h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

After years of living with roleplayers and failing to ever join in with them, four years later I finally had my first game of Heroquest. It was simple, it was fun, and our mage took great delight in running off and getting herself killed.

Now one of the group members has found himself a copy of the advanced version - essentially turning Heroquest from a single-campaign into a more fully fledged roleplaying game, including character development and many more scenarios.

Ever since I started LARPing I wondered how I'd like tabletop and other RP games.

I really enjoyed it. Admittedly it took me longer than I'd like to get a handle on how combat worked, but that was partly because three people were trying to tell me all at the same time, and they often didn't agree (nobody had read all the rules, so they were making educated guesses based on their (in some cases) considerable experience of other systems).

*feeling nostalgic being reminded of when you played Dungeons & Dragons using big empty sheets of paper, pencils, oddly shaped dice and big, heavy books printed in English because they had yet to be translated into Swedish*

Add a game master with a crazy sense of humour that often caused us to literally because we played sitting on the floor (the table wasn't big enough) and a bunch of players with vivid imagination.

I especially remember the time one of the worshipping characters sent up a desperate prayer for help when we were facing a whole heard of orcs.

'A prayer for what?' asked the game master.

'Anything! Anything!' she yelled, being too caught up in the game to be able to think straight.

'A giant pizza with banana and mustard materialises in the cave.'

*attempt to flop the pizza, cheesy side down, over the attacking orcs*

*roll dice*

Victory! *most of the orcs got stuck and we managed to cut down the rest*

Ah, those were the days...

Oh, how wonderful! We were playing without a DM because there weren't quite enough of us, and it's the sort of game that you can get away with it. It does mean that there's a missing element of control that nearly got us killed several times.

Also reminiscing. We used to spend an entire weekend playing AD&D. We had two or three very adept DMs who were storytellers by nature. Our campaigns weren't simply "hack-n-slash" until you've got ALL the treasure; they were journeys of exploration, fascinating landscapes, intricate puzzles, and good solid character development. These were the same people who took to the stage for weekly stints acting out "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the local theater. It was always the story that mattered to us, and the growing companionship we got as we spent time together...

B4iscourtheattic4amonstermanualorplayersguide

we still play weekly

when i finish my week of nights on a tuesday we all get together and roleplay in the evening, then the following monday we play again before i start a week of nights on tuesday

AD&D 3.5 at the moment

we have 2 starwars saga adventures running as well

we take breaks in the chronicles so the ST/DM gets a chance to play aswel

I'd love to do weekend-long tabletop sessions ( that came out wrong... ) but none of my group have teh time or stamina.

Trying to get a second group together so I can play more regularly.

I'm currently running WFRP 2nd Ed... wonderful game, captures the grittiness of the 1st Ed but with more streamlined rules. I don't even want to try 3rd Ed, by all accounts WFRP has pretty much jumped the shark.

I also do D&D3.5 and occasionally Paranoia. I have some World of Darkness stuff gathering dust too from my time as an angsty teenage roleplayer.

We're going to give D&D4 a go sometime with our other regular GM... looks interesting, certainly not as bad as people say it is.