#6 Favorite RPG Never Get to Play - The Original Edition #RPGaDAY

There are plenty of choices for games that I have played in the past but don't get to play enough - Call of Cthulhu, James Bond 007, West End's Star Wars RPG, Powers & Perils and Gamma World come to mind. There are other games I own that I never played - Dallas ("The Television Role-Playing Game"), Gangbusters, Hawkmoon, Behind Enemy Lines and Boot Hill would all be fun for different reasons.

There is one game I know backwards and forwards, own every rule supplement for, and yet never officially played: the Original Edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

My complete set of OD&D digest-sized rule books

How did this happen? When I started playing in 1982, AD&D 1st ed. was the new hawtness. This edition had already faded into the mythic past like the contents of the Library of Alexandria. I did play nearly every other edition of the game (B/X, BECMI, 1st ed, 2nd ed, 3.0 ed, 3.5 ed).

My first exposure to this edition was a photocopy of Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes that somebody gave me in the late 80s. It wasn't the entire book; just the Hyborian and Melnibonean mythos. In the mid 90s, I was blessed with luck and found a near-perfect "white box" OD&D set at a comic book store for $10. I picked up Chainmail from a dealer at the San Diego Comic-Con for $9.95. I assembled the rest of the set piece by piece, finally completing with Swords & Spells (invaluable for its definitions of OD&D spell ranges and durations).

I also have a copy of Tractics, perfect for combining with OD&D into a game of Sturmgeschutz & Sorcery!