Back in late 2002, a couple of us had been talking about the 1980s and the heyday of RPGs. I certainly remember my first experience of gaming, and I was hooked immediately. Of course, RPGs had a reputation of being played by teenagers, students and young executives, and inevitably those people moved on, doing those things that “normal” people do, you know: pursuing a career, getting married, having kids; that sort of stuff. I suppose we had been no different, and by 2002, neither of us had “gamed” for ten years.

 

Obviously, things are different now. We have the internet, and it wasn’t long before I started searching, looking to see what was out there. Unfortunately, though there was a old reference to a group in Ipswich, it soon became evident that there wasn’t a role playing group of any description within a thirty mile radius of Bury. I began to wonder whether the hobby had disappeared, but there were plenty of references to it thriving in the USA and despite the rise of the “Playstation” generation, there were groups in the UK (though admittedly not local).

 

It was at this point that we decided to look into putting together a group of our own. At the start, we didn’t really know whether there was anyone local to the area who would want to join us, but despite that I started looking into games systems. My last experience of gaming was a brief dalliance with AD&D 2e, but that was back in the early 1990s. The last game I had run was a AD&D 1e campaign, and a quick look on the interweb showed that though the game had now moved on to a third edition it was something I could recognise, and at a push, run a game of.

 

We decided to put a flyer out there, actually it was the front page of this site, to see if anyone took the bait. Within a couple of weeks, and much to my surprise, we had a couple of guys on board: Peter and Chris. The story pretty much started there and though we’ve had some comings and goings since, the group has grown and it’s a great bunch of guys.

 

Mark Wynne 18^th May 2006