The Time: May, 1978
The Setting: James Dugan's* dining room with three other 12 year
olds. James informs I've just randomly rolled up my first Advanced D+D
character: a half-orc.
Action: Forget everything you know about orcs now-a-days. The
half-orc in the Player's Hand Book wasn't exactly the "go to guy" for
character generation. The fantasy adventure game that builds a magic land of
swords and sorcery could randomly turn one of the players into a monster you've
killed countless times, back in the Basic / Expert Games. Nobody 'played' the
half-orc. Not on purpose. Everybody wanted to be Gandalf, Aragorn, or Legolas
(or one of the stars from the movie, Excalibur), which made for a strange
experience around the table, with nobody (except James, who owned the books)
having seen the PHB picture of a half-orc before that night.
TAKE THE GOOD
WITH THE BAD...AND THE UGLY
The upside was I also rolled my first, officially corroborated,
straight 18 Strength roll (with the percentage bonus and everything) that
night. We chewed up a lot of time with character generation, but eventually we
found an abandoned castle, fought off a few wolves, and I battled 2 skeletons
before falling into a spiked pit trap: most of it determined by James through
random die rolls (some behind the screen, some not). That's how he DM’d, and
since he was the only one with the DMG, we figured that's how you played
Advanced D+D. Later, I learned he determined everything
by random die rolls. That's how I got the half-orc in the first place.
The Take Away: I out-lasted everybody but the fighter (who was quickly killed by another skeleton down the hall). So, even though we didn't make it out of the first level, we still had fun. What kind I say? The game builds character.
*(For legal purposes, not his real name. And the above picture is from the 1978 Player's Handbook by Gary Gygax, pg. 18. Trademarked by TSR/ Wizards of the Coast, 2012).
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