When I was twelve years old (in sixth grade) I went over to a friend’s house and found him and another boy playing Dungeons and Dragons. There were these funny-shaped dice. They were playing Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits. They handed me a piece of lined paper that had a character on it; “Human Fighter”.

I was enthralled! I soon took over the role of DM becuase I understood and could explain words like “Dexterity” and “Psionics”. That year we had school camp where I met what would become my friends all through school for the next six years.

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I was always the DM, and through junior high I created my own systems. My first one I named Elfquest and it was insanely complicated. In seventh grade I took typing class so I could make my own character sheets (I learned to type on one of those old manuals). My mom worked at a local copy shop and I was always down there cutting and pasting.

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I absolutely loved Champions and I learned to do mental math with that game. Basically, I was prolific in my actual application of schoolwork, from math, to typing, to the use of word processors (and later computers) BECAUSE of roleplaying games. I didn’t know it at the time, but I needed glasses badly. I didn’t get them until after I had graduated. I always sat at the back of the class with twenty pounds of D&D books in my pack.

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If it weren’t for RPGs I probably would have flunked out.

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By the time I had graduated from High School I had hand written well over two feet thick of detailed adventures, maps and fiction. Basically, almost all of my academic skill came from roleplaying games. They kept me out of trouble. They sharpened my mind and my imagination, something that has served me well into adult life.

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I would be thrilled if my children took up role-playing games or miniatures battles games.

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People ask me sometimes if RPGs are “evil”. I ask, “Is a movie evil? Does it influence for good or ill?” The answer is “Depends on what you do with it.” Do you watch horror movies for twelve hours a day? Or do you watch a reasonable amount of uplifting fare?

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The mind is a sensitive organ– anyone is right to be careful what to put in there. But RPGs are not inherently unhealthy for your mind. In fact, there are many, many beneficial effects.

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Once in my mid-20s a few of the players in one of the RPG campaigns brought over a copy of White Dwarf. That’s how I ended up buying my first Eldar army in the summer of 1996. And the rest, they say, is history.