About Me (tolrendordm@gmail.com)

I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in New Zealand, in the early 1980s, with school friends, as a player in an AD&D campaign based on the classic Keep in the Borderlands, and as the DM of a Basic D&D solo campaign with my brother.  The solo campaign is where my world, ‘Tolrendor’, was born.

I gamed throughout my teens and university years, mainly as a DM, running predominantly AD&D and then moving onto 2nd Edition when it came out. The majority of my gaming was the solo campaign with my brother, which went on successfully for several years, as we always struggled to get a consistent gaming group going at school. Other highlights included the Dragonlance Series, some Forgotten Realms conversions (for a long while, the northlands of my world looked very like the Savage Frontier setting from the Realms!), including a re-run of the Icewind Dale stories.

Then in the early nineties my wife and I moved to the United Kingdom, with two backpacks only, so as you can guess my gaming stuff didn’t  fit! We travelled, we worked, we had fun, we bought a house, we had kids …. as you do! And thus began a long hiatus from the role-playing scene – so I missed the whole 3rd Edition and d20 explosion!

In 2007/2008 I started browsing the web again to see what was going on, partly I think because I’d just spent time back in New Zealand clearing all my old stuff out of my parents’ house, but also I think because I was spending time reading fantasy classics (such as the Hobbit  and the Narnia stories) to my children, by now 7 and 9, and it got me enthused again!

The 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons has really inspired me to get back into role-playing! I understand many of the things that have been said about it, for and against, but IMHO it’s a great game, and the quality of the product is fantastic. In my real world, I’m pretty time challenged, what with long work hours and a family life, so I really appreciate the tools and features of the game that make it easy to put together a great scenario.

I don’t have a regular ‘adult’ gaming group, except for an occasional session with my best mate way back from secondary school in NZ, i.e. at the rare times our lives end up in the same part of the world (We’re in London, he’s in Bangkok).  I’m certainly looking into technology options to allow that to happen more often!

Meanwhile, I’m gaming with my kids, and so far we seem to be loving it! I’m sure there’ll be plenty of that posts on that in the blog!

Happy Gaming!