My Second RPG Purchase – RPGaDay 2022

The question is: What is the second RPG that I bought?

That’s a tough one.

When I started gaming, I didn’t have any money to spend on games. The games I played were the ones that someone else bought for me. My parents got me the Middle Earth Role Playing game (MERP) for my birthday, and Laserburn for my Christmas.

So, I think the games that I picked up for myself were pocket money games. And by pocket money, I mean the cash that I pretty much begged off parents and grandparents when we went shopping.

I don’t know whether it was Dave Morris’ Dragon Warriors or Alexander Scott’s Maelstrom. I suspect it was Dragon Warriors — which at the time was released in single books over two years, 1985 and 86.

Dragon Warriors was glorious in its simplicity and fascinating in scope. At the moment, it reminds me of Into the Odd, where the Iron Coral is the first adventure — a small dungeon delve — which then expands into an area and then a wider region, a marsh and then a nearby township. Dragon Warriors was sort of similar, as the original adventures took place in a small area and as more books appeared character options expanded as did the scope of the game, culminating in the land of Legend.

At the time, I consumed each book greedily and the delay between each book was agonising. At that age, a year was a very long time and the gap between each book seemed to stretch out into eternity. Once I knew it was coming, I would stalk the newsagents in Corby seeking it out every chance I got, knowing that I would have to beg the five-pound note to pick it up.

But it was worth it.

You can read about it on Wikipedia, but I can say that at the time it was a revelation and a wonderful introduction to a new gaming world. Warriors expanding to wizards, rogues and more… Fascinating creatures, strange magic, legendary adventures. Glorious.


RPGaDay is a prompt-driven experience in tabletop roleplaying, initiated by Dave Chapman of Autocratik, and powered by me and you.

The prompts for this year are as follows — and you can find out more on Dave’s website.

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