To briefly recap Part I, ages 13 through 18 were the years of my original foray into Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying in general. Ages 13 through 15 were entirely dedicated to 1st edition AD&D, and I loved every minute of it. From 15 to 18, my friends and I moved on to 2nd edition D&D, and also played other RPGs. By the time I turned 19 and entered college, I has become somewhat disillusioned with Dungeons & Dragons. It’s here we pick up the story again…

PART II: Long Game’s Journey into Light and Night (Ages 19 to 25)

I began my college career in 1994, and for a short while, roleplaying of any kind was on the back burner. I did indeed enjoy myself in college, academically and socially. It was a great time all around. I won’t bore you with the salacious non-gaming details.

By the beginning of my second year of college, the roleplaying itch returned. How did I scratch it, you ask? Well, over the course of the next four years there were two primary ways.

Amber Diceless Roleplaying

If you haven’t read Roger Zelazny’s Amber books, you are doing yourself a great disservice. I heartily recommend you check them out!

For my own part, I had never heard of the Amber novels until I saw ads for a strange little game called Amber Diceless Roleplaying (ADRPG) in issues of Dragon magazine.

A roleplaying game that was DICELESS?! Who could fathom such a thing? It took a man named Erick Wujcik (who had also done some work for Palladium Books) to come up with the idea, and to me he became a new Gary Gygax. Both men created games I came to love and associate with good times in my life.

The Wujcik diceless concept seemed to me the epitome of elegance, something that could strip away all the heavy mechanics many other games sported, and only pure cooperative storytelling would be left behind! It would take a skilled GM and experienced players to handle the “high art” of the Amber DRPG.

Also around this time, two more friends joined in on the roleplaying goodness: Jim and Derek. We began our explorations of the realms and characters of Amber, and we did so with relish. We took on the roles of immortal, godlike, and flawed beings with the power to travel between possible universes. We waged war and engaged in political intrigue across many realities! It was damn good fun!

It felt like some of the magic of my original gaming experiences had returned, from a source totally separate from D&D.

Looking back, perhaps I became something of a roleplaying snob. Amber seemed to be a “grown-up” version of roleplaying. D&D was for kids! I thought I would never go back, silly young man that I was…

Looking back, my old chums and I did a good job of striking the delicate balance between GM and player connection, and had a level of trust so necessary to an RPG like Amber DRPG. If one is not careful, the game can find itself on rails, and stray too far into the negative connotations of a “story game.” Like any other RPG, a good selection of plot hooks and a dedication to player agency is vital.

Suffice to say, Amber DRPG is relatively rules-light and yet somehow “heavy” at the same time, if that makes any sense. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s rules-light but heavy on the need for experienced players and GM-player trust. I definitely think less experienced GMs and players would have a harder time with a diceless game, but I could be wrong…

Live Action Roleplaying

Another type of what I—at the time—considered “roleplaying for grown-ups” was LARPing, which was a nascent phenomenon back then. Decades later, we all know the… uh, tarnished reputation of LARPing. It has become such a joke over time (“LIGHTNING BOLT!”), but back in the mid- to late-90s, it was new and different.

I confess, LARPing never came close to the tabletop RPG experience for me. Like many of my extracurricular activities in college, I did it primarily for the chance to meet girls.

Okay, it was more than just about girls. There was some intrigue to it at first. It was akin to acting in plays, something I really enjoyed doing in high school and college. There was also the simple novelty of roleplaying away from a table.

I tried live-action Vampire: The Masquerade a few times. It was a good chance to meet some cool new people of similar mind. We ran around malls and college campuses at night, playing the “deadliest” version of rock-paper-scissors ever devised!

I even tried getting into Markland, one of those medieval reenactment societies that has people hitting each other with foam-covered swords. There was a Markland chapter on the Rutgers-Camden campus. Once, some Marklanders were practicing their faux combat on the quad when some frat boys came up and started messing with them. Someone shot one of the frat guys with a foam-tipped arrow, and hit him in the middle of the forehead. It was enough to scare off those fools. Score one for the valorous nerds!

Ultimately, I had some random good times LARPing, but after a short while it seemed to be more about who was dating who and other real-world social intrigues, rather than “true” roleplaying. So, I left that scene behind.

The Light and the Night

During my college years, there were times I did indeed think about Dungeons & Dragons, remembering the golden years with fondness. Though I was no more than a decade removed from my original gaming forays, D&D was already becoming a thing of nostalgia inextricably bound with my memories of youth. The torch was relit, and the flame brought much-needed light to my life.

By the time I graduated from college, LARPing was a distant and embarrassing memory, and our Amber table-top games were becoming fewer and more infrequent. Most gaming endeavors were drowned in my transition from college to “productive” member of society’s labor force. It was the late 90’s, and the (then) “dreaded” millennium was creeping up fast. I was filled with great expectations for the new century. I read scores of fantasy novels, and kept on dreaming…

But dreams can be so easily dashed by reality. I was 25 when September 11th happened, and my hopes for the new millennium were darkened by the billowing clouds of smoke rising from American soil.

Suffice to say, roleplaying wasn’t just on the back burner anymore. It seemed to be banished forever, a childish relic of my lost youth and a vanished world of innocence, never to be seen again.

For a while I looked on all my pastimes as frivolous, wondering if the now-dark tidings of the 21st century meant I should assume some stereotypical form of adulthood and give up daydreaming about gaming.

To paraphrase from the Bible I once revered as a kid, was it truly time to set aside “childish” things?

The torch had gone out, plunging me into a murky night of the soul…

I entered a personal gaming Dark Age, where only fantasy novels and other media continued to sustain me. I was certain that nothing would ever be the same again.

It would turn out I was both correct and incorrect…