Early Years 1979-1981

After beginning with the Holmes basic set I started reading through the AD&D books and Dragon magazine whenever I came across them. being only 10 years old I couldn't afford them but I began to pick up on what went on in the game beyond 3rd level. This is the time where I discovered the joys of Graph paper - so much graph paper. I only had one other friend who would play so i spent a fair amount of time rolling up characters and making up dungeons. 'Rolling' might be a bad word to use here too - my set didn't come with dice. Instead it came with cut-apart cardboard 'chits' numbered 1-20, 1-12, 1-8, etc. I put them in paper cups and drew numbers when a random roll was called for. It was cumbersome, but it worked. It also made me love my first set of dice that much more when I eventually acquired them.