Andrew Seiple's Blog: Transmissions From the Teslaverse - Posts Tagged "red-box-set"

My blog my rules, huh? Alright. Well, then let's make Wednesdays roleplaying game discussion days.

So. Let me tell you how I got started. It was back in nineteen eighty... six? Somewhere around there? Hard to say. I was ten-ish, and I'd heard of this thing called D&D. It sounded kind of fun. I loved reading fantasy books, checked out dozens of them from the library each month. I got kind of jazzed by the idea of playing a hero in my own fantasy stories. But aside from longing glances at the kinda-pricey books in Kay-Bee toys whenever we went to the mall, nothing much came of it.

Then on a visit to the local hardware store, I noticed that for some reason they had a display of roleplaying games and wargames. They had Dragon Pass, they had Lords of Creation, they had Powers and Perils, and some other Avalon Hill boxed sets. And they had the red box basic D&D set, in all its Larry Elmore-illustrated glory, discounted down to a mere ten dollars.

I have no idea why a hardware store had a gaming section.

But I saved my allowance, and grabbed that red box set with my scrawny little paws as fast as I could.

I got my money back and more, from that set. It was glorious. I spent hours alone rolling up characters, and drawing dungeons on graph paper. I'd make up story lines, and roll out fights between monsters, and fart around with it. But...

Well, I didn't have anyone to play with. My parents humored me a bit, but it really wasn't their thing. Same thing with my little sister. And I'd gush about it and annoy everyone... to me, it was a great discovery, this awesome thing that everyone needed to know about! To them, it was me going on for hours about weird stuff that got old after the fourth explanation of the various currencies of the realm. Nobody wants to hear about electrum pieces, it turns out. Odd, that.

I loved that old red box set. I still have a copy of it on my shelf today. Later on I'd get the blue box set as a Christmas gift and drool over the glorious adventure that was the Isle of Dread, but I foolishly traded that away long ago. I'd love to track down the full run of the box sets, but they're kind of pricey to tell the truth. And I've got a copy of the D&D rules cyclopedia which collected them all, so that works instead.

I never did play a full game of basic D&D. When I finally got started playing in High School, the group I was in was doing AD&D, which is a different thing entirely.

Perhaps when my daughter's ten-ish, I'll pull that old red box set out, and see if she can defeat Bargle in the solo adventure. Hopefully she won't feel bad when Aleena the cleric dies at his hands.

Or maybe she'll want to play a cleric like Aleena, instead of nameless fighter guy?

Well.

We shall see.

I tell you this, though. If she ever starts telling me the difference between silver pieces and electrum pieces, I'm gonna listen.