Mug, Saphron, and the First Age of Gaming

It was the late 90’s, and I was just entering middle school. My brother, my dad and I were seated at our kitchen table. My dad was an avid fantasy reader, and my brother and I had finally convinced him to sit down and learn our favorite card game—Magic the Gathering. 

To our surprise, Dad didn’t seem that interested. His eyes glazed over as we explained the rules, and his reaction didn’t match our excitement as we pointed out the creatures and spells that could be played. 

Instead, he abruptly rose in the middle of our explanation, and said, “I have something for you. I think you’re old enough now.” We watched as dad disappeared into the basement. A few minutes later he came back up, carrying a box filled with old books. 

“This,” he said, “is Dungeons and Dragons.” 

This excerpt appears at the beginning of my RPG for children, First Role. It comes to mind today, because I still have all the items my Dad brought upstairs in that box, 25 years ago.

One of those things was a folder. And inside the folder, was a spectacular treasure for me.

The Spectacular Treasure

Inside the folder were my Dad’s old gaming characters and notes!

There were gaming cheat sheets with shorthand Dungeons and Dragons rules, a hand-written adventure, hand-drawn dungeon maps, and old school D&D photo copies. Possibly most exciting of all, the folder included characters that he and his siblings created and played.

This not only shows me the type of games my Dad and his siblings played back in the 80s – it also shows a snapshot of how some gamers played Dungeons and Dragons without the advantage of computers and wide-spread RPG adoption.

Old School Gaming

I don’t think my Dad had any of the source books when he started playing Dungeons and Dragons. He had a few adventure modules, was taught the game by others, and started building resources to be able to play without the core rulebooks.

I don’t know if this experience was wide-spread at the time. But the way my Dad dealt with this was to use one of the best tools at the time – photocopying. 

I have to imagine that many gamers in the 70s and 80s made wide use of photocopying at the time. My Dad photocopied player cheat sheets (likely for character creation), and a custom character sheet.

Interestingly enough, this was basically the same character sheet template my Dad drew up for my Brother and I 25 years ago when we got our introduction to Dungeons and Dragons.

Besides photocopies, the folder included lots of handwritten notes, a handwritten adventure, and dungeon maps drawn onto graph paper.

I’m lucky in that my Dad is both alive and in good health. I’ve talked with him about his days playing Dungeons and Dragons, and this folder. The problem is, he doesn’t remember much of it. He doesn’t remember his character, Mug. He doesn’t remember playing with his siblings, and he doesn’t remember the adventure included in the folder (which I’m pretty sure he wrote entirely by himself).

He remembers playing D&D in college, and how his Dungeon Master would tear up a player’s character sheet when their character died. Hardcore!

He remembers one story in particular when the characters were high level – and a character used an invisibility potion and a levitate spell during battle. Unfortunately, shortly after, the character got hit by a type of amnesia spell and failed the saving throw in spectacular fashion. The Dungeon Master ruled that the character just kind of…floated away, and had no memory of anything. The Dungeon Master ruled the character forfeit, and tore up the character sheet. Super hardcore!

I find it incredibly interesting, looking back at these old school gaming resources, to see how the game was played at the time – and how the game has changed. I have to imagine that these types of artifacts are still relatively common now. But 1980 was 44 years ago, and at some point these artifacts, and sadly the people who created them, will slowly disappear.

It’s not a thought I want to dwell on, but I have to think that snapshots of the past like this folder should be cared for, before they disappear forever.

The First Age

While going through gaming notes that span back four decades is fun for me, I always want to gamify the things I have. 

So I created a world based on my gaming history. And with it, I created the First Age.

This is a persistent fantasy world that includes the entire history, resources, characters, and events of any fantasy-based role playing game I’ve ever played. The campaigns, adventures, maps, and characters all contribute to the history of this living world. All of my fantasy based role playing games going forward will be taking place in this world – and it will be one where there is already a history that has been (at least partially) formed. 

The most exciting part of this, is that my Dad’s notes – what I found in that folder – form the basis of this fantasy world. His notes, characters, and dungeon are all that remains of the First Age.

His notes are the basis of legends, whispers of what once was. 

Scholars in this fantasy world will tell you that dwarves used to have high resistance to magic (and some still do today), and that they had a proclivity to use magical war hammers in battle. Elves used to share a base language with orcs, hobgoblins and gnolls. Only humans and elves used to be able to use magic. Mug was a legendary fighter, Saphron a legendary magician, and their legends are sometimes looked up to, even today.

Of course, this is only what we knew of the First Age. Since then, the Second Age has come and gone, and most recently the Third Age has just been completed.

For me, starting this year, the Fourth Age begins. The fantasy based role playing games I run will be built not only upon the decades of games I’ve played, but also what remains of my Dad’s gaming from long ago. I think it’s a fitting place for my Dad’s old gaming notes, and a way to keep the games that finished decades before, still alive.

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