By Kevin Curtin
Thank you so much for dropping in to our corner of the internet. We truly appreciate it.
We hope you find treasures from the earliest days of this whole phenomenon known as Tabletop Role Playing Games in our store. If you don't see something you're looking for at deigames.com, please check our Etsy Shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DEIGames or shoot us an email. We're always happy to hear from a gamer!
Here on our blog we will share various experiences we've had over the years as we pursued our RPG obsession. Don't expect any deep insight or revelations from us. That's other folks job. We just love playing RPG games and will share our enthusiasm for it with you. If you're looking for "deep thoughts" on gaming, here are some great blogs that will provide insight into tabletop roleplaying games.
Grognardia by James Maliszewski
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/
Grumpy Wizard by Travis Miller
https://grumpywizard.home.blog/
Dweller of the Forbidden City
http://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/
Of Gods and Gamemasters by Jack Kellum
https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/
Daddy Rolled a 1 by Martin R. Thomas
http://daddyrolleda1.blogspot.com/
Home of the Red Wyrm and the Wyrmling (the 5-Year-Old DM)
https://wyrmden.com/home
Samwise7RPG
http://samwise7rpg.blogspot.com/
OK. So now you have some great links above to keep you entertained.
Now, about us. Who are we? Do you really care? Well, just in case you do, here we go!
We’re Kevin and Linda and we have gamed for a long, long time. As best we can recall Kevin started sometime in 1977 with the Basic Dungeons and Dragons Holmes Box Set and the original white box set (Collector’s Edition) in California and never looking back acquiring every TSR gaming product possible as he was (and is) an unrepentant TSR fanboy (Gygax/Arneson Uber Alles!).
Funny Anecdote from Kevin (at least mildly amusing)
Buying everything I could get my hands on caused more than a little confusion, at first. Since I dove in headfirst, I also bought every miniature and accessory, including geomorphs. Also picked up every Microgame by Metagaming (Melee/Wizard). I got home and excitedly opened everything, covering the dinner table (Knights of the Dinner Table, anyone?) with all my newly acquired swag.
Before even reading the rules, I was perplexed and concerned about the size of my 25mm miniatures compared to the geomorphs. These playing pieces would never fit on this board! See how ignorant I was? I thought the geomorphs were a gameboard! This RPG stuff was really a game changer. No board! What! I had no idea what I was getting into. Oh, and my miniatures were really only 25mm (or smaller) pieces of toxic lead. This was before all these “Heroic Scale” 28mm miniatures started appearing that were made of less toxic materials. No doubt, we'll find out these are just as deadly. Oh, well, that's just life, I guess.
Linda started about 1980 or so with a friend’s books in Colorful Colorado. After meeting at college in Santa Fe we continued gaming our way through life to this very day.
(Yep, those our our beat-up copies we've had from the 70s)
Does gaming for so long make us special in any way? Nope. We just enjoy role-playing games and most especially Dungeons and Dragons in all it’s many forms. Well, we have not played 4th or 5th edition yet. We do plan on playing 5th this year using the Goodman Games homage to B4. Wonder if it will really happen?
We have no interest in D&D 4th edition since as best we can tell, it’s a video game turned into a tabletop role-playing game. We love playing video games but we prefer using our computers. I understand it has some great Mob rules and one or two other things to recommend it. You can almost always find something good about a system (or person) if you look hard enough.
We will acquire some core 4th edition rulebooks at some point (just to have them). We don't participate in edition wars. We prefer some over others, just as you do, and let's just leave it at that.
So Many Games, So Little Time
What Games Do We Enjoy?
All of them. Well, here are a few. I'm sure we forgot many.
Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, d20, DnD 3.x, Pathfinder
Mostly Dungeons and Dragons using the 3.5 ruleset with lots of D20 and Pathfinder accessories and modules mixed in. Love that Pathfinder stuff and must acquire more. We also still play our mix of ADD 1E/2E and adapt anything from the other editions for our 3.5 game. And steal liberally from everything else.
We have played every version up to 3.5 and love the oldest stuff the most. While we generally play a modified 3.5 edition, we use old style gaming sensibilities and are working through all the old TSR and Judges Guild modules and adventures. At least the ones we didn't already play back in the day. Our parties have henchmen, we use 10’ poles (now collapsible or extending), torches (great weapons, too!), iron rations, and other dungeon delving devices pioneered by our contemporaries.
Even after playing D&D 3.5 for twenty years, I still compare the ascending AC in 3.5 to the descending AC in AD&D. In my mind, it goes sort of like this:
“Wow! AC 28. That’s a bad ass! That would be AC -8 in “real” D&D.”
I guess I still think of D&D 3.5 as not quite the “real deal” but it’s the system I prefer. Hmmm. Probably need some kind of mental health care for this. Oh, well. Too late now! Onwards!
Arduin Grimoire
We never played an exclusive AG campaign. Since D&D and AD&D are wonderfully modular, we just plugged this gonzo stuff into our D&D campaigns as most people did. I never ran into anyone actually playing an exclusive Arduin campaign back in the day. Since Emperor’s Choice resurrected the game a few years (decades?) ago, that has surely changed.
I love the fact that this game jams technology and magic together in a seriously gonzo way. Phraints (my favorite), barbarian hobbits, technos, courtesans (what?), robots and other weirdos adventuring together. So. Much. Fun.
Really showed what you could do with a RPG when you compare the classic Tolkien based party to an Arduin Grimoire troop of misfits.
Thank you so much for dropping in to our corner of the internet. We truly appreciate it.
We hope you find treasures from the earliest days of this whole phenomenon known as Tabletop Role Playing Games in our store. If you don't see something you're looking for at deigames.com, please check our Etsy Shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DEIGames or shoot us an email. We're always happy to hear from a gamer!
Here on our blog we will share various experiences we've had over the years as we pursued our RPG obsession. Don't expect any deep insight or revelations from us. That's other folks job. We just love playing RPG games and will share our enthusiasm for it with you. If you're looking for "deep thoughts" on gaming, here are some great blogs that will provide insight into tabletop roleplaying games.
Grognardia by James Maliszewski
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/
Grumpy Wizard by Travis Miller
https://grumpywizard.home.blog/
Dweller of the Forbidden City
http://dwelleroftheforbiddencity.blogspot.com/
Of Gods and Gamemasters by Jack Kellum
https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/
Daddy Rolled a 1 by Martin R. Thomas
http://daddyrolleda1.blogspot.com/
Home of the Red Wyrm and the Wyrmling (the 5-Year-Old DM)
https://wyrmden.com/home
Samwise7RPG
http://samwise7rpg.blogspot.com/
OK. So now you have some great links above to keep you entertained.
Now, about us. Who are we? Do you really care? Well, just in case you do, here we go!
We’re Kevin and Linda and we have gamed for a long, long time. As best we can recall Kevin started sometime in 1977 with the Basic Dungeons and Dragons Holmes Box Set and the original white box set (Collector’s Edition) in California and never looking back acquiring every TSR gaming product possible as he was (and is) an unrepentant TSR fanboy (Gygax/Arneson Uber Alles!).
Funny Anecdote from Kevin (at least mildly amusing)
Buying everything I could get my hands on caused more than a little confusion, at first. Since I dove in headfirst, I also bought every miniature and accessory, including geomorphs. Also picked up every Microgame by Metagaming (Melee/Wizard). I got home and excitedly opened everything, covering the dinner table (Knights of the Dinner Table, anyone?) with all my newly acquired swag.
Before even reading the rules, I was perplexed and concerned about the size of my 25mm miniatures compared to the geomorphs. These playing pieces would never fit on this board! See how ignorant I was? I thought the geomorphs were a gameboard! This RPG stuff was really a game changer. No board! What! I had no idea what I was getting into. Oh, and my miniatures were really only 25mm (or smaller) pieces of toxic lead. This was before all these “Heroic Scale” 28mm miniatures started appearing that were made of less toxic materials. No doubt, we'll find out these are just as deadly. Oh, well, that's just life, I guess.
Linda started about 1980 or so with a friend’s books in Colorful Colorado. After meeting at college in Santa Fe we continued gaming our way through life to this very day.
(Yep, those our our beat-up copies we've had from the 70s)
Does gaming for so long make us special in any way? Nope. We just enjoy role-playing games and most especially Dungeons and Dragons in all it’s many forms. Well, we have not played 4th or 5th edition yet. We do plan on playing 5th this year using the Goodman Games homage to B4. Wonder if it will really happen?
We have no interest in D&D 4th edition since as best we can tell, it’s a video game turned into a tabletop role-playing game. We love playing video games but we prefer using our computers. I understand it has some great Mob rules and one or two other things to recommend it. You can almost always find something good about a system (or person) if you look hard enough.
We will acquire some core 4th edition rulebooks at some point (just to have them). We don't participate in edition wars. We prefer some over others, just as you do, and let's just leave it at that.
So Many Games, So Little Time
What Games Do We Enjoy?
All of them. Well, here are a few. I'm sure we forgot many.
Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, d20, DnD 3.x, Pathfinder
Mostly Dungeons and Dragons using the 3.5 ruleset with lots of D20 and Pathfinder accessories and modules mixed in. Love that Pathfinder stuff and must acquire more. We also still play our mix of ADD 1E/2E and adapt anything from the other editions for our 3.5 game. And steal liberally from everything else.
We have played every version up to 3.5 and love the oldest stuff the most. While we generally play a modified 3.5 edition, we use old style gaming sensibilities and are working through all the old TSR and Judges Guild modules and adventures. At least the ones we didn't already play back in the day. Our parties have henchmen, we use 10’ poles (now collapsible or extending), torches (great weapons, too!), iron rations, and other dungeon delving devices pioneered by our contemporaries.
Even after playing D&D 3.5 for twenty years, I still compare the ascending AC in 3.5 to the descending AC in AD&D. In my mind, it goes sort of like this:
“Wow! AC 28. That’s a bad ass! That would be AC -8 in “real” D&D.”
I guess I still think of D&D 3.5 as not quite the “real deal” but it’s the system I prefer. Hmmm. Probably need some kind of mental health care for this. Oh, well. Too late now! Onwards!
Arduin Grimoire
We never played an exclusive AG campaign. Since D&D and AD&D are wonderfully modular, we just plugged this gonzo stuff into our D&D campaigns as most people did. I never ran into anyone actually playing an exclusive Arduin campaign back in the day. Since Emperor’s Choice resurrected the game a few years (decades?) ago, that has surely changed.
I love the fact that this game jams technology and magic together in a seriously gonzo way. Phraints (my favorite), barbarian hobbits, technos, courtesans (what?), robots and other weirdos adventuring together. So. Much. Fun.
Really showed what you could do with a RPG when you compare the classic Tolkien based party to an Arduin Grimoire troop of misfits.
Cyberpunk 2020
Is it just us, or are we headed towards the dystopian future depicted in this wonderful game? This is one of the games we spent lots of hours playing and still do. Love the CP2077 computer game as well. Despite the bad press it got, you should really give it a shot.
Gamma World
The original science-fantasy RPG. Emphasis on the fantasy. How many folks go around actively looking for sources of radiation to gain MORE mutations? Well, we did. So much fun playing a mobile stalk of broccoli with Life Leech!
Vibro blades, torc grenades, black ray pistols, yexils, hoppers, badders, the Red Death, Knights of Genetic Purity, Death Machines…these are words of power to my brain.
Microgames by Metagaming and Steve Jackson Games
These are so much fun! Ogre, Melee, GEV, Wizard, Rivets, Warp War, and so many more. We would play these often during lunch at school or when waiting for the dungeon delving crew to assemble.
Here's a link for more info on these fabulous games of yore from Metagaming Concepts and the other companies (including TSR) that produced similar games.
https://maverick.brainiac.com/cmm/
Blood Bowl by Games Workshop
We've loved this game for years. In our Spelljammer campaign, Linda's characters formed a Blood Bowl team for the ruler of the Rock of Bral (Prince Andru) and traveled the flow and crystal spheres adventuring, carousing, and occasionally playing a game or two of Blood Bowl.
MERP Middle Earth Role-Playing.
We’ve only made a few forays into this fun system but will play again. The last time we played, we left Linda’s characters trying to get to Rivendell to seek healing for a potent poison working through one of their character’s systems. Hmmm. We really should resolve that. So many games, so little time.
Rifts
Never played enough of this game. Love it. This has impacted all of my D&D campaigns. Cause, with gates leading all over the multiverse, you never know what you might run into in Greyhawk. See Arduin Grimoire.
Marvel Super Heroes
Love the original FASERIP version. If you know FASERIP, we can be friends. We probably played through every module/adventure for this system and it’s about time to play again. Hmmm. I think we’ll give Spidey some armor this time around. Man, loved playing him but without armor in this system, you could get hurt real quick!
Mutant Future
See Gamma World. Same fun.
Top Secret
Merle R. Rasmussen. The Administrator of Administrators. This was my high-school gaming group’s go to game when we weren’t dungeon delving. We thought we were James Bond or the Man from Uncle. But, nope. We always ended up blowing up our objective and running from the law. We generally survived but the world’s papers would have been filled up with even more unbelievable stuff that they are today. Maybe.
Villains & Vigilantes
Loved this game. Although, it was weird using ourselves as the characters. That kind of rubbed me the wrong way but the group loved it so I ran it for them. Shows me, what do I know? Very little.
This was the first Super Hero roleplaying game and was designed by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman. Jeff Dee was the youngest artist to work for TSR, starting at the age of 18! Neat trivia, huh?
OSR Games
Love many of these, but usually play AD&D despite the organization in the "retro clones" being so much better and many questionable rules have been clarified. But, since I still have most of the page numbers memorized for AD&D, we’re good with the originals. We do use the modules!
General Philosophy on Board Games and Collectible Card Games
They’re fine, but we could be playing D&D. Or working on our characters for D&D. Or polishing our dice for D&D. Blood Bowl is very cool as are the microgames. See above.
Who do we game with?
These days, mostly just with ourselves or with one of our oldest gaming buddys. We used to game with a diverse cast of characters and have run adventuring parties as large as 12 to 15 people at a time. Even teaming up as co-DMs. We have never gamed online and have only watched one online play session and could only kibitz and want to play ourselves. We of course know of the Titan in the room called Critical Role but know virtually nothing about it. Will we ever watch it? Maybe. Stay tuned to find out.
Video Games
Yes, we love us some PC gaming. Mostly RPGs and various other games. Love all the Fallout titles, Borderlands, Neverwinter Nights, the SSI Gold Box games from the 80s and 90s, MechWarrior, Elder Scrolls, NBA 2K, Cyberpunk 2077, Total War, Civilization, Blood Bowl.
The old SSI Gold Box Games are available again at GOG and Steam. Here’s an article at PC Gamer detailing what they had to do to get the rights to these games.
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-gog-rescued-13-forgotten-realms-games-from-licensing-hell/
I hear they are restored faithfully but the interface is quite clunky. Not surprising as they were clunky "back in the day" too.
Politics
Well, we’d love to just skip this whole topic but with our country becoming more and more divided by the moment because of our crappy leaders on both sides of the aisle I guess you should know we are unabashed “leftists”. We still believe fascists and Nazis should be ostracized from polite and impolite society. While we are generally pacifists, we would make exceptions for punching Nazis.
We also believe in universal health care coverage, universal basic income, and a woman’s right to govern their own body. We support our LGBTQ+ and trans brothers, sisters and siblings. Everyone should live in a fashion that makes them feel like a worthwhile human being. 'Nuff said, move on to gaming.
Religion
Nope. Thanks, not interested. You folks can have your various cults and all that mumbo-jumbo. No offense, it’s just not our cup of tea.
We strongly support that each person should have the right to worship as they feel without government interference. As long as it is not hurting anyone and you do not try to impose your silly beliefs on the rest of us or most especially on our government. We strongly support the separation between Church and State. Otherwise, go for it!
Sports
We bleed Purple and Gold for the Lakers. Go Lakers! Sorry if this upsets any Celtics fans. I do love Larry Bird and just wished he wore the right colors. But those were some great series in the 80s! If Boston Garden had AC in ’84 the Purple & Gold would have won. Ah, home court advantage. We was robbed! Of course, there was that series the Lakers won when Larry only had one arm. We would have won anyway!
Don’t follow much of anything else these days. Used to be a big Raiders fan back in the day. You know, when we won Super Bowls.Okay, back to RPG stuff.
We would love to hear about how you got started gaming and your experiences. Please be nice to one another. We will moderate your comments and while we do believe in the first amendment, let's keep it relatively clean. We may all swear like sailors or truck drivers at the table (and some of us are sailors/truck drivers) but no need to do it here.
Cyberpunk 2020
Is it just us, or are we headed towards the dystopian future depicted in this wonderful game? This is one of the games we spent lots of hours playing and still do. Love the CP2077 computer game as well. Despite the bad press it got, you should really give it a shot.
Gamma World
The original science-fantasy RPG. Emphasis on the fantasy. How many folks go around actively looking for sources of radiation to gain MORE mutations? Well, we did. So much fun playing a mobile stalk of broccoli with Life Leech!
Vibro blades, torc grenades, black ray pistols, yexils, hoppers, badders, the Red Death, Knights of Genetic Purity, Death Machines…these are words of power to my brain.
Microgames by Metagaming and Steve Jackson Games
These are so much fun! Ogre, Melee, GEV, Wizard, Rivets, Warp War, and so many more. We would play these often during lunch at school or when waiting for the dungeon delving crew to assemble.
Here's a link for more info on these fabulous games of yore from Metagaming Concepts and the other companies (including TSR) that produced similar games.
https://maverick.brainiac.com/cmm/
Blood Bowl by Games Workshop
We've loved this game for years. In our Spelljammer campaign, Linda's characters formed a Blood Bowl team for the ruler of the Rock of Bral (Prince Andru) and traveled the flow and crystal spheres adventuring, carousing, and occasionally playing a game or two of Blood Bowl.
MERP Middle Earth Role-Playing.
We’ve only made a few forays into this fun system but will play again. The last time we played, we left Linda’s characters trying to get to Rivendell to seek healing for a potent poison working through one of their character’s systems. Hmmm. We really should resolve that. So many games, so little time.
Rifts
Never played enough of this game. Love it. This has impacted all of my D&D campaigns. Cause, with gates leading all over the multiverse, you never know what you might run into in Greyhawk. See Arduin Grimoire.
Marvel Super Heroes
Love the original FASERIP version. If you know FASERIP, we can be friends. We probably played through every module/adventure for this system and it’s about time to play again. Hmmm. I think we’ll give Spidey some armor this time around. Man, loved playing him but without armor in this system, you could get hurt real quick!
Mutant Future
See Gamma World. Same fun.
Top Secret
Merle R. Rasmussen. The Administrator of Administrators. This was my high-school gaming group’s go to game when we weren’t dungeon delving. We thought we were James Bond or the Man from Uncle. But, nope. We always ended up blowing up our objective and running from the law. We generally survived but the world’s papers would have been filled up with even more unbelievable stuff that they are today. Maybe.
Villains & Vigilantes
Loved this game. Although, it was weird using ourselves as the characters. That kind of rubbed me the wrong way but the group loved it so I ran it for them. Shows me, what do I know? Very little.
This was the first Super Hero roleplaying game and was designed by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman. Jeff Dee was the youngest artist to work for TSR, starting at the age of 18! Neat trivia, huh?
OSR Games
Love many of these, but usually play AD&D despite the organization in the "retro clones" being so much better and many questionable rules have been clarified. But, since I still have most of the page numbers memorized for AD&D, we’re good with the originals. We do use the modules!
General Philosophy on Board Games and Collectible Card Games
They’re fine, but we could be playing D&D. Or working on our characters for D&D. Or polishing our dice for D&D. Blood Bowl is very cool as are the microgames. See above.
Who do we game with?
These days, mostly just with ourselves or with one of our oldest gaming buddys. We used to game with a diverse cast of characters and have run adventuring parties as large as 12 to 15 people at a time. Even teaming up as co-DMs. We have never gamed online and have only watched one online play session and could only kibitz and want to play ourselves. We of course know of the Titan in the room called Critical Role but know virtually nothing about it. Will we ever watch it? Maybe. Stay tuned to find out.
Video Games
Yes, we love us some PC gaming. Mostly RPGs and various other games. Love all the Fallout titles, Borderlands, Neverwinter Nights, the SSI Gold Box games from the 80s and 90s, MechWarrior, Elder Scrolls, NBA 2K, Cyberpunk 2077, Total War, Civilization, Blood Bowl.
The old SSI Gold Box Games are available again at GOG and Steam. Here’s an article at PC Gamer detailing what they had to do to get the rights to these games.
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-gog-rescued-13-forgotten-realms-games-from-licensing-hell/
I hear they are restored faithfully but the interface is quite clunky. Not surprising as they were clunky "back in the day" too.
Politics
Well, we’d love to just skip this whole topic but with our country becoming more and more divided by the moment because of our crappy leaders on both sides of the aisle I guess you should know we are unabashed “leftists”. We still believe fascists and Nazis should be ostracized from polite and impolite society. While we are generally pacifists, we would make exceptions for punching Nazis.
We also believe in universal health care coverage, universal basic income, and a woman’s right to govern their own body. We support our LGBTQ+ and trans brothers, sisters and siblings. Everyone should live in a fashion that makes them feel like a worthwhile human being. 'Nuff said, move on to gaming.
Religion
Nope. Thanks, not interested. You folks can have your various cults and all that mumbo-jumbo. No offense, it’s just not our cup of tea.
We strongly support that each person should have the right to worship as they feel without government interference. As long as it is not hurting anyone and you do not try to impose your silly beliefs on the rest of us or most especially on our government. We strongly support the separation between Church and State. Otherwise, go for it!
Sports
We bleed Purple and Gold for the Lakers. Go Lakers! Sorry if this upsets any Celtics fans. I do love Larry Bird and just wished he wore the right colors. But those were some great series in the 80s! If Boston Garden had AC in ’84 the Purple & Gold would have won. Ah, home court advantage. We was robbed! Of course, there was that series the Lakers won when Larry only had one arm. We would have won anyway!
Don’t follow much of anything else these days. Used to be a big Raiders fan back in the day. You know, when we won Super Bowls.Okay, back to RPG stuff.
We would love to hear about how you got started gaming and your experiences. Please be nice to one another. We will moderate your comments and while we do believe in the first amendment, let's keep it relatively clean. We may all swear like sailors or truck drivers at the table (and some of us are sailors/truck drivers) but no need to do it here.
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