Memory Lane - Part 12

 So, it's late 1982 and I'd been gaming for a while now. Only a few months in reality, but it felt like an eternity.

White Dwarf in GW Sheffield at the time was still on the top shelf and having one day looked left and right, somewhat furtively, I'd grabbed White Dwarf 35, with it's fantastic cover by Les Edwards, the Green Horizon scenario for Traveller and Necromancer character class for AD&D.

And I was blown away...

But, let's go back a little way and go into town with my parents one Saturday morning early in 82 - sometimes, I was required to go with them rather than out with my mates, or maybe I was angling for some consumer booty - and the obligatory sausage sandwich in Woolco on the Gallery, a few doors up from Hopkinson's Toys.

Having finished mine, I excused myself and went out of the back doors of Woolies and jogged down to Hopkinsons, where on a bottom shelf, was a pristine Holmes edition of Basic D&D for £2.99.

At the time I received £3 per week, so this was for me a major purchase at the time.

I'd been disappointed at Christmas, having asked, pleaded and begged for a copy of the new Errol Otus Basic set, but been rebuffed by my parents on the grounds that 'all it contains is two books, some pieces of wood (mis-identified poly dice) and a crayon.'

So, now I was able to get my own set of D&D and stick it to the mam (and dad of course).

I paid Mr Hopkinson, who was his usual ebullient self and had it away on my heels back to my breakfasting parents who were as you will imagine, full of joy for the return safe from the mean streets of early 80s Sheffield, of their treasured firstborn.

Eyes were rolled, and comments about having to wait a week for more spending money, but I didn't care.

Oddly, I already had dice despite only playing the D6 Heritage pseudo D&D rules. I think I'd bought one or two ech week on the now regular visit to GW, where it was sytill an amazing and new place that my parents would not set foot in - EVER - in all their lives. This was fine by me, because it meant that if my mum & dad shunned a place, it must be bloody risque, and thereby, just the kind of place an edgy and worldwise (yeah, right) young ruffian like me (yeah, right) should be. YEAH, RIGHT!

I devoured that slim book, and together with Alan and his younger brother and sister, Andrew and Diane, we got into playing Dungeons & Dragons, with your correspondent invariably being the DM.

We'd sit around Alan's parent's dining table, his long suffering Mum & Dad trying to watch TV whilst we yelled and threw fireballs at goblins, or attempted TPKs with arbalests, hidden behind walls at the end of long corridors.

It was nearly always goblins who did the dirty work, because bioth Alan and I were fans of the Ral Partha goblin range sculpted by Tom Meier and we bought a LOT, although I'd been steadily building up a collection of Citadel undead, Hobgoblins and Orcs from the Fantasy Tribes ranges.

OK, back to early 82 and GW...

So, I shelled out £1.75 for three WDs because two were marked up at  a mere 50P each and grabbed a bus home. Normally, I would be hanging around town with Alan, but I recall clearly being in town on my own that day - not a safe thing to do back then - so going home made more sense, the bus stop being just around the back of GW, and I spent the 45 minute journey (yes, I took the service which took the longest, to get some reading time) breaking my cardinal rule of denying myself the pleasures of the GW carrier bag until home, to heighten the ecstatic pleasure of adding another piece to the puzzle and further stepping away from the real world.

The Necromancer class was a masterpiece in how to write something which was certain - without a doubt - to get the screaming Fundamentalists, well, screaming for the blood of Gygax and his global, devil worshipping, child corrupting coven.

To this day, it can still cause a shiver.

It was great.

But, it would be the Green Horizon scenario which would probably be the most influential and paradigm shifting article for me, in those early years. Why?

I'll tell you all about it in a future post...

TTFN