Why? (Part I)

Like most people over the age of 30, I lament that I'm not younger than I am. For me, the '80s was a particularly crappy time to grow up. There was only 13 channels, no internet, and Ronald Reagan was President. Bad times all around.

Aside from going outside and playing (and yes, I did plenty of that), social activities were pretty limited in 1984. I was thirteen, already too old for action figures. Computer games were primitive and only one person in our neighborhood had a console, and for reasons I can't even remember that person and I didn't get along -- actually, there was startlingly bad blood between us. We had come to blows several times, and at one point, he ran out of his house brandishing a kitchen knife threatening to stab me. Needless to say, I was never invited over to play Pong.

Comic books and role-playing games were the main engines of social interaction among the geeky. When there was nothing else going on, two geeks could always get together to talk about comic books. When the latest shipments came in and were subsequently purchased, the entire afternoon would be spent sitting on someone's living room floor reading the latest booty. Countless hours were spent perusing each other's back issues, trading for stuff we didn't have, or debating who was more powerful, Superman or Thor? (It's Superman, by the way -- just let it go -- but it didn't matter, because Thor was always cooler).

Role-playing games had been a part of my life since I was seven years old, with the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons. TSR, in a brilliant marketing stroke decided to put a scary-looking demon-thing on the cover of it's Dungeon Master's Guide, thereby revealing to us which parents were gullible enough to believe idiotic news reports that it had something to do with the occult. We also had the world's best Dungeon Master, a ten-year old wunderkind who could quote every single rule and memorized every chart with the efficiency of a CPA. He's probably a millionaire now.

By 1984, D&D had opened the doors for other RPGs: Star Frontiers (stupendous game, always wondered why it wasn't more popular), Gamma World, Car Wars, Top Secret... it was a role-playing cornucopia. So when I first learned that TSR decided to combine my two favorite things, Marvel Comics and role-playing, well... I don't even remember what happened. I think I passed out.

I do remember scarfing up that bright, yellow box at Toys R' Us, tearing it open in the car on the ride home and devouring the rules. I remember the sheer giddiness of reading the Campaign book, narrated by a host of Marvel characters. I remember cursing the fact that the stats for a measly EIGHT heros came with the set (an absolute outrage!). I remember GM'ing the included adventure, "Day of the Octopus" with my friends Mark and Kevin. We finished the whole thing in a day.

Here's my favorite memory: at the time I was (unnecessarily) seeing a child psychologist. I was one of those "do great on the tests but don't do the homework" types. Homework was boring, I explained. Nowadays they would have labeled it ADD and dosed me up with Ritalin. Back then, it was EEG tests and a child psychologist. So the psychologist, a pleasant Asian man with a thick accent, spent one entire session with me doing one of my favorite things: playing the Marvel Super Heroes RPG. So we played an hour's worth of "Day of the Octopus," (likely the most expensive gaming session ever, now that I think about it) with him assuming the role of The Thing. He didn't know a thing about the comics, and when I explained that The Thing's battle cry was "It's Clobbering Time," he decided to yell it out before every single attack. I'm smiling just thinking about that.

To be continued...