Return to Brookmere

My beginning.

Welcome to my new blog where I discuss all my random thoughts about RPGs. I've named it after the fourth Endless Quest book with the same name as this post. It was my entry point into Dungeons & Dragons. After reading this at seven, I bugged my parents to buy me the Moldvay Basic box set. I took it home and quickly realized it was beyond me. We returned it to the store.

Fast forward to three years later, the summer of 1985. I tried again with the Mentzer Basic red box. This time it took. I became obsessed. My friends and I played a combination of BECMI with 1e AD&D options added in for the next few years. I flirted with Gamma World, Star Frontiers, MERP, and some others, but I was chiefly D&D.

High school came and so did second edition. I was starting to get more into skateboarding and music and role playing took a back seat. The artwork became more stylized and the mechanics started getting complicated so I stopped playing. I kept checking in on the hobby through the years, occasionally sitting in on a one-shot with friends. I bought old modules second-hand and checked out the new books as they came out. I even bought the re-skinned 2e books before WotC swooped in and saved D&D, creating 3e, d20, and the OGL. I bought the 3.5 core books when un-smart people sold when 4e came out. I even bought the 4e starter or basic box to test the waters. I gave it to a friend after quickly determining it wasn't for me (Dragonborn? Seriously?).

Marriage and fatherhood pushed a lot to the side, but one day looking for old modules online I heard about the OSR games coming out. I ran across Basic Fantasy browsing on Amazon and I bought it because it looked good and was cheap. When it came, I started getting excited because here was something I related to. It took a few years for my kids to grow up enough to find the time to go over it in depth.

A few months ago we built new bookcases in our new house and we finally had a place to put all of our books which had been in boxes since our move. In pulling out the RPGs (which I tended to do a couple of times a year), I decided I wanted to start gaming again. The last month or so has been a whirlwind of discovery of the OSR games I've missed out on while I was gone.

Maybe this will be shortlived, or maybe I'm grasping at something from my youth to comfort me in a warm glow of nostalgia as I get older. Either way, I'm enjoying myself and I refuse to feel bad about that.

I plan to post random thoughts on the games I own, responses to video channels I've subscribed to, and hopefully the new games I'll be playing. I'm wordy and nerdy, but I'll try to keep the excessive verbiage to a minimum. I'm also starting this at the beginning of RPGaDay month, so I'll be hopefully keeping up with daily posts all this month.

Thanks for visiting, and stay tuned.