Not to derail this thread, but Nightblade - get on Fantasy Grounds, download the free software, and look in the Looking for a Player forum.
Within a week you’ll be talking PCs and within another or less, you’ll be playing with a bunch of folks old and young!
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I always love a good failed perception story!
For my own part, I was a jock and sci-fi lover throughout childhood. I had friends on both extreme sides of the fence but wasn’t a typical gamer.
I fell in love with the Uncanny X-men comic series in Grade 7, and soon started working for a local comic shop to help keep me in comics glory.
I’d always pass the section we kept of MERP books and would gaze at the
Angus McBride covers covetously.
I’d hear stories of my Manager “killing” people but the stories always ended epicly with battles against mythological beasts vs being IRL, thankfully, and asked to watch one day.
Man, was it kewl!
The GM, now close friend, would take plotter printer sized sheets of paper and actually draw dungeons to D&D mini scale! He’d colour it in a bit, dungeon dressing it up a bit and slid a thin plexiglass sheet over top, that could be drawn upon with wet/dry erase markers to map out spell radii and other features during combat.
I immediately bought my first ever non-d6s that next day.
Still have ‘em = one black and one green clear d10 and they roll 90+s still!
Later that year, ICE had its hooks into me as I had saved enough for the Red Box Set(RM2), its companions up to III, and was eyeballing Shadow World’s 1st Ed. boxed set for a setting.
As with Nightblade, I made sure to collect every book during those 90s heydays of RM2.
It wasn’t long before I enlisted my best friend, girlfriend, and Couz to play.
First battle in the first adventure I wrote for 1st lvl PCs had the girlfriend try to rescue the buddy from being surrounded by a pack of Wolves.
She made it to him, proceeded to fumble her Rapier and rolled a high 90+ ‘E’ Punc. which resulted in her ally dying of a brain hemorrhage!
We ended the game session with close to a TPK and I made sure to read up on how to game balance encounters.
30+ yrs of GMing later and I wouldn’t change my insta love affair with RPGs and RM!