D&D Red Box: No Neighborhood Was the Same –

We all have nostalgic memories of our first foray into the realm of tabletop roleplaying games.

For some, it’s not that distant of a memory, perhaps it even happened last week or just yesterday. However, for many of us that were introduced to it in the 1980s, there’s a spark of magic in our memories, like Bilbo chancing upon the One Ring in a deep dark cavern or a young squire named Arthur happening upon a mystical sword sheathed within an anvil atop a bed of stone.

There were no triple A video games or online mmorpgs that could temper the uniqueness of our gaming discovery. For the majority of us, this was a new experience unlike anything else. The pretend world from the playground that we used sticks for swords and trashcan lids for shields had come to life.

A portal to it was sitting right there on the shelves of bookstores and hobby shops across the world. A gateway to adventure was now at our fingertips.

Many players started with D&D B/X, but for me and countless others it was D&D BECMI that went mainstream and opened the eyes of every kid on my block. The mythical Dungeons & Dragons Red Box started it all.

This is my nostalgic experience …

My older brother was given the Red Box as a gift. Like many older brothers, I had strict rules: don’t even think about touching it without his expressed permission and supervision. He was the Dungeon Master for the neighborhood.

He ran the games for those in a fifteen block radius. Of course, they were only three years older than me, but for the kid, that was an eternity. Mounds of BMX bikes and skateboards sat in piles in our front yard, as my brother lead party after party on expeditions through long forgotten ruins and dangerous cavern systems splintering under the earth.

Being the younger brother, I was not allowed in the room, but that didn’t stop me.

I routinely sat with my back to their door, eavesdropping on their adventures. Listening to Todd (now a mechanic) devote all his gold to buying a huge ship and sail the world, which was his goal when he created a lowly level 1 Human Fighter. I was there when it happened and silently cheered from the hallway.

In the downtimes between adventures, my brother let me look through the book. I was just young enough that I had trouble understanding all the rules, but I got the gist of it. It didn’t matter though because just starting at the art was enough. It was captivating.

I had so many questions: who was that fighter on the cover, what was he after, what was the name of that sinister red dragon?  I didn’t know who the artist Larry Elmore was at the time, and honestly didn’t care. His painting sucked in in like a vortex from one world to another. The black and white interior art all told their own stories.

I wanted to know them, in fact, I wanted to be part of them. I wanted to go on expeditions to meet those that I could.

My brother did occasionally run a game for me. It wasn’t campaign or of any significant length but was enough. Once AD&D came out, he upgraded and let me keep his Red Box in my room and play it with my friends. We didn’t know all the rules, but we winged it. Many expeditions and explorations were had. My friend Patrick took over Dungeon Master duties and I got to step into freedom to explore our playground world as I saw fit. It was nothing short of magical.

Sure, I did flip through the pages of the AD&D books, but it was the Red Box that I kept coming back to. It was my One Ring; my secret portal to another world. To me AD&D was a game and it was fun, but the Red Box was a portal to another world that allowed me and countless others to live out their dreams, whiling creating amazing memories in the process.

I can guarantee you that, to this day, Todd remembers buying his first ship. I certainly remember it.