Mryddin's Circle

 One of the original old gits @Hopper_JT and I made contact last week after getting of for thirty years of no contact at all. It was a good evening spent chatting and reminiscing about events and people and our old gaming club. 

I moved to this area in 1989, straight from school aged 16, no friends here and just a fascination for fantasy books and painting Warhammer miniatures and with only a small amount of experience with roleplaying. On one of the first visits to the town I spotted a hand written poster in the local hobby shop where I purchased some miniatures. 

This is how we rolled back then, hand drawn posters and land line numbers6

It was for Myrddin's Circle, a roleplaying / gaming club in town. It had a name and a contact number. So for me, I did something that was very brave and I called and arranged to meet Jon. What followed was friendship that lasted directly for a year or so while Jon was in the area and fortunately has carried on where we left off. 

Quality posters, you don't get them like this any more... Sadly. 

Jon was great, he made me (aged 16) very welcome and suffered me being an irritating teenager at the games. But I learned a lot and he helped my find my roleplaying feet (not furry). We had a few extra players, Eric from Canada (also just made contact again after many years) and Griff and a few others. We even made the local paper at one point, because you know, Dungeons and Dragons was so weird and wacky back then!

Two members of the original Old Gits... Mryddin's Circle. That's me in the middle with the hair, when I still had hair. 1989!

Back in 1989 / 1990 there was a new thing just starting to be more heard of, Live Roleplaying, I had read about it and seen the amazing costumes in GM magazine and I had to do it! So I contacted one of the groups I had read about, Fools and Hero's and asked if I could set up a local branch. They ummed and ahhed about it as I was so young still, 17 at most. But they said yes, I got trained up, it was all very professional and the Aberystwyth branch of Fools and Hero's was opened. We celebrated with another hand drawn poster...

Fools and Hero's Aberystwyth. 

It ran quite well, even with the modest number of members we had in Aberystwyth. I went along to the festivals they held and again made a good number of new roleplaying friends. 

I can't begin to tell you how happy I was to see these pictures that Jon sent to me, I have not seen them for thirty years and in honesty, I had forgotten I set up the Fools and Hero's branch in Aber, when I was so young. 

This to me is proper roleplaying history, hand made, hand drawn, no smart phones and video screens... This is how us Old Git's rolled. 

PS..... I would love to get in touch with any of the old Fools and Hero's members if anyone knows of any?