This is where it all began for me: the D&D Basic Rules Set. When I opened this book in 1983, I had no idea that it would change my life. Back then, if you told 11 year-old me that I’d be 36 and wiping tears from my face because reading it brought back so many joyful memories, he would have called you one of the names the cool kids called him for playing it. (Don’t judge him too harshly; he’s only 11.)
My original D&D Basic set was a garage sale casualty, but the book in this picture is a first printing that I bought at a game store about ten years ago. It’s perfect in every way, except for a missing character sheet in the middle, which I printed from the PDF copy I bought from Paizo last year.
The Keep on the Borderlands module beneath it belonged to someone named Randy Richards, who wrote his name and phone number (as we so often did in those days) on the cover. I don’t know who Randy Richards is, if he cares, or if he’ll even read this, but if he does, I want him to know: your book is in very good hands, Randy, and its current owner loves it as much as anyone could.
I’ve been on a real D&D kick lately (blame the Penny Arcade podcast, and how much I love 4e) but I hadn’t actually gone back to the beginning and read the Basic Rules for a very, very long time. So late last night, after my family went to sleep, instead of watching TV or reading blogs, I went to my bookshelf and grabbed the Player’s Manual you see in this picture. I read it cover-to-cover for the first time in over 20 years, and played the solo adventure, which was the very first dungeon I ever visited. I named my fighter Thorin, just like I did when I was a kid. I made a map on graph paper, rolled dice on the floor, and felt pure joy wash over me. I scared off a Giant Rat and killed the remaining two before I failed – like I did when I was 11 – to solve the riddle of O-T-T-F-F-S-S, losing all my treasure. I tried to talk to the Goblins … before I killed them and took their treasure: 100 sp and 50 gp. I battled the Rust Monster, who was just as tough and unreasonable an opponent for a first level fighter as I remember. Thorin eventually managed to defeat it with some … creative … trips back to town to replace his armor and weapons, just like he did a quarter century ago. Luckily for him, the Rust Monster didn’t heal between battles … just like the last time he faced it. I decided to leave the skeletons for another time, and walked back to town with my 650 gp and 100 sp. When I calculated my XP, I had earned 1084 … not too shabby. I closed up my book, and went to sleep happy.
When I was a kid, the D&D Basic Rules Set was never just a game to me; it was my portal into a magical, wonderful world that I still love. Now that I’m an adult, it isn’t just a couple of books to me; it’s a time machine.
The world I live in is filled with uncertainty and occasionally-overwhelming responsibility, but for an hour or so last night, I was 11 years-old again, and I went back to a world where the biggest problem I faced was trying to save up for a Millennium Falcon. When I read “You decide to attack the goblins before they can get help…” I could hear my Aunt Val tell me “That’s a game that I hear lots of kids like to play, Willow. It’s dragons and wizards and those things you liked from The Hobbit. The back says you use your imagination, and I know what a great imagination you have.” I could feel the weight of my Red Box, which I carried with me pretty much everywhere I went, and how huge the thing felt in my tiny arms. I could feel it get heavier as I added modules and characters, and my own dungeons, drawn on graph paper. I could hear the snap of the thick green rubber band I eventually had to wrap around it, and I could see the yellowing scotch tape I added to the corners.
I enjoyed it so much, I’m going to reread the Dungeon Master’s Rulebook next, and run the Group Game adventure it contains, “for use by a beginning Dungeon Master.” Then, it’s time to go back to the Keep on the Borderlands, using just the Basic Rules, where Magic-users can’t wear armor, Fighters have 8 HP, Dwarf and Elf are classes, and everyone dies at least once before finally taking a character to second level, because that’s where it all started for me, and sometimes you just have to go back to your roots.
Reading this, I finally put my finger on why I bother to RSS your blog, buy your books, and follow you on twitter:
You help me remember who I used to be. I mean that as a pretty damned high compliment.
Better still, he reminds me of why I continue to be who I am. Everyday I try to remember what it was like to be a kid. It helps keep me young in both body and mind!
I also picked up the “red” books at a value village a few years back for $5 and I have also re-read it.
I totally know how you feel Wil. I always smile when I take a second and take stock of who I am am and what I get to do for a living. I can’t even imagine the person I would be if I didn’t have things like this in my life. I know I would probably be fine, but I doubt I would be the same person. The fact that I can still sit and play games like 4th edition today, makes me wish I could go back 12 or so years to myself back then and reassure that nerdy adolescent that yes, everything is going to be ok. What you are doing today will have a tremendous impact on who you will be, the people you meet, and things you will do.
Well said, Shane. Ditto.
I didn’t know it when I started writing my blog, and then my books, but the biggest reason I do any of this is so *I* can remember who I was, and understand who – and why – I am today.
Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Wait, there’s a riddle about 1234567? Did you have to roll to discover whether you solved it or not? Cuz otherwise, you lose 50d6 MathGeek Points…
B1 In Search of the Unknown. That was where it all started for me… 1st Edition Basic set, that I got in 1979. Didn’t even come with dice; just numbered squares (chits) that you put in a cup to pull out at random, and the module had blank spaces so you could provide your own monsters and treasures. It still is the standard for the quintessential ‘Dungeon’
Got a copy of B2, Keep on the Borderlands later. Loved it. Still do.
My all time memory re-activator module, however, is X1, the Isle of Dread, from the blue expert set. I recently found the plastic AFX slot car case I kept my dice in, and there they all were. Even the ones i got from my older brother’s friend who turned me on to D&D back in 79′. Good times. Good times.
BTW, Wil, if you go to RPGnow.com, there are tons of publishers keeping 1st ed. alive w/ new modules, and there’s an open source version of the 1st ed. Rules called OSRIC at knights-n-knaves.com.
Okay it’s not exactly the same as a crawl down memory Demonweb Pit, but there’s good stuff there…
Damn. Gonna go roll me a Lvl 1 Ranger right now.
Yeah, I lose all my math geek points, just like I lost all my treasure.
My brain just isn’t wired that way, I guess.
Oh, wow. That was my first set too. I made up a fighter named Snoopy, ’cause yeah, that’s just me. I remember that rust monster, and that darned riddle, and the giant rat….
I don’t know about you going medieval on the poor goblins, though!
That’s no moon. It’s a space station.
In fact, Wil, file that under “Things I Learned From D&D”: Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses- It’s important to learn these, so that you can kill them more efficiently. (Wait, I think that last part might be a US Military addendum…)
Ya know…
When you write like that I can actually feel myself slipping into your shoes and piggybacking your life for a while. HR tests lable me an “empath” (I see you looking at the irony)so it isn’t really as creepy as it looks at first or second glance.
I was never as cool as you were/are/ever will be. I just watched the rituals, the expressions and the way these things transported people to other places. But it is the absolute love for the thing itself evidenced by the scotch-tape stiches on gaping wounds. And… to have compadres to share it with. I don’t know, Wil, maybe you would have let me bring my Fisher Price dragon to the game? Maybe not.
But you write these things and its a free pass to places I never could go to before. Wow.
Oh man…..
My brother took me on that adventure, he DM’d it even though it was supposed to be the solo. The way he read the riddle, my 8 year old brain saw some perfect logic and I answered ‘E’. He got so mad and accused me of cheating (apparently when his friend ran him through the adventure he couldn’t figure it out and he was older than me, therefore infinitely smarter…)
But it wasn’t until I saw that post above that it all *really* made sense. I never solved it at all, just made a natural 20 on my dumb luck roll and guessed the correct letter.
I forgive myself. I was only 8 at the time and I’ve finished Professor Layton on the DS without any help since then so my geek cred is still good. (that was actually one of the puzzles in Prof Layton.)
*sigh* Memories.
Thanks Wil.
The early sets came with dice but they ran out so they started putting those chits in until they got a new dice supplier. 🙂
I hated those chits. I’m a total sucker for rolling dice. Shiny dice. Maaaaagical dice.
Crap, now I want to buy *another* set of dice.
Takes me back, too, except I was in college when I was playing that one…now my son’s playing the most recent iteration and I’m in awe of how complicated it’s gotten. I could barely keep stuff straight with the old version.
Of course large amounts of weed may have had something to do with that…
Will – thank you for bringing back memories of 1977 and playing D&D while in the Coast Guard. We got lots of strange looks on the ship I was on, but we had a lot of fun and didn’t go out and get drunk in port at night like most of the rest of the crew.
My first character was an Elvin fighter named Therin Balintine who later became known as Ginsu (he somehow ended up with two Vorpal Longswords) and had high enough (THACO) bonuses to hit most everything that moved even with the 2H penalties.
Thank you for reminding me of the pleasures of D&D, I think I need to find a group of like-minded guys and start playing again – live instead of just Never Winter Nights
I knew I kept you in my feeds for a reason 🙂
Wil has really started a new genre of sorts imo…that of nostalgia writing. This is yet another example. I think what makes your blog and your writing so popular is that for many of us who are also in our latter 30s we shared all those same firsts. The arcade, the role playing game, the game console, the home computer, BBS’s, Star Wars, Star Trek, Saturday morning cartoons (remember those!)
Let’s face it the 70s and 80s were a magical time to be young. We just caught the first wave of home computers and game consoles. We also lived through pen and paper RPGs in their golden age.
Yet we were also cursed with geekdom. Not nerds with floods and pocket protectors but guys who looked fairly normal on the outside but revealed all manner of geekdom when we got into any conversation remotely approaching our interest base…
For me, the Red Box was a forbidden thing, hidden away in my brother’s closet after he got it for his birthday one year… and my parents forbade him to play it, having heard things about that game. I learned this after I came home after school one day to tell my folks I was heading to a friend’s house to try a new game. My dad asked, “What game?” I said, “D&D.” He said I couldn’t go.
It’s thus entirely possible, I suppose, that my career to date has been an act of rebellion centering on a verboten toy.
I’ve never played D&D myself, but I have had friends that play. Now for the first time, I truly understand why they loved to play so much. Thank you for showing another side of gaming to me, one that I’ve never paid much attention to before.
I think you win one box of Dark Dungeons, just for this.
You know, Wheaton, I think I have to blame you for this huge tabletop RPG nostalgia kick I’m on.
I haven’t played anything at all in a few years, and nothing of substance in over ten. Yet I’ve been listening to the Penny Arcade podcast and every episode is over too soon. Then in between I’ve been trawling RPG blogs and forums.
Worse, I’ve bought the 4th Edition Players Handbook and DM Guide, read both cover to cover, and am working like heck to get a group together of like-minded forty-somethings.
And it’s killing me that I haven’t been able to play yet. My kids don’t understand though my wife is trying to.
I hope you’re proud of yourself, sir.
I remember doing exactly the same thing when I first got my Red Box. I sat down and ran through the solo adventure and read the whole book several times, and the mention of the rust monster made me smile.
I also distinctly remember coloring in the cheap dice with the white crayon that was in the box.
The first set of rule I bought myself where Melee and Wizard, followed by The Fantasy Trip, as soon as my meager allowance would let me. I’ve had the desire to go back through them for a year now (thanks to Wil), but I cannot find them anywhere. I’ve searched my home, my parents’ home, and even accused my now 30 year old brother of hiding them (he claims he didn’t). Does anyone know where I could find these?
Hey Will,
Am a big TNG fan. Just found your blog recently, through Neil Gaiman, and I am hooked! Loved the books and have been recommending them to all. The blog is fantastic and I am eagerly awaiting the next book. I love having a place to let my inner Geekess out, thank you!
Take care,
Kira
Oy. I remember forcing my mom to drive me to a hobby store (Doug’s Hobby Shop, Waldorf, MD) in a torrential rainstorm, because some of the kids at school were talking about a game that I really really really wanted to play. I ended up buying what was probably a third printing of the Basic Set – blue book, dragon on the cover, long before the printing you’ve got pictured.
I was so proud when I got to school the next day, only to find out that what I should have bought was the AD&D Players Handbook. Took a week to convince my mom to head back to that store to spend more money.
And now I’m able to get my 10-year-old son to play D&D with the 3.5 edition Beginner’s Set. *Awesome*
B1 In Search of the Unknown was my first set as well. I remember my friends and I used that module, once we had played it through, to create our lair. My map on the inside cover still has the extra tunnels and rooms we added to expand our headquarters.
Man I miss that game. I should look for a group locally who still plays.
I owe everything I am as a geek to a massive convergence of The Hobbit/LOTR and Basic D&D in the 5th grade. I can look back now and understand that it informs me as an adult in so many different ways. My humor, my writing, everything I owe to D&D and friends who played it with me.
-Todd
I think the book in mine was light blue but other than that, sounds totally alike. I didn’t have any friends to play D&D with, in jr. high, so I made really elaborate dungeons and world and only occasionally, tried to play them. Wasn’t until high school that I found a physics group that played D&D. And Traveller and Gamma World. Such fun! Helped that main DM was big H. Beam Piper and Hal Clemet.
I gave away all my D&D/AD&D (first editions!) stuff when I headed off for art school (was 25 and ‘too old’ for such things). Only thing I kept was my white box books. Not sure if that would a good intro for daughter (8 years old). What do ya’ll think would be the best way to intro a kid to D&D now?
Somewhere around 1981 my Players Manual and Dungeon Masters guide went AWOL (out of my 1964 Plymouth Valiant). Some asshole saw it was better that they had them than me. But I still have the memories they couldn’t steal them. Oh and somewhere in this house I still have a box of miniatures, I’ll have to find them one of these days. Oh they days of D&D, not a care in the world except what monster we would run into next. I miss those days.
What do ya’ll think would be the best way to intro a kid to D&D now?
I’ve had a lot of success with the D&D Basic Game. It’s a simplified set of (3.5ish) rules, minis, dice, and map boards in a boxed set. My (then 9, now 10)-year-old loves it.
When I saw the picture, I actually said holy shit out loud and could have drummed up a tear if my wife weren’t sitting right next to me. I got that exact same box as a christmas present. I didn’t have a lot of people to play with, but I drew and redrew that dragon over and over again. So much that my parents started taking me to art classes and later tried to convince me to go to art school instead of pre-law. All because of the box set. Holy crap, there’s some memories all the sudden coming on. I have to log out so I can call my mom and ask her if she still has it. Wil is Fracking awesome!
Wil, your aunt has got to be the coolest. My uncle played back in the ’80s, but no one I knew played when I was old enough to know what it was. One of the curses of small town life.
It wasn’t until 2000 or ’01 when I finally got to roll up a character and participate in a game. My first has been my only. Now I’m jonesing for a regular game, and Gabe’s group with the webcam may have given me a chance to get together with that group. Hopefully I can get them to do it online. It’s amazing what we can do with today’s tech.
Thank you for the peeks into your past.
This is one of the parts of our pasts that do not align. I was not allowed to have D&D because it was “evil”. This seriously annoyed me and put me at a great disadvantage among my friends. The first time i got to play was at summer camp between 5th and 6th grade. Camp Indianola, somewhere near Seattle. My friend BJ (older kids made fun of his name, and I didn’t know why till much later) was the DM. BJ was a very quiet kid, but as DM he came alive. I had no clue what I was doing so he helped me create my character, a freakishly strong elf, and even made a back story for him. We played until after 3am one night, and they had me do anything that required brute strength and sheer stupidity. I really wanted to get the game after that summer.
But it was evil, like the fru-its of the devil.
I tried playing at friends houses a couple times after that, but without BJ to guide me it was quite frustrating playing with skilled players. So I retreated to my Intellivision with the voice module and Atari adapter.
Of course one day my mom made the mistake of giving my money to buy any Intellivision game I wanted. I came home with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and all other game cartridges gathered dust after that.
Later I did get into Robotech RPG, but it did not fascinate me like D&D did that one summer years prior.
Strange to have such a regret over a game.
I can’t tell you how much enjoyment I got from listening to those podcasts. Just hearing someone play D&D took my way back to my childhood days.
I pulled out my copy of the original rule books a couple of weeks ago and flipped through them. I didn’t play the rulebook game but I did recall one of the best games I had ever played. It was a sleep over a friend’s house and it seemed like we played for days. It was only a few hours but the memory of that night stuck with me.
I haven’t found any D&D people to play with in Vancouver, so, maybe I should start one.
Thanks, Wil for kick starting my imagination — again.
Those of you who dig on ol’ skool D&D could do much worse than check out Troll Lord’s Castles & Crusades (http://www.trolllord.com/cnc/index.html) which is essentially 1st Edition AD&D (complete with Barbarians and Cavaliers!) OGL’ed and brought into the 21st century, mechanics-wise.
I’m in pretty much the same boat…although two of my friends also in their later 30s actually want to try to resurrect our 19 year old campaigning under 4th edition rules. Ill be grabbing the books myself this week.
My daughter who is now 13 was 10 when I first introduced her to D&D using the 1st edition rules. She loved it. Kids catch on a lot quicker than you think. Just remember yourself at that age and how quickly you adopted things you enjoyed.
At 8 a great entry activity to fantasy would be something like Magic cards and then graduate to D&D if the fantasy interests her.
I wish I could say that I remember playing straight out of the red book, but to be honest… I wasn’t born when it came out. My dad did, though, and some of my earliest memories are of sitting on Mom’s lap at the DM’s (Dad’s) left hand, rolling her dice for her.
I was nine years old when they first let me play. I remember dad pulling a double handful of dice out of the spare dice box and telling me that they were mine, and if I didn’t like the ones I had then I could trade with the spare dice box. 😀 I still have every last one of the dice I ended up with that day. (Plus some, of course. A friend of the family machined me an aluminum d6 shortly thereafter, and I’ve bought some shiny ones for myself.)
woot, my first post here(geek cred +5!)
My first D&D memory was at a friends house watching him and his brothers play, I didn’t really get much of the mechanics but I remember watching him rolling for an attack and having to roll twice cause he just couldn’t fit that many 6-sided dice in his hands at once.
Now, I just try to collect RPG’s and someday I’ll get to gather enough like minded friends to actually play again.
ps. I’m eagerly awaiting my order for your woot shirt(had to order it on re-run)
I used the red book opening adventure for DMs as the basis for my current 3.5 campaign thats been running for 3-4 years now. And my first D&D character was a fighter, made it to 12th level before we ended the campaign due to high school graduations.
I remember playing D&D in my friends living room in 1978. It was brand new then, my friend was the child of a University dean who knew Gary Gygax and we got all of the new stuff. (Modules, dice, figurines) We had the COOLEST dungeon master named Norm. He was a long hair when NO ONE was a long hair…I remember that if you would somehow piss him off during the game, a troll, ogre or Lucifer himself would be sure to sneak up and steal your +8 Ring of Smiting while you were sleeping.
I can remember endless sodas, a big bowl of Doritos and my good friends sitting around a table full of papers and dice until midnight….man, who knew that those would be some of the best days of my life….
For my birthday in 5th grade, I got the Holmes blue book set with B2 and chits instead of dice. (Somebody needs to make a tshirt about those chits.) It looked cool but I couldn’t figure out how the “turns” in this new game worked, so it took a few months before I found someone that knew how things worked.
I still have the ratty, taped together, partially colored old blue basic book. I got it out so my 9 y/o daughter could see what it’s like to play old-school pencil and paper instead of Neverwinter Nights, but it just isn’t the same without having a few players around her age.
Not since your Growing Up Star Wars post has that inner childlike part of me been so roused to sing out in soul-stirring symphony. Reading this post, the yawning chasm of time between then and now contracts to an infinitesimal space in my mind, and I relive the wonder of what it was like to wield the imaginative power of my D&D Basic Set as a 10 year-old boy, as if it happened days, not years, ago. How do you put into words the wonder of it all? I think you’ve done a damn decent job here. What you’ve managed to capture is the essence of it, pure and true.
I got my D&D Basic Set around 1981. It would’ve been the one that came out prior to your Red Box edition, in the magenta box with Erol Otus artwork on the cover. I have no recollection now of why I was possessed to possess it, or when exactly I did finally get it but I do remember the absolute delight and sheer excitement that was generated every time I lifted the lid. That boxset went EVERYWHERE with me. For months it was always no more than an arm’s length out of reach. I took it on vacations, trips to the relatives’ houses, to school, wherever I went.
My imagination ran wild whenever I would think about what was inside it. I poured over every page of the books inside the boxset. I bought supplements like the Rogue’s Gallery in order to develop new character ideas, and gorged myself on the later AD&D corebooks that came along. Dragon Magazine became an essential purchase every month. There really was no limit to the creative impulses that that Basic Set box of treasure begat in my brain. Our parents’ paranoia at the time proved correct to a point. The D&D products at the time were imbued with something magical alright: the power to instill in their young readers’ minds amazing flights of fantastic imagination and unfettered, not fiendish, creativity.
I’ve stayed out of the debate in previous post comments regarding which edition of D&D is the One True Ruleset. I can’t pretend I’m any kind of proponent of the current 4E rules (everything up through 3.5 is more my bag) but as long as new players and young minds discover the same sort of pure wonder and raw imaginative power that I did when I was a D&D addict at the age of 10 or so, I think the torch will be considered passed on. Regardless of which set of rules you prefer to play your D&D games under, I hope that it still provides a gateway to adventure for you and your hearty companions like few gaming experiences really ever do.
You got me so pumped, Wil, I had to dig out my old set and snap some pics for posterity: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8669390@N03/ . Thanks for bringing it all back home again.
After reading this post, I was suddenly very happy to revelled in my geekishness. I picked up that same DND boxed set way back in the day, and like everyone else here read it cover to cover and imagined. After Ad&d, ver 3, ver 3.5 and now ver 4.0 the fundamentals are still the same. I still play now with my wife, our son and our friends, some who have been in the game for many, many years. There is nothing like 6 people sitting around a table with pencils, papers maps and monsters, all dreaming the same heroic dream…. Awesome..
“the Basic Rules, where Magic-users can’t wear armor…”
Wait, wait, wait. Are you telling me that Magic Users can wear armor now? What kind of wimpy gamers do we have these days? Next thing you’ll be telling me that Clerics can use edged weapons.
I picked up Bender’s Game the 3rd Futurama movie about 6 months ago. My kids (10 and 7 yrs old) loved it! Of course I had some esplainin’ to do. Which brought me to the whole D&D universe. Which then traveled to my older brother who had a bit more experience at the D&D than I did. So, I come home from work a few days later and both of my boys were creating characters on wide ruled notebook paper. It was the cutest thing ever!
Hey Wil,
Long time skulker on your blog/twitter feed. Should’ve written you a thank you a long time ago. Love the stuff you fire off into the ether.
It’s funny. Been reminiscing with couple other guys about D&D days. But I couldn’t believe the rush of feeling when I saw the shot of the ol’ red book and that map grid on your blog. It wasn’t the fact that I felt something that surprised me. I was what I felt. An overwhelming sense of one thing:
Possibility.
Anything was possible back then.
Back then, even my dream to one day be a writer seemed attainable.
And now that’s exactly what I do. You would be amazed at how many successful writers, story editors and showrunners I’ve met in film/t.v. land who all share a common trait. We all played D&D.
Turns out those all nighters spent rolling to hit, damage and saving throws with cheesie stained fingers wasn’t a waste of good ginger ale and time.
We were learning story, character and plot from the ground up.
We weren’t just learning and playing with possibility.
We were creating it.
Thanks, Wil. It was amazing to feel that again.
I really MISS playing D&D. I learned AD&D in college (early 90s). Just haven’t been able to play due to lack of people who play and time
My red set was a gift from a good (and wise) friend in ’85 or so, who said I might like it, since I liked Elfquest & swords [Good call, Devin, damn good call]. I still have it (looking forward to presenting to my little one), and while unpacking into our new place, did my own similar walk down memory lane, that you tell so wonderfully. Also ran the adventure.
“Damn that Bargle!! ”
“Aleena!! NOOOoooo!”
“WTF? Rusted?!”
Later, much like ChooseYourOwnAdventure, I went through and tried all the routes, just to have read all the blocks. 😉
The writing comment is spot on; D&D and writers go well together. Either that or writing is naturally geeky (mostly true).
Been lately playing (as PC) a long drawn out series in 4e with friends/brother-in-laws. After having not played since 2e. Damn Good fun – not sure what the 4e hate is about.
Would love to get something new going for Seattle area (CapHill), don’t mind newbies, only mind stubborn min maxer power gamers. Nixon babies and all genders of D&Ders encouraged. Seriously: mphoenixsmith(AT)hotmail.
Guilty admission I hear no one else claiming:
Elmore’s doe-eyed girls* sold me, though I stayed for the dungeonmastering.
*= dude, cleric on page 24 = totally hot art *ahem*, er, when I was 13. Elf on page 49 = based my fav character on this drawing. In fact, gave the 3 characters a backstory and dialogue, the works. She ended up killing Orcus and herself dozens of levels later – blaze o glory!
Your recollection of the first adventure in the Basic player handbook was what triggered my memories.
I remember being in Grade 9, walking downtown after school – there was an independent office supply store whose basement level was dedicated to gaming. It was there that I got all my D&D player handbooks. I can’t even remember the names of the levels, but I remember their colours: red, blue, green and black – in that order. Good times.