On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Michael J. Lowrey orangemike@gmail.comwrote:

Back in the day, I was the Wise Old Man (early 20s) who dungeonmastered for a bunch of high-school boys in the Nashville Science Fiction club. I was careful to put several traps into my dungeon which switched genders on their player characters, and used the results to do some consciousness-raising on issues ranging from menstruation to rape.

I take no real credit for the fact that one of those kids is now a multiple Hugo-winner (8 nominations, 3 wins, I think) who handles women characters pretty well.

That's pretty awesome (especially the outcome - a Hugo winner, nice!). My first paid job was at a gaming store called The Game Preserve, and yes, I peddled dice, Magic cards, tarot decks, RPG books and board games to gamers for two years. Then again, I also had a compute in my bedroom by the time I was 10 and was raised by my father, so I suppose I have a little bit of a different "growing up" than some.

I haven't played D&D and whatnot in 10+ years, but every now and again I have a craving for pizza, geek parlaying, deciding who walks in what order into a dungeon and celebrating the fact that now I can buy beer legally and not have to beg the older kid in the group to go buy it for us. Sadly, out of my youth I don't know any Hugo-winners personally.

Perhaps we need to add a AD&D game into the mix after the netball game Kaldari, Pete and I were joking about putting together. Heh.

-Sarah