Role playing games; a subject guaranteed to provoke hatred in most, but I love the buggers despite having it rammed down my throat since I was a kid (RPG’s that is). Y’see, when I was 8, Peter (my older brother) decided that since he only had one friend who liked pen and paper RPG’s, then he was going to have to enlist his younger brother to bulk out the adventures, whether I liked it or not.

Every Sunday afternoon we would go round his mate Andrew’s house and spend hours upon hours playing games such as D&D, Space Hulk, Middle Earth, Blood Bowl etc. You could imagine my frustration, being eight, playing role playing games with guys three years older than me who clearly had a better grasp of what to do.

If only someone had told an 8 year old me about the Australia tactic…

The worst offender was the proto RTS - Risk. I was dire; my eight year old mind could barely comprehend simple division let alone the finer art of tactical global warfare and diplomacy. Peter was by far the worst abuser of the age gap - it took a good couple of months before I realised that his tactic of pointing out how big Andrew’s army had become was just his way of dividing and conquering. I would duly rain death on Andrew, fatally weakening both me and him the process, leaving the door open for Peter to sneak in and win.

Despite my repeated arse kicking, Sunday was still my favourite day of the week – for one very simple reason; hidden on the top floor of Andrew’s house was a brand spanking new Atari ST!

After about four hours of dice-rolling dungeoneering we would turn on his ST and then the real fun would start as we played Toki, 3 player Super Sprint, Wizball, Marble Madness, Championship Manager etc. But there was one game, which grabbed me by my barely developed balls and made me want to play more than any other – Dungeon Master.

Still scares me now.

Dungeon Master was mind blowing, it had everything that “grown-up” RPG’s had – party creation, numerous items, swords, magic, swords, ninja stars, swords, big scary monsters and so on - but it had something that no paper based game ever had. No more did we have to imagine that Andrew (putting on a not-particularly-scary voice) was a demon from the third circle of hell – the monsters were there, on the screen, and they were horrible and fantastic in equal measures.

Never had a screeching bush instilled so much terror in a group of three boys. Andrew had to be removed from navigating duties and placed into one of the two advisory roles, he just couldn’t take the pressure when we were approached by anything remotely dangerous. Wuss.

Never until now that is…

We spent hours playing this but never got very far, despite making meticulous maps and practising potion recipes in our spare time. We were just so unused to the game structure, it was completely different from the usual fare, the interface alone was confusing. I remember the excitement and the fear we used to get when we discovered a new creature. The game would become a long distance boxing match; our party would slowly traverse around the beast, trying to delay conflict for as long as possible, waiting for an opportune moment. This was of course, only after we had thrown every vaguely missile shape object within our inventory towards the fiend, usually resulting in a complete lack of damage inflicted. Magic followed a similar spazzy technique, only we would argue for ages whether we should save our magic power for a potentially stronger unknown foe which we haven’t met yet but could be round the corner.

”What say we ‘it tha’ monster with yon’ fireball?”

Looking back at it, its no wonder we didn’t get very far in Dungeon Master, we were idiots, complete buffoons!

Given how few of them I saw its amazing I can’t remember the names of most of the creatures, or even what some of them looked like, but there’s one thing that will stay with me forever, I’ll never forget the screaming.

“JOHN, QUICK!!! CLOSE THE DOOR ON THE MUMMY’S HEAD!!!!

OH CHRIST, DID YOU HEAR THAT??? THERE MUST BE A TREE NEARBY!!”

Because of Dungeon Master, I began to love role-playing games, a love which I still hold today with games such as Morrowind and Shining Force. But, for all the advances made within this genre, I have never experienced the emotion Dungeon Master created since and I doubt I ever will.

THRONGOR, July 2004.

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