Today’s #RPGaDAY2023 Prompt: “OLDEST game you’ve played”.

While I’d like to have played 1974 Dungeons & Dragons, I was rather late to that party. I own it, have read it, have messed around with it, but ultimately, no, I’ve never actually played it. The same can be said of those pre-D&D proto-RPGs, such as the game inside The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg. I want to play them, but…

The oldest game that I know I have played is Traveller (1977). My then best friend Daniel introduced us to the now classic boxed set of Little Black Books and the memories are deeply ingrained in my psyche. We played Traveller first, even before Daniel got D&D.

Having played the 1977 original has some significance because the 1981 revision (which I also own) began to introduce more overtly the Official Traveller Universe (OTU) and subtly changed the feel of the game. While the 1981 revision cleared up several points, it also marked a shift away from the do-it-yourself spirit of the original.

Reflecting on this experience, I recognise that I am drawn towards those games which inhabited the spirit of do-it-yourself. In this sense, I am (as I have said before), a child of Gygax, Perrin, Hargrave and Miller because I am influenced by early D&D, the Perrin Conventions which birthed RuneQuest, Hargrave’s Arduin, and Mark Miller’s Traveller.

It was the spirit of rolling your own subsector map, of designing your own starships, of inventing mysterious alien beasts, and the open style of free-wheeling play that Traveller introduced which began to awaken my creative soul.

I crave those experiences still.

Game on!