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I was an evil DM. Sometimes I'd roll my dice for no particular reason just to see the distraught expressions on my players' faces. Then I'd just sort of nod to myself and say something ominous like "Fine. Nobody dies. Let's proceed."

I believe the very first edition of standard D&D was in a brown box, and included a basic player's guide and DM guide. I had that one and the red box set too, and later the blue box AD&D set. I also had a library of those hardcover reference manuals that were like 20 bucks a pop (Monster Manual, Deities and Demigods, etc.). Must've been around '82 or '83 when I started playing.

My gaming history is almost perfectly parallel with Dragon's (in fact, I'd almost be surprised if we haven't met at some point ). I quit playing M:TG after 5th Edition, but I still have all my cards and counters and I still have my favorite decks stored separately. Just in case. That game is like crack. I've been having to make a conscious effort the last year or so to avoid any contact whatsoever with M:TG Online (tap three swamps and cast "Unsummon Bank Account").

Voidhawk wrote:I was an evil DM. Sometimes I'd roll my dice for no particular reason just to see the distraught expressions on my players' faces. Then I'd just sort of nod to myself and say something ominous like "Fine. Nobody dies. Let's proceed."

This is a hallmark of a good DM, the abigitory dice-roll for no apparent reason.
I had a bad habit of stopping in the middle of combat and asking a random player what one of thier ability scores or throws were, make a few die rolls.. grunt, grumble under my breath a bit, not say a thing the go straight back into combat. Was ALWAYS immediadately bombarded with 10 minutes of "What did we see", "Can I make a INT check to see if I noticed anything unusal?", "What EXACTLY was the monster we're fighting doing?", and my favorite "I'm going to break off combat and look around to make sure there's not more of them, you guys can finish him." Do the same thing while they're camping.. and the quant little campfire, for no apparent reason, starts to take on the look a military encampmant, double watches and idiots trying to sleep in armor. The next day when they do find something to fight they are all -1 or 2 for sleep depravation:sleep:.... BWWAHAHAHAAAAA

Voidhawk wrote:I'd almost be surprised if we haven't met at some point

Well if you ever did the Friday night 'dusk-til-dawn' M:TG thing at Caldwell Hall at NC State or played a Caitlyn's 'The Magic Place' over next to Duke or went to any of "Big Daddy Jim's" tournements/pre-releases in High Point or.. well there there were other places but those where the big ones. Pretty much if you played in any tournements.. we've played Early on I came up with the type I 'Abyss' decks that were so prevalent in this area for quite a while; Near the end I made it to Nationals with a 'Living Death' type II deck. This thing was independely developed by a bunch of people but I still think mine was the best since it didn't rely on as many 'big' combos that could be a pain to set up. I'd just play a bunch of 'small combo' creatures with some punch and pounded the snot out of you with them, If you got the situation under control.. well time for 'Living Death'... be surprised how many people just died to fat green/black critters and I never had to living death on them. They'd wait for me to play 'Living Death' to set up a 'big combo' and I'd just play more critters. It was fun to drop a 3/2 creature on turn one followed by a 4/4 on turn 2 then watch the sweat beads start forming on my opponents forehead, knowing that if they did manage to kill them, they'd all be back the next turn.





Yep... those were the good-ol-days:)