For those of you who are not familiar with role-playing games, they are games that involve rule books, paper, writing utensils,

          dice, and brain power.  All of the players except one generate fantasy personas according to the rules set forth in the rule books,

          and portray these personas until they perish or become too insignificant to game play.  The remaining player is the referee, who

          controls the world in which the fantasy personas exist.  The referee presents challenges to the fantasy personas, and the players

          choose to pursue those challenges to the best of their imaginations and strategic thinking in order to increase the personas'

          power and/or wealth.

          The first company to create games of this genre was Tactical Studies & Rules, better known as TSR.  TSR was formed in the early

          1970's by a handful of college-attending members of the hippie counterculture.  Its group of Dungeons & Dragons games and

          associated products, inspired by medieval legends and similarly themed tales of fiction such as J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

          trilogy and its prequel, The Hobbit, rose to immense popularity (and notoriety) between 1978 and 1983.  TSR was absorbed by

          RPG publisher Wizards of the Coast sometime in the 1990s.  In turn, Wizards of the Coast became a subsidiary of the game products

          giant Hasbro sometime afterward.

          One of my childhood friends received the second-generation Dungeons & Dragons basic rule box set as a gift in 1979 or 1980, and

          shared it with our clique soon afterward.  We soon graduated to the original edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D).  I and

          a few other clique members later branched out to a modern-day espionage-themed game from TSR, Top Secret, but we eventually

          abandoned it due to its relative lack of popularity in the clique and the fact that it took away from AD&D gaming opportunities.  The

          friend that began this craze fell away from role-playing games by 1985, but some of us from the clique managed to stay relatively

          active in AD&D gaming at least through to the end of high school (1986 for most of us).  I remained steadily active until I met my

          wife, in 1988.  From then I remained sporadically active until the demands of fatherhood began to weigh in heavily on my time, in

          1999.

          You can learn more about the existing parties in my RPG campaigns by following these links:

          AD&D campaign party #1

          Last updated 2004-04-13