An Introductory Post

I have been messing about with RPGs for nearly as long as I have been interested in gaming and war gaming.  My love of wargaming, RPGs, paragraph adventure books,  computer games and board games is all fairly intertwined.  Born in the 1970s, I came to most of this stuff in the 1980s and through that decade there was quite a heady mix for me of figure games (6mm WW2, 15mm Napoleonics, various 20mm periods),

The first role-playing games I played were "choose your own adventure"-type books, particularly those in the Lone Wolf series although I played quite a few of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks too.  The first role-playing game "proper" I played was Middle-Earth Roleplaying (MERP) which I really enjoyed although with only a very rough understanding of the rules.  Later on, I played to a greater or lesser extent Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying, Dungeons and Dragons, Judge Dredd, Recon, Phoneix Command, Twilight 2000, Shadowrun, Paranoia, Universe, various Palladium games (Heroes Unlimited, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Beyond the Supernatural), Maelstrom...there were probably some other ones. Generally speaking, I had a very good time!  That said, I also thought - and continue to think - that RPGs never quite delivered for me quite as much as I thought they might.  Like many role-players, there was probably a tension between the (good) games I was enjoying in reality and the (great) games I was imagining.  I still don't know if it is the games or my expectations that are more at fault for the mismatch.

Anyway, although my primary gaming interests are now more concentrated in wargaming and computer games, I do still occasionally play role-playing games (as a GM for my children) or play one as a wargame (i.e. do the "combat scenes") so I have started this occasional blog as to put my thoughts about various games that I may dredge up from time-to-time.