Fond memories of glory and wanton slaughter: Part One - The Freaks

I've been trying to recall some of my favorite RPG experiences over the years. For my own sake (what other sake is there at the moment for this blog?) I'll try to catalogue my variegated forays.

As noted previously, it all started with Dungeons & Dragons. Which version exactly, I'm not sure. I know The Keep on the Borderlands was involved fairly early on, and we used tall, skinny, orange pre-printed character sheets. I recall little actual play from this time beyond flashes of characters and regular ogling of the artwork in any and all of the D&D material available to me. I drew a lot of monsters. I loved monsters. Monsters and bad guys. I really liked Vampires.

Once my sister was out of grade school, I doubt we ever did much neighbourhood D&D again. Deities & Demigods sure was neat though. I already loved mythology, but that book opened my eyes to cultures and powers I had never heard of. The mysteries of the world and the breadth of my imagination grew.

In junior high, two overlapping, but distinct groups of gaming friends developed for me; the intellectual Geeks, and the rough-and-tumble harmless Freaks.

The Freaks and I played Palladium games.

Our love of comic books led organically into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG.

There was a lot of material coming out for TMNT and the rapidly-growing stable of Palladium games, but the Freaks were always more improvisational with our play, and didn't rely on much beyond the core info. Myself and one of the other guys were the only DMs (and prolific illustrators), but each player had an ensemble of characters in the same world together.

Some of our adventures got so intense and personal that we'd get quite emotional. It was intoxicating and addicting.

I experienced my first death of a beloved character. It was heartbreaking, but it was so well built up and handled by my friend who was DMing that it only made the whole experience richer and more gratifying. One of our sessions involved a Ouija board which took things to a whole new level.

My favorite character was a mutant Gila Monster named Garrison. The one who died was a mutant Alligator named Lockjaw. There were many others though, like I said.

Next, we delved into the Palladium Fantasy roleplaying game.

There is where I first came across the Lovecraftian notion of the Old Ones. They struck a powerful chord in my unconscious that resonates to this day.

We had many rich, imaginative, intense, fantastic adventures in this world, again with many characters apiece. My primaries here were a small cyclopean thief named Maximilian, a Necromancer named Shader and an Ogre named Diablo who was afflicted by the Old Ones and became half-demon. We consorted with the Gods and overthrew kingdoms, seduced barmaids and snuck down alleyways, high and low.

In high school, we tried a few other Palladium titles; Heroes Unlimited (we had a pretty lengthy and involved Heroes campaign), Ninjas and Superspies, Rifts, Robotech, Recon, Beyond The Supernatural. Rifts was a lot of fun to read about, but never much fun to play for some reason.

We gave White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade a few chances, but it didn't suit us. We even partook of a Vampire LARP which was totally lame because I didn't even end up getting to play a Vampire.

Shadowrun was attempted. GURPS Car Wars was given a shot. Warhammer had a chance.

Our sessions waned. The games became little more than fodder for artwork. Drugs and girls and visions of more girls and drugs were intervening.

Next: The Geeks