[NickMiddleton]

Originally Posted by soltakss

I was at Warwick from 1982-1985 (Maths) but played in the roleplaying group from 1985 onwards.

So we probably crossed over then - I was at Warwick 1986/-/1989 (Phil Lit), and lived in Coventry until 1995

I caught a bus to Wellingborough, came up on the coach from Wellingborough to Coventry then a bus from Coventry to Gibbet Hill and walked down from Gibbet Hill. Then after the coach got cancelled, I caught a bus to Northampton, walked to the train station, got a train to Coventry and the bus to Gibbet Hill where I walked down to the main campus.

Actually, now you described it, it doesn't sound as bad as I remembered it...

We played in the Airport Lounge in the main Rootes building and normally took up two or three of the big multi-seater couches around a coffee table.

Eerily well suited to running big games in weren't they?

I can't remember if we played on a Tuesday or Wednesday but I stayed the night on campus or at friends' in Coventry in an area called Paradise which is possibly the most unsuitable name for a region I've ever known.

I always assumed it was one of those blackly ironic consequences of the idiotic wide eyed optimism of the post war rebuilding when they came up with names like that...

Then I moved to Coventry and the long commute ended but the games didn't, until everyone left Uni and went their own way of course.

Funnily enough a largish chunk of my gaming crowd stayed on in Coventry after they finished at Warwick, so we were still all gaming together through the early '90's at various friends houses in Earlsdon and Tile Hill until my job was abolished during rail privatisation and I relocated to York.

:focus:

It's strange thinking back on gaming then actually - I had far fewer RPG books, and made minimal use of computers to aid with the role playing (I'd dabbled using my Amiga to keep notes, but the screen was crap and printing a bugger - I actually had more joy with the Amstrad PCW8512 I "inherited" from my in laws), albeit we'd experimented with using walky-talky radios for a dual GM campaign (it hadn't worked), and on another occasion had run a multi-threaded campaign that climaxed with four GM's running four interrelated games in the same house at the same time (and with characters occasionally slipping between them...) - THAT would have been hugely easier in a typical modern house with four computers and a network!

I do like having electronic versions of stuff that I can reference at work or easily print extracts from for players etc. but remain both firmly attached to books for actual reading and reference when I'm writing material; and I must confess I remain some what sceptical that PDF releases are automatically a good idea in all circumstances for the RPG publishers.

But, having said that, I can't help feeling it's time Chaosium did something a bit more substantial on the PDF front than simply re-issuing old OOP material via DTR.

Cheers,

Nick Middleton