It’s raining today.
I reminds me of the first time I played Dungeons & Dragons.
But I am getting a head of myself.
Here is my hobby story. How I got into games and how my hobby has evolved over the years. i have no idea if this is of interest to anybody, but since I am writing this mostly for myself, I guess that is fine.
At the time of writing this I am 51 years old. I have used games to bring colleagues together and I have even spoken about games at Østerskov Efterskole, a school using games to help young people become embedded members of society.
Funny how something people used to look down upon—or even saw as dangerous— is now cool. Wonder how that happened… anyway let’s start from the beginning:
Mid 80s: The first exposure to roleplaying games
I was born in 1974 and by mid 80s I started developing a fascination with terrain. It was sparked by a TV bulletin on model train hobbyists, but for me it was the landscapes they built that sparked my imagination.
Maybe I was just bored living in Stenum, a remote village of 400 inhabitants.
When I realised how expensive that hobby was I quickly dropped the idea. I then saw some landscapes in a toystore made for to doll series Sylvanian Family and I did start planning for a little Sylvanian world in my desk drawer.
The Bookbus
That plan never left the drawing board because in 1986, at the age of 12, I was introduced to fantasy books by a librarian in our local “bogbus”, a bus with a library inside that would drive around to the remote rural areas of Denmark.
The first fantasy book I ever read was “The Neverending Story” – I was blown away.
The came “The Hobbit“, then “Lord of the Rings“, then the “Soul Rider” series (which is really not for kids btw) and then ofcourse “Dragonlance“.
And it all culminated on Sunday 18. oktober 1987 when the Danish TV news program “DR Søndagsavisen” introduced the Danish population to Dungeons & Dragons!
Needless to say that changed my hobby life.
“Drager og Dæmoner” and miniatures
Shortly after, I found a copy of “Drager og Dæmoner“, a Swedish RPG translated to Danish, in “Bogladen”, a local bookstore in the nearby bigger town, Brønderslev, and started playing it with my friends.
I was close to 14 years old.
Bogladen also got a few fantasy miniatures on the shelves. My younger brother and I bought as many as we could. And to my pleasant surprise, I found out a few years ago, my brother had saved them all!
Amongst the minis the sold at Bogladen, I also found three strange sci-fi looking miniatures. I didn’t know what they were for, but I bought them anyway…. we will come back to those later.
Early 1990s: Moped, mobility and Dungeons & Dragons
January 1990 I turned 16, which meant I could get a license to ride a moped. I bought a Suzuki FZ50 shortly after.
The mobility I got meant it was far easier for me to get to Brønderslev and I joined an evening art class where I met two twins, Thomas and Jacob, who invited me to join there Dungeons & Dragons game.
And on a rainy day I took my Suzuki FZ50 to Brønderslev for my first game of Dungeons & Dragons!
It was a blast. Not just the game but playing with a whole new gang of teenagers. While these kids were my age, they were all in high school while I had taken the optional 10th grade in school.
But that would change that summer when I also started at Brønderslev Gymnasium, our local high school.
Clubbing and Shadowrun
The D&D group I had been invited to had grown too big and at one game, the last game we played, it became clear that the heroes were at such a high level that it was no longer fun to play.
The group split into two: One who wanted to focus on the rule crunching and math element and one that wanted to lean into more story-driven RPGs.
I stayed with the later group led by the two twins who had originally invited me in as we had developed another friend circle with some friends we had started going clubbing with and who we started playing Shadowrun with. Thomas was the game master. His brother Jacob, myself, Troels and Lars Ulrik were the regulars in the group.
I played a Street Shaman name Jancovich and we played regularly throughout our high school years. I wish I still had his character sheet.
We mainly played in Seattle as we had the Seattle Sourcebook.
Warhammer 40.000 Rogue Trader
The high school class I started in iwas made up of all the young people from the rural areas around Brønderslev, including the beach town Løkken.
Shortly after starting I got talking to one of my new classmates, Rasmus, about roleplaying games. He didn’t play RPGs but he played something called “Warhammer 40.000” and qe quickly established that a bunch of the Orks I had bought for RPGs were in fact Space Orks for Warhammer 40k.
And that’s how I got into WH40K. This is the only photo I have of my Ork Goff army with Khorne allies, but I still paint miniatures from that era and have a far larger army today.
But I have saved a bunch of my old armylists.
Magic The Gathering
Both the RPG crowd and the Warhammer crowd kinda looked down upon Magic The Gathering when it arrived.
But it quickly became a filler game and the interest grew rapidly when the cards became “rationed” as in the local MTG store “Goblin Gate” could simply not keep up with demand. So while you might have ordered 10 packs of something, you may only get 1 or 2 when they arrived.
No idea who these people are but it is the only photo I could find of Gobling Gate and i feel it fits the time.
1994-1995: the army
Following high school I was drafted to the army.
And Magic The Gathering became my main game focus as several of my army comrades also played Magic. Plus it was easy to store and bring out even when you live in barracks.
Late 1990s: Games Workshop takes over
I started Design School after leaving the army in 1995. there wasn’t really much Magic The Gathering being played, mostly because it had become costly to play especially for poor students like us.
But Games Workshop games really took over as many people on the school played different games from GW.
- Warhammer 40k, 2nd edition
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 3rd edition
- blood Bowl, 2nd edition
- Necromunda, 1st edition
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
And to top it off, I got a part time evening job as a model building teacher where some of the kids also played warhammer.
Warhammer 40k, 2nd edition
I just kept playing with my Orks. I did feel the 2nd edition Orks were much less fun and had less rich lore than their Rogue Trader counterparts.
Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 3rd edition
I pla
I don’t have the army anymore, but I have painted up a new one focusing on Night Goblins