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I expect this will be a short one (cue inevitable rambling), in answer to the question: Where would you host a first game?

Somewhere quiet, with a table.

Over the years I’ve typically gamed (played and run) in people’s houses. So there’s been a lot of ’round the kitchen table’ stuff. Once upon a time I was part of a weekly RPG thing at the Dragonslayers gaming group at QUB in Belfast…but that was way-back-when and these days I prefer something a bit more…if not private then at least less actively loud and busy. A library would seem ideal if they have the room(s).

Which is not to say I don’t like running games at cons – and I’ve done that many times, with varying degrees of success over the years. It’s just that for a stable, ongoing gaming night, and especially for a first time game, tables to set all your stuff on are great. Essential even.

And, again, it’s not like I haven’t played or run games when everyone has been sitting around a room in comfortable chairs. But it’s not the same. I think you need the demarcation, the creation of a ‘space for gaming’.

Also, if the ‘new gamer’ is someone the group already knows, then I guess we could just stick with bringing them into the group at whatever location we normally play, otherwise, maybe go back to a gaming group for the initial sessions, while everyone gets to know each other. Even if that does involve someone shouting their way through Tomb of Horrors two tables over.

There’s a whole other aspect to this question and I did muse for a bit on the idea of maybe running a first game in a castle, or a haunted house, or perhaps an abandoned fairground on a pier. On reflection though I suspect that might be trying too hard, and in danger of overwhelming the point of the gaming session. It is tempting though. Maybe one day…

Today’s question–which I had prepared for and yet somehow still ended up leaving to the last minute–is this: When were you first introduced to RPGs?

Initially I would have said it was around 1981, but checking the dates of various relevant things, it seems more likely that it was sometime in 1982 that I actually got my hands on a copy of an RPG and commenced playing.

The concept of RPGs came slightly earlier, in the form of advertisements in a UK science-fiction/fantasy/movie magazine called STARBURST (still going strong to this day, albeit after a slight break in the early 2000s). I remember ads for D&D, but oddly the one I recall most clearly (scientists fleeing from something awful) was for “Attack of the Mutants”, which was apparently a board game and not an RPG at all.

In summer ’82 I worked in a shop in a forest park, and used some of my wages to buy the 1981 Moldvay variant boxed set of Basic D&D. Which looks like this:

I then attempted to run Basic D&D for a couple of friends. With variable results. But obviously something went right because I’ve not stopped running games since.

Oddly, I also remember the influence of ET: The Extraterrestrial, a book about RPGs called What is Dungeons & Dragons?, and the first Fighting Fantasy book, Warlock of Firetop Mountain, but looking back those all seem to have appeared after I’d already bought and started playing D&D, so… shrug :-/