I actually enjoyed running the games as much as the players enjoyed playing them. It was also an opportunity to see and talk to them for a few hours. After all, they are my friends, going back half a century now.
Wesely went off to the army after running Braunstein. I am almost certain that the miniatures battle was after he came back, but I can not be sure of this. Wesely would be the one to ask to pinpoint the date of the game.
As to the Troll game, I do not remember anything else any more (other than David agreeing that these rules were not working); not even the other players in the game. I think the only reason I remember the fight with the troll was because it ended (for me) so suddenly and traumatically.

New video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmWDM7g ... e=youtu.be

Haven't had time to watch this one yet as I am busy getting ready for trip to the UK, but will offer more thoughts on this later!

Let me know what you guys think! :)

-Havard

I just posted the following reply in another thread in this forum, and consider important enough to also post it here. Thank you for your patience.

What you are seeing in the video was meant as an explanation to people who were strangers to me, and to the origins of Fantasy Gaming. I was trying to set the stage and recreate what it was like at the beginning. I did not deliberately lie or try to mislead anyone, but this is my impressions and remembrance of facts as I remember them.
If you were to ask half a dozen of us the same question of what happened back then, you would probably hear half a dozen stories that would be similar, but disagree on some of the facts. I appreciate Aldarron jumping to my defense (thank you sir) by saying that I misspoke, but the fact of the matter is that I was probably just plain wrong. These are the memories and impressions by an old man about events that happened half a century ago, and if you accept every detail as fact, then this would probably be more misleading than helpful. In my defense, I have stated that my only real memory of the Troll game was the actual fight with the troll, and the opinion of the rules.
I understand that people are trying to piece everything together from back then to give perspective and understand what you have ended up with. Unfortunately, an awful lot of time has passed by (and too many of us have passed away), and no one person could possibly give a comprehensive account of what really happened (except of course for Arneson, who is now gone).
I do not object to the questions you ask; I ask you to put this history together piece by piece from different sources to give you the picture that you seek.

Hey, Bob!

This is Rafe. We corresponded many years back over the ZGG boards, when I was running a game there. - I am not following everyday discussion on Blackmoor, any more, but I just wanted to say: No worries. Everybody here understands that you might not remember just about every little detail about a thing that, at the end of the day, was a free time activity, and secondary to everything else that really took place in your life. I know that there are people and entire communities that are extremely unnerving and sometimes even (for whatever silly reason) hostile when when it comes to this topic; we here at the CBI take pride in saying that we are none of them, and that we don't tolerate this kind of behavior.

I understand that you wrote this originally as a response to "klintron" in this thread over here:

viewtopic.php?f=83&p=33647#p33647


- I am sure he meant no offense.


- As to the larger situation, though, in my personal choice words, please, Bob, stop giving a damn about people who try to pick up fights about this; there's a small portion of people in the oldschool community that are, to use the most apt term I know for this, full-time sheisters. They wil go to great lengths to prove that they are smarter and more versed in the topic than everyone else, and they will use this claim to act as if they were community leaders. The reality, though, is that they are not. Other, balanced, "normal" people are. And normal people will not try to corner anybody because of stuff like this.

Raef: I'm not trying to prove I'm smarter than anyone. All I did was wonder whether Bob's recollection meant that there were hit points in Blackmoor earlier than anyone had previously thought.

Bob: thanks again for your recollections. I understand that it's hard to recall things from so long ago (like many others, I have a hard time recalling what happened in my games last week). It also must be hard having someone hang on your every word for clues about games that happened so long ago.

Hi Rafe! Of course I remember you. It is good to talk to you again, and thank you for your words of encouragement.
Actually, my previous post was not really directed at klintron; but was a reaction to something that happened elsewhere, not on this forum.
I felt a need to offer an apology and explanation, and thought it was a good time to remind people not to believe everything I say, as I could be wrong. It appeared harsher than I meant it to be (my apologies klintron, that was a good question).
The things that people say here are not what I worry about, it is the things that I say here that I worry about.
A glance at the list of original gamers in our group shows something like sixty of them, and that list does not include everyone gaming with us back then. Blackmoor did not come out of nowhere, it was a culmination of the things we had been doing up till then, and it continued to evolve from there. Not everyone was involved with everything that happened back then. Arneson is the only person who could give a full picture, but he is gone now.
The problem is that you do not have access to everyone from back then. As a matter of fact, there are only half a dozen to a dozen of us that you can ask questions of in forums or at conventions. This means you are trying to solve a puzzle that is very much incomplete. That gives a tremendous importance to everything that I say.
As an aside, the people making the documentary have talked to most of us, and even with that amount of information, they will have to reconcile our stories (which probably do not agree in many of the details).
You say that people understand that this was a long time ago, but I still worry about misleading anyone with whatever I say.
I have seriously considered staying away from the forums because of this, but that would not address anything else that would come up (such as the video).
This all weighs heavily on me, because this is more than the evolving of a game, and a game genre. We are talking about a group of friends that grew up together. A group of friends that are passing away now. Soon, all of this information will pass away with us.