Yudhishthira’s Dice

My Roleplaying Summary

It all started with White Box D&D, back in about 79.

Then it went to Red Box D&D, and stayed in the various colors of boxes for eight years or so.

AD&D came next, at about the same time as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangenesses.

Pendragon and Champions introduced me to the fact that there were radically different types of games out there, and after that the flood gates opened.

Next came Shadowrun, Rifts, TORG, Battletech, Cyberpunk, Ars Magica, Marvel FACERIP, Ghostbusters, and Star Wars all in a huge rush. This was the era of the summer game where my group would play for 16 hours, sleep, move to someone elses house and play for 16 hours again. Insane and possibly unhealthy when I look back on it, but it rocked at the time.

I dimly remember some oneshots of Darksword Adventures, the Batman RPG, Skyrealms of Jorune, and Prince Vallient, but none of them caught on. My group shifted around as we moved into highschool, and there was a time of short games.

Vampire made a brief appearance, then faded out quickly.

Amber introduced me to diceless RPGs, and Theatrix followed quickly after to turn me into Lord Master Illusionist.

Then came a gold age of Dark Conspiracy, Cybergeneration, AD&D again, Earthdawn galore, Elric!, Middle Earth, Pendragon again, Shatterzone, and Everway.

Changeling: The Dreaming took me back into the land of White Wolf, and was followed in short order by Mage, Wraith, Werewolf, and Mummy. I also got into MUSH play at this point, and played lots of WoD, homebrew, and freeform play online.

In my non angst-gaming I did some Mekton, Paranoia, and Lace and Steel all leading me towards Castle Falkenstien and an abortive move into LARPing through CF rather than WoD LARPs.

Relativly late in the game I got into Feng Shui, Talislanta, and Fading Suns. At this point all of my play was pretty illusionist, and this lead to lots of short run games in which I didn’t get what I wanted — including Babylon Project, Jovian Chronicles, Blue Planet, and Call of Cuthluhu campaings that withered on the branch despite everyone being “really interested in the game.”

Tribe 8 and Unknown Armies were the next shift, and both resulted in a lot of new play and my first full book publications in RPGs. I played UA locally and played Tribe 8 with the Wicked Ink crew, developing a style of epic marathon game that I still enjoy to this day.

Joshua got me into 7th Sea, which I continue to play (slightly guiltily), and I had online games of it and BESM. I also got a single game of Nobilis out of the little pink book, and a session of Agone followed by a Sengoku game that was maybe my worst campaign ever.

Along with everyone else on earth I played D&D 3, with some success at first but followed by growing disconent. FVLMINATA briefly scratched my historical game itch, and Jadeclaw got some milage out of my TMNT naustalgia.

Riddle of Steel followed, and even though it didn’t last long it did give me a taste of something new and lead me to the Forge. From there I got into Sorcerer, and played a very terrible game of Sorcerer before giving up on Narrativism for a time.

Exalted then rocked my world and for years, as I moved to Toronto, dominated my gaming. More epic marathon games followed as I moved between two cities, and I got in a few oneshots of Wheel of Time and Buffy the Vampire Slayer along the way.

Then comes the current era, kicked off most notably by Heroquest and Dust Devils, which got me back into Nar play. Since then I’ve done Dogs, Breaking the Ice, PTA, Polaris, and a million other hippie games. I’ve also rediscovered my love of the bash with Iron Heroes, and of long run games with Burning Wheel and much more Exalted, drifted. I’ve also entered a new era of one-on-one games with Mo, and we play all sorts of those games in quantities to numerous to list, though Unknown Armies and Truth and Justice deserve mention for their lasting impact on play.

Now I’m in India and haven’t played for 3 months, my longest dry spell in 5 years.

As a note, a lot of this is clumped as it is because since late highschool I’ve almost never played only one game at a time.