Memoirs of an Old School Gamer

Not long ago, maybe a couple of years back from the time that I write this, I was in search of a game. Nothing big and elaborate, nothing that a true gamer would consider playing, just your run of the mill, mass market board game made by Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley. The game was to be a Christmas gift for one of my younger siblings. Just a few weeks before, I had seen the one I wanted to get them at the local Toys-R-Us, but foolishly I didn’t pick it up and now could not find a single copy in any of the myriad “big box” stores I walked into. What should I have expected for the last Saturday before Christmas?

In desperation, I searched my memory and could recall the image a small gaming store from deep in my past. It was my hangout when I was in junior high and high school, it was a geek shop and was a Mecca for those of us who played the semi-shadowed game of Dungeons and Dragons. Without a single idea of where else to go, I steered my aging station wagon toward Castle Games and prayed that it would still be there. It was the place where we could consort with others of our ilk, read the new books just released by TSR, discuss strategy with the guys that worked there and pick up a new set of dice from time to time. We didn’t play with maps and miniatures, but if we had, Castle Games had display cases full of hand painted lead figures.

“It couldn’t still be there.” I told myself time and again, but as I turned into the small, familiar, strip mall I was thrilled to see that the place still existed. In the storefront window stood a life size cardboard cutout of “Master Chief” from the popular HALO video game and my heart sank to think that Castle Games had finally caved to market pressures and had tuned from an RPG shop to a video game store.

I blamed myself. After all I had not walked into the place in almost twenty years, and had not put a single hand to the cover of any of my old D&D books for at least ten. Not that that would have saved Castle Games from the allure and hype of the multi-billion dollar video game industry, but maybe I would have felt better.

Walking into the store was not entirely like walking back in time. The place was darkened so that the images of the demo screens would be able to show brighter and dazzle the teen aged customers just a little more. Behind the glass counter, once filled with lead miniatures and dice sets, stood a tall young man in a pirate shirt. His face was pierced in places I didn’t know you could pierce; the uniform of the millennial video gamer I was guessing.

I looked around for a while and noticed that there was an almost continual stream of very young teens signing in at the counter and then walking into the back room. I knew from my childhood that the back room was for small tournaments. Many times, as a youth, I would stand in that room watching the elite play D&D tournaments with their very best characters and pristine dice kept in small velvet lined bags. I could not imagine what I would find back there these days.

Before long, I was able to find some strange little game that I thought that my sister and her husband might find enjoyable and walked it up to piercing boy at the counter. While we waited for my credit card to go through I asked, “What are they playing in the back room?” I half expected the answer to be some kind of Play Station game, and his answer could have been just that, because I didn’t recognize the name. To me, it sounded like a sneeze, interrupted by a belch, followed by something a samurai would yell just before he was gutted by a small furry woodland creature. So I just nodded.

“So,” came a voice low and to my left, “what do you play?” I think it was more of a challenge than a question. I looked down and found an eleven or twelve year old boy looking back up at me.

“Nothing,” I answered, “I used to play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, but not so much any more.”

“Oh ya,” he said, “What edition?”

Edition? There’s more than one D&D? I had no idea. I knew that they started with the basic game, and then went on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I think that 2nd edition was coming out just before I graduated from high school and my games were becoming more and more rare. But beyond that I had no idea, so I stuck with what I knew.

“Advanced,” I said simply, and left it at that.

Slowly his head began to bob up and down, “Ooooh,” he said, “Old school.”

“Ya,” I said, “Very old school.”

“That’s so cool.” he said, still nodding his head.

As I left my old haunt that day, I felt like Obiwan or someone of the like, looking for a young learner to impart my vast gaming knowledge upon; only to realize, later, that the world had moved on, and that I was just an old guy stuck in his gaming ways, unwilling to move beyond his fading coverless copies of Dragon Magazine.