Assembling a Fellowship of Gamers

Hi Scott, here again. Time to open the vault doors to the good old days of my gaming life. early nineties was a time where being on the fringes of social society meant being kept out of a lot of the "normal" activities everyone else enjoyed, sports, popular music and in later years being one of the cool kid who could manage to get cheap bottles of alcohol on a Friday night, to sit in a dark and dank place, hidden from sight and "hangout" talking rubbish.

Being the only person in my year at school who listened to Nirvana, music was not a common ground for discussion. Wearing my favourite smiley face Nirvana top at any opportunity was my style. Makes me warm inside today when I see the younger generation of Nerds rocking those same smiley face Nirvana tops that I wore, sparking great memories of my youth.

But I digress.

At this point of the story myself and my friend, who I shall call DM for ease from here on, had played Advanced HeroQuest to death, the black box DnD had been thoroughly palmed through and numerous legendary heroes created. At this time we had only been playing two-player DnD, my great character Kismet Furtive, Weretroll human Cleric, had been blinked into existence, his name arriving from randomly turning to pages in a dictionary.  Always good for generating character names when inspiration is lacking. lol.

DM mentioned to me that we could probably do with having a bigger group to adventure with, he noted that a couple of our friend group, had mentioned liking comics and like a geek detecting Geiger counter our interest had been peaked. We broached the idea of DnD with them and another one of our friend group soon also showed an interest. Being on the edges of social society, these friends were made up of people with common interests like a love for fantasy films and the original star wars trilogy. Arrangements were made and bribes offered, DM agreeing for the comic lovers of the group to come to his house to have a look through the meagre offering of comics he had for any they wanted.

The day arrived and with glee, like a child on Christmas morning, we hastily made our way to DM's house straight from school.

Two of our group hastily thumbed through Dm's comics picking out any they fancied, whilst myself, player 3 and DM set about sorting out the gaming area, as set out in the hallowed rulebook, paper character standees assembled, dice carefully piled together and the Advanced HeroQuest dungeon tiled laid out. The stage was set. The only inconvenience we could see was that DM's Mum would be home in a couple of hours. We began.

As with anything new, multiple questions were asked every few minutes, DM dutifully doing his best to find the right rule or description, valiantly we made our way through the dungeon, laying waste to a gaggle of goblins and pesky undead. Players 1, 2 and 3 doing their very best to grasp the masses of information that myself and DM unloaded on them. The thrill of player interaction, the sheer joy of forming a character, that anyone who has roleplayed knows well, soon our characters formed into their own entities. What had started as generic fantasy tropes in each of our minds had manifested into fully fleshed-out beings, the group splintering into buddy groups that would have died for each other without flinching.

At the back of all of our minds was the fact we were running on a ticking clock that was fast running out of time, as we approached the final room of the dungeon(one that had been painstakingly hand drawn by DM on some spare paper nights before) a shadowy silhouette appeared, its horned head towering over the group. "A minotaur!" we exclaimed in unison. After a brief description from DM battle was joined, metal hacked sinew, horns gored effectively, a battle raged.

First Player 1 fell, his lifeless corpse mauled to a bloody pulp under the hooves of the foe, the rest of us gulped deeply, should we carry on. (Player 1 stood up and grabbed a comic and proceeded to read deeply, we all know character death can be a traumatic experience, it stings, he seemed genuinely moved by the destruction of some numbers on a piece of paper).

We pushed on, shouts of revenge echoing the stone walls of the rough-hewn corridors we traipsed. Next to fall was Player 3, slammed effortlessly into a wall by the bovine hulk. Damn! came the cry this time, myself, player 2 and DM eyeballing each other like the most professional of poker players. We questioned DM about how the foe looked, if it seemed near death or badly injured, the response affirmed that indeed the minotaur was heavily injured, with this knowledge we pushed on once again, and surely we would triumph shortly. Eyes darted to the clock, time was almost up, we must succeed now or not at all. Player 2 fell next with his innards becoming outers. I stood alone, sword in hand a quick check showed me my hit points were almost spent but surely the minotaur would fall....just one more hit. The die was cast and what seemed like an eternity transpired, the plastic lump bouncing loudly, the others who had switched attention from the game to various comics strewn across the table took a breath and turned to check the outcome.

"Miss" came the reply to the roll from DM as the minotaur loomed large over my character. Mere seconds later the last remnants drained from my character as the minotaur proceeded to consume the flesh of the fallen.

We all sat back the importance of what had occurred washing over us, each person dealing with their first character death in their own way.

As we packed away all the pieces in silence, DM looked down at his notes sheet and said "Funny thing is it only had 1 hit point left"

And so the legend of the 1hp minotaur was born, even to this day over 25 years since the event, myself and DM fondly recall and tell anyone that will listen to the tale of the minotaur with 1hp that destroys unsuspecting gaming groups, lol.

After the game, player 3 decided that he would be up for more of this thing called Dungeons and Dragons, whilst the other 2 didn't really see that they would play again but thanks for the comics they noted to the DM as they left.

So, we had three and the fellowship had begun. ;)

Thanks for reading this little vignette of the history of my life in gaming. Do you have any stories that no matter where you are they bring a massive smile to your face, one that you can't help but reminisce about or blabber to strangers about, let me know in the comments?

Thanks

Scott