I hate to say that my reasons for getting into gaming was anything shy of introversion. Perhaps there was more to it than simply looking for any chance to ignore the abuse I was suffering, I personally would like to think so, but my fantasy push was probably mostly due to immersion.

At a young age I was reading at an adult level. My mother is to thank for this, she was an avid reader and helped me to discover my voracious appetite for reading as well. Her poison was fantasy and science fiction, which introduced me to the likes of Mercedes Lackey, Holly Lisle, Anne McCaffery, Douglas Adams, and Roger Zelazny to name a few. My mother still loves to tell the story of telling off the teacher who thought I lied about reading one of her books at such a young age and also the one about the teacher correcting my assertion that we only had eight fingers between our two hands. This was the common ground I shared with my mother for many years, it wasn't until later I expanded on this.

I had also grown up around video games. I remember playing Atari and owning my first NES. I admit I didn't hit my gaming stride until I received an unexpected and wonderful bribe (thank you drunk bastard) of an N64. I had had to make do with gaming at friends' houses and my NES prior to that. Which I wouldn't trade out for anything. But it wasn't until Ocarina of Time did I really cement my desire to be a gamer, though it wasn't the first game to showcase my love of the RPG.

In a small town on one of many numerous Sunday afternoon drives, my family stopped at a small secondhand goods store. Potentially I run the risk of embellishment, but bear with me. This store was in a run down strip mall with barely anything to it, Hell I don't even know why we stopped. On one end was the secondhand goods and the other a trading card shop, sandwiched in between was a barber. The wooden slat flooring was dingy and caked in dust. The display cases half worked and this particular one did not, but inside it was used Nintendo cartridges. I convinced my step father to buy me a couple games, one particular game came with no booklet and no front sticker. I have no idea what the other game I got was, but this nameless one would lead me to one of the best bonding experiences I ever had.

The game I bought turned out to be the original Final Fantasy. It took awhile to get the game to work, but when we did; my mother and I played for countless hours. I spent most of the time controlling the characters and my mom spent time doodling out maps and store listings, it was like she was writing a strategy guide for those that came after us. Personally I think watching her develop those guides was what helped me later in life with DMing games. The organization of knowing such minute details about a world I crafted, even down to the hot dog vendor that always had Tuesday off, but I digress. Countless hours of playing that game and even though we couldn't finish it, the battery died wiping out our saved game on the final dungeon, it was an experience I wouldn't trade for the world, but then again I put little stock in humanity so that may not be saying much.

My mother isn't incredibly old, she had me when she was twenty. Meaning this tale of spanning generations isn't much of one, but still it shows one of the most important aspects of any type of parenthood. When you want a child to experience something that you enjoy, you immerse them in it. You show them what you like and support them whether they don't or do like it. Beyond that if they have something you don't follow then you show interest anyhow and at least support them. You can't force people to like something, in fact that tends to be a sure fired way of showing them to hate something (perhaps because I inherited my mother's contrary nature, boy does that cause some arguments) instead of giving it a chance.

My gaming lead me to an experience I wouldn't change, though many from that period of my life I would have loved to forget. Perhaps I really did seek out gaming due to the escapist nature of gaming or perhaps I had already had the groundwork laid before me and it made picking up such a mantle easy. Either way I ended up a gamer and will continue to be one even as I grow old and have children of my own. Thank a constant source of detriment for cementing the timeless nature of my gaming, tell me time and time again that I would grow out of gaming and my contrary nature just begs to snub thee.

Also in this tale of gaming evolution, I forgot to mention how I got to the point of chucking dice. That one was simple, I got to high school and saw people playing Vampire. Namely I saw a girl I liked playing Vampire and though I found this breed of RPGer odd, I felt with my knowledge of gaming and fantasy I would easily fit in. I sure did and several years later, I'm familiar with far more systems and still chucking my dice. On a side note, I feel I totally screwed it up with that girl thanks to disappearing for eight years and showing up once more completely in a bad place. So in two more years I will be trying once more, third time is a charm right? Doubtful, but that is another story and I have been grandly personal as is. Cheers to all who listened to (read) my blathering.