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chapter one

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Gamers Interview

Kilsern, I took the time (a lot of time actually) to answer the questions posted on your web page. I think your idea of putting together a montage of gamers’ lives is a good idea. Too often society looks upon us as simple geeks. They don’t realize that we are real people with real lives. I hope that people read our stories and realize this.

I’ve given you more than you probably wanted. Once I started telling my story, I couldn’t stop. I hope you find something useful. Writing it all down has been therapy for me. I’ve realized some things about myself that I never knew before. Anyway, as I said it is probably more than you wanted but here it is. I’ve titled it: A Munchkin’s Tale.
 

1. Tell me a little about yourself. Please include facts like your age, occupation, residence, marital status, education, hopes/dreams/aspirations and anything else that you think might be important.
 

I am Martin Edward Warden. I was born the fourteenth of December 1968  in Falling Rock Memorial Hospital, Falling Rock, PA. I am currently 33 years old, soon to be 34. I determined at a young age that I would leave Falling Rock forever and never return. I now reside in Falling Rock. I’ve left twice.

 Immediately following graduation, I joined the Air Force. During Basic Training, the love of my life dumped me. I ended up being an electrician for the Air Force, something I had no interest in being. I joined with the intention of traveling, but instead I was stuck at Edwards AFB, CA for four long years. If you’ve never been to that neck of the woods, you’re not missing much. While in the AF, I was briefly married, had a child, and two years later was divorced. I separated from the service just prior to Operation Desert Storm, and moved back to my hometown to go to school at good old FRU (Falling Rock University).

 From the fall of 91 to spring 95, I attended University. I hold a Bachelor in English Literature, with a minor in Creative Writing. During my college years, I attempted to get back with Kara (the love of my life that I mentioned earlier). It almost worked.
After college, I moved to Anchorage Alaska to be closer to my daughter. I lived there for two years before my ex-wife moved to Germany with her new husband and took my daughter with her. I’ve seen little of Adrienne (my daughter) since. While in Alaska, I amassed an enormous debt. I had no choice but to return to Falling Rock and lick my wounds.

 I’m an aspiring writer whose managed to publish three poems in the span of ten years. I’ve written numerous short stories, none of which have seen print, and I am searching for a publisher for my novel Talgarth’s Sword. Currently, I’m the manager of Big John’s Pizza Den. I live above my parent’s garage which they renovated into an apartment a number of years ago in hopes of opening a bed and breakfast. Luckily for me, it didn’t work out. From this lofty castle in the sky, I run my weekly games.

Well that’s my life condensed to five paragraphs. It’s actually a bit more complicated but that will sum it up.

2. What got you into Gaming? How long have you been Gaming? I’d also like to know what is/are your favorite game(s)?

I believe that I was destined to be a geek even though the cards were stacked against me. Don’t take that sentence wrong. I fit the definition of a geek then and now. At the age of 14 I was too skinny for my height, I had brown hair that was too curly to comb, glasses that never sat straight on my face and a generous helping of facial acne. Luckily over time, the hair straightened a bit, and the acne went away. The skinniness is no longer a problem. I now fight the good fight against fat (I’m losing…miserably). The glasses are still crooked. I am genetically inclined towards geekdom. My problem was my town was never and never will be a gaming Mecca.

There is no game store in Falling Rock. Hell, there isn’t even a bookstore. Falling Rock is located in northeast Pennsylvania, nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. The closest game store is two hours away in Ithaca, NY. The journey to a bookstore is a bit shorter clocking in at one hour and fifteen minutes, but if you speed you can make the trip in just over 45 minutes. Falling Rock doesn’t have much of anything. It does have a one screen movie theater which shows the same second run movie for seven days, two shows a night the first at seven the second at nine (longer movies tend to have only one showing a night). There is also a hospital (where my older sister, older brother and me were born). There are also a total of five bars which consist of The Pioneer (caters to the college kids), The Silver Nickel (the 40+ crowd), Ralph’s (the less savory town residents), The Studio (don’t be fooled by the name, this is the same crowd as Ralph’s), and Big Jack’s (live music every Saturday, Yahoo!). The churches outnumber the bars eleven to five. Represented are Catholics, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Baptists. I grew up Baptist. I attended The First Baptist Church every Sunday rather if I wanted to or not (which I didn’t). Falling Rock, PA: Home of the State Fair. Yup. Falling Rock is pretty lame. It’s only saving grace is Falling Rock University.

FRU is a small state college that specializes in producing elementary teachers. I, like just about any person born and raised in Falling Rock, swore that I would never go to school there. I ended up going to school there. What I didn’t realize until I went to school there is that old FRU ain’t such a bad place. It’s small, but it has a lot going for it. When I went there, the English department had about four kick ass professors, and three others that were best avoided. I relished my time there. I kept my hair long, grew a beard, expanded my mind, wore sandals year around, found my religious calling and wrote poems that don’t rhyme. These days since I work around food I must shave the beard, work place policies infringe upon the mind expansionism and I traded the sandals for Nikes; however, I still have long hair, and while my parents aren’t happy about it, I’m still practicing my preferred religious calling. Oh yeah, I still write poems that don’t rhyme. Even though my degree from there hasn’t exactly allowed me to set the world on fire, I don’t regret attending. I’m a part of the minority of Falling Rock residents who enjoy the fact that the university is there.

The majority of the small population of Falling Rock is hostile towards the university students. Most respectable citizens would rather that FRU be anywhere other than Falling Rock. The good law abiding citizens of Falling Rock claim that the students are loud, drunk and boisterous. The students often prove them correct just about every weekend. I appreciate that the university is there, if for no other reason it keeps me with a fresh flow of players for my weekly game. If it weren’t for my years at the university, I wouldn’t have started playing again. FRU was not my introduction to roleplaying. The seed was planted at a younger age. FRU was just fertilizer.

As a young child, I didn’t even know what a roleplaying game was, nor did anyone in my immediate family. To this day all they really know about RPGs is that they consist of a bunch of books that Marty wastes his money on (their opinion) and that he and his weird friends pretend to slay dragons or some such nonsense. My immediate family seems to have an innate hatred towards rpg’s. With the cards stacked so high against me, it was amazing that I turned out to be a geek. It all boils down four men who programmed me for geekness: George Lucas, Gene Rodenberry and Stan Lee and Robert E. Howard.

Being the youngest, whenever my mother went grocery shopping, she would stick me in the little metal cage in the front. As hard as it may seem to believe, at one point in history comic books were affordable. At the time, my mother would gripe about five cents for a “funny book”, but it was worth a nickel to keep me out of her hair and give her time to shop. The first thing she did when we entered the grocery store was go straight to the comic rack and grab me a comic book. She unintentionally began my descent into geekhood.

Sure I couldn’t read, but the pictures were enough to get me hooked. Jack Kirby knew his stuff. Superman flew majestically across the page, Batman was creepy, and Spiderman was just kick ass cool. Because of my love for comics, I begged my mom to teach me to read. She did, and I learned to read by age four. I loved the words “Stan Lee Presents”. So my mother began my slide to geekdom, but my grandmother continued it.

I discovered Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek in of all places at my maternal Grandmother’s house. Nana, isn’t a Trekkie, far from it. When I was in kindergarten, my mother decided that she would return to work. Since grade K was only half a day long, I had to spend the afternoons with Nana. Nana enjoyed her soaps, but she didn’t enjoy an overeager five-year-old constantly distracting her. To solve this problem, she would send me to her room to watch TV. This was in the days before Cartoon network, not to mention that Nana didn't have cable. Five days a week I would watch really choppy, poorly animated cartoons of my favorite Marvel heroes, followed by Tom and Jerry. That was all well and good, especially the Marvel Super Heroes, but what was even better were re-runs of Trek. During Trek hour, I never bothered her.

I was only five. At the time, I didn’t enjoy Trek as much as I would when I grew older and was able to appreciate all the little things I couldn’t at the time understand. However, I might not have always understood what was going on, but I understood enough that I knew when I grew up I wanted to be as smart as Spock and cool as Kirk.

If my mother was to blame for comic books and my grandmother was to blame for Star Trek, then the blame falls on my brother Rob for introducing me to the works of Mr. George Lucas.

I went to The Falling Rock Cinema much as possible. My parents weren’t big George Lucas fans, so I never saw A New Hope in the theater. As a matter of fact, I saw The Empire Strikes Back first. My brother Rob offered to take me. Not because he liked doing nice things for me, but because he wanted to meet his buddies and go to the school dance. Our mother had a thing about middle school dances. High School dances were fine, but she seemed to think that Middle school dances were cesspools of sin. I’ve never understood this. She never tried to control the music we listened to, and had nothing against dancing. I guess she feared too much of a good thing, at too early of an age. Had she stopped to consider how much more the average boy’s hormones kick into overdrive after the age of 13, she might have reconsidered her theory. Anyway, it was pretty common for Rob to “take me to the movies”. It was my job to watch the movie and give him a quick five-minute run down of what it was about just in case Mom decided to give him a quiz (which she never did). Rob of course never went to the movie. He would always sneak off with his buddies, smoke cigarettes in the cemetery (which has always been a big hang out for adolescents in Falling Rock) and go to the forbidden school dances. It was during one of these movie trips that I discovered Luke, Han and friends.

I was hooked, and hooked bad. I needed to have every Star Wars toy I could get my hands on. Imagine my excitement when I discovered Star Wars comic books. Hot Damn! Now that was cool. Between my parents, my grandparents, and my allowance I had just about every action figure (still do—what good geek doesn’t collect toys?). There was one thing I never did get. Every year at Christmas and birthday I would ask for the Millenium Falcon, and every year I would be disappointed. I did buy one when I was sixteen and landed my first job. Okay, Mom took the wrap for comic books, Trek was Nana’s fault, Star Wars was Rob’s. Robert E Howard was nobody’s fault but my own, or perhaps his own.

After kindergarten and the end of half school days, I didn’t spend as much time with Nana. Most days, I would walk straight home, and Jill (my sister and oldest sibling) would watch Rob and I. Jill is seven years older than I am, while Rob is only three years older than I am. When Rob started going to Middle school instead of Elementary, he was always in a sport.
Thus would begin the first major rift between my brother and I. He is a natural born athlete, I am far from that. His interest in sports did serve one advantage for me. On the days he had practice, I was allowed to walk to the town library. My mother felt that if Rob was doing something special, that I would feel left out if I wasn’t allowed to do something as well. My mother always tried to make everything fair and equal.

This little situation worked out well for me. I enjoyed the library. There weren’t a whole lot of books. There was a small science fiction section. Of course, it was the section I was drawn to like a magnet. The first book I laid eyes on was a collection of Conan stories by Howard. Thus my introduction to fantasy, or more appropriately to Sword and Sorcery.

To a too skinny, awkward future geek such as myself, Conan the Barbarian was the definition of cool. Here was a muscle bound savage. Here was a natural warrior who never lost a single battle. Not to mention, he always had half-naked nymphets dangling off of him like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Eventually, I’d discover Conan comic books, and love The Savage Sword of Conan. My first character for my very first roleplaying game was named Conan. Okay, so I didn’t have a whole lot of originality back then.

I have gotten way off topic. Well not really off topic, I’ve just expanded a bit more than I intended. The truth is, FRU is indirectly the reason I became a gamer long before I even attended.

The year was 1982. I was 14 years old in well on my way to the acne hall of fame. The geek seeds were all ready planted. I was still collecting comics. My parents gave me a weekly allowance that was either spent at the grocery store on comics, or at the Five and Dime where I could buy Star Wars action figures. I watched Star Trek every chance I had. I still read Conan, but had expanded my list to include Burroughs (Edgar—William S. would come much later),  Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and had even experienced a touch of Asimov, not to mention every Star Wars and Star Trek novel in the library. I was primed to become a gamer.

Jill brought Allen to eat Thanksgiving dinner with her. She was twenty-one and in the middle of her junior year at FRU studying to become an Elementary Teacher. Allen was a music student. I liked Allen from the moment I first met him. He wasn’t like her other boyfriends, he actually recognized that I existed. Looking back on it now, I think he saw my inner geek.

I sat in the living room reading something. It was probably a Conan novel. I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but he took the time to ask me what it was about and if it was any good. He asked me what authors I liked (I didn’t know too many at the time) then he recommended a few books to me (I remember he insisted that I read Dune).
“Do you game?” he asked.

I didn’t know what he was talking about. He explained what a roleplaying game is and told me about his favorite The Fantasy Trip. I was intrigued. He promised to teach me. Jill brought him over again. He brought his TFT stuff with him. He helped me make a character (I named him Conan—Allen was a sport about it), then he ran me through a quick adventure. Holy shit! What a monster he created.

I started begging Jill to bring him over more often. I think I weirded Jill out. She broke up with Allen, and I lost touch with my one connection to gaming. However, it was meant to be.

I began searching for a copy of TFT. Unfortunately,  my parents weren't willing to drive me to a game shop. However, the dice land where they may. On one of my trips to the Five and Dime to by Star Wars Action figures I made an amazing find. Low and behold, there in all its pink glory was a single boxed set edition of Basic DnD (remember the one with the green dragon on the front?). I relentlessly begged my mom to advance me enough on my allowance to buy it, and had she known at the time the monster she was about to unleash upon the world, she probably would have refused. Luckily for me, she thought it would just be a phase. So far the phase has lasted for 20 years and counting.

It wasn't long before I had my friends hooked. I probably ran all my friends through Keep on the Borderlands a hundred times. When we grew bored of that, I created dungeon after dungeon. I set them against every monster listed in the basic set over and
over. We had characters with names like "Ace", "Swordmaster" and of course "Conan" .

It wasn't long before I was begging my parents to drive me to the closest place that carried gaming stuff. That was Waldenbooks at the Chesterfield Mall, over thirty miles away from my front door. My parents were sports about it and drove me there so I could get it (I'm sure they had a better reason to go to the mall, but we'll paint my parents as people who wanted to prime their young son's imagination). That gave me and my friends, more spells, more monsters and of course The Isle of Dread.

About the same time period the made for TV movie Mazes and Monsters was released (forgive me if I get the title wrong, I'm going from memory here). It stared a young Tom Hanks as an easily influenced teenager who took his gaming just a little too far. That movie, and an over religious aunt of mine, almost ended my gaming. I soon began hearing stories from my friends that their Moms were burning their DnD stuff.  Gods NO! My parents began frowning on my favorite past time, but they were too late. I was all ready hard core geek. In retrospect, had they introduced me to sex, drugs and rock n roll, it might not have been too late.

That same year AD&D was booming, partly because of the negative media attention. A store called Brass T-Shirts put a small shelf of gaming stuff in the back of the store. It wasn't long before that small shelf expanded to engulf most of the store and the
T-Shirts were relegated to about two racks in the back. This began my “Golden Days of Gaming—The Brass T Years”.

Every dime I made was spent at Brass T's on anything TSR that I could get my hands on: 1st ed. AD&D, Gamma World, Top Secret, Boothill, and (my all time favorite) Gangbusters. I bought mini's, Dragon Magazine and White Dwarf Magazine but nothing surpassed my true passion: Modules. I bought them all: The Tomb of Horrors, Against the Giants, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (man my friends and I loved the hell out of that one. We were zapping monsters with laser pistols for months), The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, the list goes on and on.

Sadly, my friends grew tired of gaming and suddenly it was considered very uncool to game. So I stopped. The AD&D craze ended, and Brass T's closed their doors to be replaced by a lock smith shop. I still read tons and tons of fantasy and sci-fi, but
my gaming came to a screeching halt. I entered high school and discovered the other finer things in life. Namely, sex, drugs and rock & roll. Okay, the truth of it is, I reveled in the rock and roll, drugs didn’t come until years later and I strived for the sex. The sex came in slim pickins, but I strove for it. My gaming collection slowly disappeared. I tucked it all away in boxes, some of it was never to be found again, but I still have most of it. I'd thumb through those boxes from time to time, wishing that I wasn't too old to game (I had no idea that adults played!). I would even create adventures that I knew no one would ever play. I started working half-heartedly on a world of my own creation. I told myself that it was for a novel that I'd some day write, but I knew the truth. I was in gaming withdrawal. I was convinced that gaming was a thing of the past for me.

I joined the Air Force, and over all had a pretty rotten experience. I met a few gamers, and gamed some. Then I met Cindy. We got married, had a child, she convinced me to burn all my gaming books, then she divorced me and left me. When I got out of the Air Force  I went to college.

Man, you wouldn't believe how many classes can be skipped to play roleplaying games. I was in my freshmen year, insecure and not sure if I belonged in college or not. I found a sign advertising a meeting for the "Maple Dorm Fantasy Gaming Society". I couldn't believe it. People still gamed after their adolescent years? I went to that meeting not knowing what to expect. The dorm manager and his wife founded it. I remember his name was Larry, and his claim to fame was he had gamed with Steve Jackson (I didn't even know who Steve Jackson was then, but I smiled and said "Wow!"). The club offered a place to game (a room tucked away in the basement of the Dorm next to the laundry machines), a shelf full of mini's and a library of gaming material. Larry was DMing a long running Greyhawk game. He had a line of people wanting to play, but precious few DMs. At that meeting, he asked if anyone would be interested in running a game for a few people. I shyly raised my hand and volunteered. I announced that I could play on Tuesdays.

I was nervous before that first game. These people were expecting a campaign! When I'd gamed in my youth, we just haphazardly hacked our way through whatever module I'd pulled off my shelf. I was afraid that I'd suck. I had to come up with
something original. The week before the game, I devised a world where Christianity had been introduced into a Pagan Fantasy society. The results were crusading paladins and clerics, and mages living in fear of witch hunters. That first week, three people showed up. They were disappointed that there wasn't room for them at Larry's table, but were willing to give this skinny kid with long hair and scruffy beard a shot.

We played for six hours straight and had a blast!  No one had more fun than I did. I'd rediscovered a part of myself that I thought was gone. I was reliving my childhood. I remember we would have played longer that night, but two of the guys had a quiz the next morning and hadn't studied yet. The next week, those three returned with four more people. They'd told everyone how much fun and original my game was. Now there was a line for my table! I welcomed them all. The next week two more showed up. Not knowing any better, I allowed all nine of them to play. Soon, we were playing Tuesday and Thursday. Larry himself asked if he might be able to join my game sometime. I was a Geek God!

I continued playing throughout college. I discovered GURPS and loved it. Soon my summers and breaks between semesters were filled with endless GURPS sessions. Each semester meant back to the DnD game. Soon, Vampire: The Masquerade became popular. Suddenly, everyone was wearing black and playing bloodsuckers. I of course ran the GURPS version much to the cringing of die hard V:TM fans.

College ended.  I moved to Anchorage, AK to be closer to my daughter and found a large gaming community. In Anchorage I fell in with a group who introduced me to a bunch of games that I'm now addicted to: Warhammer FRP, Pendragon, Traveller, Call of Cthullu, Champions, you name it, I'll play it.

 After a couple of years in Anchorage, my ex-wife’s new hubby received orders for Frankfurt Germany. They moved, and took Adrienne with them. I couldn’t afford to stay in Anchorage anymore, so using the last of the money I had left, I moved back to Falling Rock. I had to sell all of my new found games, but I took my love of them with me, and with the help of eBay, I’ve managed to get copies of many of them back.

I guess that answers your question. Sorry it was so long. Let me know if you want or need anything else.