I've Got My Twelve-Sided Die

[robotnik2004]

Dungeons and Dragons Club, Somebody's Yearbook, California, 1980.

Comments

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! [cough cough] BWA! BWA HA HA HA HA HA! [cough, cough] LOOK AT THEIR HAIR! BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA! [wipes eyes]

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that's "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Club."

Er, "Dungons."

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

They were going for the olde English spelling maybe? Donjon? :)

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

What's that, 10-11 people in a party? That's a better party size than I ever managed at that age.

Which is, honest to god, the first thing that occurred to me, looking at that picture.

On a scale of geekiness, just how I high does that make me rank?

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

It didn't occur to me that it was all one party, but remembering my own early 1980s in school D&D adventures, it might well have been. Which one do you think is the Dungeon Master?

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

I feel like the old lady at the end was the DM. Call me crazy.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

If it was anything like our school RPG club from the early 80s the woman was some liberal teacher who felt kids should explore whatever interested them and was the advisor because the school demands a faculty sponsor and was hardly ever in the room where the gaming was going on.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

If it was anything like my high school adventures (1981-1984), then they probably had rotating DMs--one guy ran the group through his own dungeon, another guy ran the group, with different characters, through his dungeon.

The DM...hmm. Kid with the glasses, front row, second from left? He just looks like a DM to me.

[ivan23.livejournal.com]

And curiously, he looks just like I did at that age. Weird. Eerie.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I owned several of those shirts.

[ivan23.livejournal.com]

Young Carson Kressleys we were not.

[sneech515.livejournal.com]

The serious-looking one, front row, second from the left. He looks like the type that would memorize "to hit" tables and give stern, schoolyard lectures about game balance.

Either that or the black kid holding the DM's guide.

Pointless aside: All three of the books in that photo (and two of those three exact editions) are not less than five feet from my desk at home.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're right, I think. He probably gets really irritated at the chubby kid next to him who doesn't take the adventure seriously enough.

[gammafodder1.livejournal.com]

Gotcha beat: All my 1st edition D&D manuals are within arm's reach from my desk, including King Floyd's copy of the Cthulhu Edition of Deities and Demigods.

My Mom says I'm cool ...

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Aha! I knew one of you guys had to have that book. All this time, whenever I've needed to know Shub-Niggurath's Charisma or the armor classes of the Melnibone Mythos, I've been SOL... :)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I dare folks to post a similar photo from where they were in 1980. I would but I don't think I have any.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Capital suggestions. I fully intend to when I get a chance to go through my photo albums. Brant can afford to laugh - he wasn't even a zygote in 1980, but I looked a lot like some of those kids (well, in the mid 1980s - I'm a few years younger than they). I posted it not because they are alien to me but because they are emphatically not.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Yeah in 1980 I was 9, which meant I was probably playing Chivalry and Sorcery. Our schools RPG club probably dates from like 1982. I'll have to ask my mother if she has thos pictures, because I certainly don't. I don't think I have any pictures of my life pre-Jess. Make of that what you will.

[bluegargantua]

So...D&D (and C&S) are not...y'know, Candyland. They're pretty hardcore games. These days I wouldn't even attempt to learn a new game as complicated as D&D -- I only kept up with 3rd ed. out of tradition. It's not that I can't learn the rules, it's just that I don't think baroque rulesets mean it's a good game.

But yeah, I'm around 8-9 years old and I'm tinkering with D&D, Avalon Hill Wargames, I even got into Star Fleet Battles -- Really frickin' complex games. I'm amazed that I comprehended it as well as I did. I'm amazed that any of us did.

I guess it's no different than being able to rattle off all 250 Pokemon and distinguishing characteristics are today. But still...

Tom

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Yeah we were doing Rolemaster, C&S, Space Opera, some Star Fleet Battles all before we were 12. D&D was big, I was just a difficult little bastard even then.

Nowadays I can't handle anything with more than 5 stats reliably.

Emphatically not alien. In fact there's me!

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Back row on the left. That was me. Styling with my flowing locks and skater cred. Not a loser like these other kids. I'm just here 'cause I like the game. :)

The kid with the PHB looks just like an old friend and fellow gamer I knew at that age. Friggin' weird. 'Course all blonde haired blue eyed aryan youth probably looked like that back then. Or maybe he was a boy from Brazil...

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Back row on the left. That was me.

Really? You looked kinda like a young Steve Buscemi.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Well, truth be told, in 1980 I was seven. But when I was fourteen (that's about how old these kids are right?) I started growing my hair in my first faltering steps of quasi-teenage rebellion... that and the shock of going from a junior high class of 20-something kids to a regional high school freshman class of 500-odd kids. That'll make you desperately seek an identity pretty damn fast! Small fish and big pond and all.

I just WISH we had a D&D club in school.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

Let's see, where was I in 1980? Oh, that's right. I wasn't even conceived yet.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I'm also thinking that our ethnic diversity hasn't improved much as a hobby in 25 years. Though our gender diversity has.

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

You'll be happy to know that my work's highly intelligent nannyware design blocks that image as nudity and/or satanic content.

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

When I first saw this picture (was it linked on Fark.com a while back?) I was extremely gratified to see they were proudly displaying the three core books, as befits any true Dungons and Dragons club. So I guess I'm in the same geeky boat as ratmmjess. :)

[broin.livejournal.com]

Fuck.

That's what I thought too.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Was it linked on Fark.com a while back?

Could be. I saw it on RPG.net in a discussion about The Valedictorian's Death, Paul Czege's ingenious game of stories in old high school yearbooks.

[head58.livejournal.com]

None of those kids are fat enough to have been me in 1980.

I think I looked most like the teacher/advisor woman though. How scary is that?

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

...and I wonder what those kids are doing now? I would like to think at least one of them is a millionaire. At least one of them is probably a *former* millionaire... :)

"Marry a geek," said my mother. "You'll have the last laugh. I did!"

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely. Statistically, I think there must be at least one millionaire among the bunch by now. Probably at least one enraged kill-spree too, mind you.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Can anybody tell what second from the right in the back is holding up? I'm guessing some original art or something, but it's really tough to make out...

[head58.livejournal.com]

d00d! That is so totally the DM's Screen!

I want your Geek Badge on my desk in the morning.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Really? That does not look familiar AT ALL. The DM screen my buddy had-- the panels were the covers of the three corebooks if I remember correctly. Or maybe he didn't even have a screen at all and he just stood his books on end. I don't remember. In my defense, the first AD&D books I bought were all later 1st edition printings anyways. The uniform beige binding series.

Youse can come try to take away my Geek Badge, copper! You'll hafta pull it outta my cold dead hand!

[noctrnlsunshine.livejournal.com]

looks like an encyclopedia with it opened to a section or entry on dragons if i had to guess.

lol

[xbuilder.livejournal.com]

Its the DM's screen .
When my friend Sean's mom ran our games in middle school that's what she used.

Man they started playing DnD just about the time I did.

I feel old.

My friend Sean's Mom

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

When my friend Sean's mom ran our games in middle school that's what she used.
That's a pretty great sentence.
Sean's mom must have been cool.

Re: My friend Sean's Mom

[xbuilder.livejournal.com]

Actually she was.

She ran us through Basic, Expert and Advance DnD for about 4 years.

Ok I'm starting to feel older.

[head58.livejournal.com]

What does it say that this is the most Responded-to post* I think I have ever seen on Livejournal?

*excluding anything posted by Warren Ellis

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

*excluding anything posted by Warren Ellis

warren, your bizarre rant about genetically modified food ravishes me! your URL is tattooed on my breasts! i hate hippies! OH!

sincerely,
typical mistersleepless commenter

[head58.livejournal.com]

The comment was perfect, then I looked at your choice of icon. Flawless Victory!!!!!

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Magical Truthsaying Warren, indeed.

[dawaterrat.livejournal.com]

Hi, I was directed here via ivan23.

This does bring back some memories, yes.... Games Club, Science Fiction club (which eventually absorbed Games Club, because Games Club kept loosing people to Play Rehearsals). Though none of them look like me, I recall plenty of other folks in those clubs who looked like them.

[gammafodder1.livejournal.com]

I am insanely jealous of all of those 1980 kids. If I remember right, our D&D club at school lasted all of two sessions before it was forcefully cancelled by the administration because of concerns that we were Satanists.

To quote Ogre, from Revenge of the Nerds, "Neeeeeeeeeerds!"

[mfbob.livejournal.com]

even though i haven't gamed in years, that pic brings back some memories. painful, disturbing memories. i was such a geek back in the early '80's... {{{shudder}}}

what's a dungon? lol!

I don't have any pictures of myself from that age.

[mysteriousrhino.livejournal.com]

I thought about digging out a picture of myself from that age, but then I remembered that there aren't any. Or at least if there are nobody can *prove* it. Heh heh heh.

::smirks, furrows eyebrows, and wrings hands with evil glee::

Hey! My wife is a high school teacher, and she just started an anime club. Apparently, it's very popular. (Now do I have a cool wife, or what?) She doesn't look like the teacher in the picture, however.