followed as they were willing to put me up as I tried to find work. I did find a job and moved out of my parents' house, which they were more than happy to see happen. I found my own apartment. Jeff, Jen, and I would continue to game for the next couple of years, with periodic visits from Keith. Then came summer of 1987. My first trip to Milwaukee and Gencon!
Gencon is the world's largest gaming convention and was so back then but wasn't as big as it is now. It was still large. It's primary focus at that time was tabletop role playing games. I went as a visitor instead of a player that first year, just so I could get a feel of the convention. I quickly became hooked as I saw not only a lot of other gamers but some REALLY good gamers and GMs. It got me to step up my game. For the next couple of years, I went as a player. Then I heard a seminar about the zen of role playing, where the lecturer had talked about creating scenarios on the spot. Inspiration!!! I thought, "I could do that!" So, the next year I decided to go as a game master and run scenarios on the spot.
So, it's 1990. My first year as a game master, running zen role playing where we make up the game on the spot. I told them to pick a campaign style and to create characters. As they made up the characters, I created a quick starting point for a story and we would run with it. Now, I had been running pre-built scenarios for different game systems and wrote my own game stories. I even tried to make one up on the spot for my group and it was horrible. So here I am at this largest game convention doing this same thing. I ran it three times each year for three years. Every year the results were the same: one good, one great, and one disaster. At least I was consistent with the quality.
Robert had told us about a game he played in which the game masters ran two groups secretly opposing each other and that kept in touch with a runner between the games. Keith and I went, "We can do that!" So for 1991, we created a scenario in which we had our games running in parallel but we used radio headsets to keep in touch. Now in those days at Gencon, games were scheduled to run for 4 hours at a time. We ran this in two slots back to back with the groups running in parallel. Somehow we were able to manage to do this twice that year. Yes, we ran an eight hour game TWICE. Hey, it worked.
So we did the same thing for the next year but with a different group and different story and it turned out to be 4 four hour slots over the weekend. And to top it all off, we were updating the game between slots and reprinting as needed at the convention. We had incorporated theatrical style LARP in our presentation, though we didn't have the word for it then. We had the two groups start out separately and it was up to them to determine when they would meet up. It organically happened in the first round. Once the two groups met, we let them talk among themselves and we would answer questions as needed. It worked this way for the remainder of the rounds, at least until the finale in which we drove the plot. But the one thing I remember about that experience was having several of the players leave near the end of the third round in order to get tickets to play the fourth round! They wanted to keep playing that much.
I still attend Gencon every year. I haven't missed one yet since 1987. But in 1998 (if I remember correctly) I played my first "official" LARP without really knowing that it was different than tabletop and not knowing it was a LARP because it wasn't advertised as such. It was "Intrigue Beneath the Waves" by Dean and Dana Edgell. Sadly, Dean is also no longer with us. Dean was part of a gaming group at Gencon and the style of getting up and "acting" the part instead of talking about it had been happening for since before I started going to Gencon so I was used to it. What I was not used to was the number of players. Being used to 6,7, or 8 players, it was a shock to be part of a group of 20+. I still had a good time but felt a little out of my depth.
By this time, I was engaged and living in New England. I stayed out there until 2000, when I had to move back closer to home. But before I left I noticed that there was a LARP convention in the Boston area. Unfortunately I didn't attend at that time and moved back to Chicagoland. I then tried to find more gaming in the area and found a couple hosting a game in their house. That led to finding another group and finding out more about Intercon. My first Intercon was in Baltimore in 2001. Shortly after 9/11. It was a good convention and I started adding Intercon Boston to my list of conventions to attend.
Through other connections, I learned about Whately's games in the Chicago area. So I attended and enjoyed it, though the game itself ended early. I ended up getting to know the couple that hosts the Whately's games. In 2004, they invited me to assist with editing and writing an existing LARP they wanted to run. I jumped at the chance to learn from experienced writers and LARP GMs. We took and existing game that needed work and we tried to fix the issues with it and expand it to let more players in. However, there was one fault we found that was known but we didn't effectively address. Still, I did learn some lessons on writing and running. But, this was editing not creating.
I also assisted other GMs in helping to run their games. I also helped run Intrigue Beneath the Waves several times. I also created sound effects for the game which helped add to the feel of the game.
I know that this was a long post and probably more than you wanted to know, but I wanted to show my journey from D&D to LARPing. There are lots more detail that I didn't cover because they weren't relevant to how I got to LARPing.
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