This is more a history of my gaming exploits rather than a history of gaming itself.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved playing board games. I think the first game I ever owned was Junior Scrabble. It helped me learn how to spell and remember different rules. This of course progressed to regular Scrabble which I’m pretty decent at. It didn’t stop there though. I played Chess in Primary School. Yes, I was in Chess Club and I even played in tournaments, my first foray into competitive gaming but more on that later.
As I went through Primary School, I acquired Monopoly, and played other games with friends (we were even allowed to take them in on the last day of term) but it was in high school that I started to really get into tabletop gaming. I was in year seven and it was a Monday night and I went to the school youth club. It was there that I encountered a strategic game of world domination, Risk! I’d never played it before so gave it a go. I really enjoyed it so I asked for it for Christmas and got it. It got played to death with family and friends, the box got tatty from being transported everywhere but all the pieces were still there. It as it was my new favourite game. I still have it to this day and sometimes gets played. It hasn’t got a box anymore especially as I’ve had it for nearly 34 years but the only thing that is missing is two cards which I’ve replaced. I had other games when I was younger like Mouse Trap, Game of Life and other such games that everyone had but I consider Risk to be my gateway game into tabletop gaming as a hobby.
I didn’t really get many other games through high school as I discovered I could play games on my TV with a Sega Master system which got lots of attention, which progressed to a Megadrive etc. I wanted games like HeroQuest and Space Crusade but didn’t get them. It wasn’t until I went to America in 1991 where I discovered a starter box for a role-playing game in a book shop and decided to buy it. That game was Dungeons and Dragons. I read the rules and it seemed quite complicated so it didn’t get played that much and ended up gathering dust on my shelf. That’s not the end of the D&D story though, there’s more on that to come!
That year, I started college and was going into Cambridge every day where I discovered a shop that I recognised from when I visited my Dad… Games Workshop and it all went downhill from there…
Tabletop Tales 