…….hey buddy,….everyone went through the “rat problem” phase. In the spring of 1976 I was in seventh grade. I had been reading science fiction for two years and had just started bleeding over into fantasy. One day at lunch I overheard my friend Keith saying, “I listened at the door, and I didn't hear anything, so I went inside and got attacked by a giant rat!” I said, “What do you mean, you listened at the door? What are you talking about?” They said, “Well, it's kind of hard to explain, but in this game called Dungeons & Dragons there's a probability that you'll hear something through a door, and my character's a thief so he can hear better. The game just came out. Come over Friday and we'll play.” I did and was instantly hooked. A whole new kind of game. No board — just dice, just probabilities. It allowed me to enter the world of the books I was reading. I put more effort into that game than I ever did into my schoolwork. We were all complete outcasts in school — beyond the fringe, beyond nerds. We were our own sub-dimensional bubble of the school. I'm not even sure we were on the rolls of any of the classes; that's how outcast we were. D&D made quite a little explosion when it first came out. We were close to the Bible Belt, and ministers were preaching on TV against it, saying that it was a cult,….. to be continued,…after these dots…………….. http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/dungeons-dragons-online/537989p1.html added by: remanns
