When I got to start at University, I converted Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I liked and had an audience participation tape of, into a RPG location for D&D, Frankenfurther Mansion.
Once courses started, I wore a T-shirt with the cover Iron Crown's Gorgoroth, sporting three Nazgul riders in front of Mount Doom. That way I met Dirk, who was a D&D 1e player from Tübingen, one of the older students whose name I now cannot remember, I think Martin, and another co-student, Thomas, and we had the makings of a gaming group. Yvonne, another co-student, joined in, and one of her girlfriends for some time to, as did one more co-student whose name now eludes me, a blond guy who liked to wear black and who listened to industrial music.
Dirk also was part Myra, of a play-by-mail from Tübingen, that was playing in a world established by a German pulp-magazine fantasy series I had never heard of nor read, but I started playing in there and played a pirate empire on the world segment of Corigani for a few years. Later I repurposed the rules mechanics to run a middle earth play by mail for a few years too, back then there was no internet quite yet, so you would get real letters and make photocopies in a copy shop to mail out the newsletters of the last turn.
We did go to a retreat on a cottage in Schwaben that Dirk organized, and where he ran D&D Desert of Desolation, with Raoul, Yvonne and Thomas, and one where we were joined by a fun friend of his, Richie, who was super laid back. I also mastered a cottage playing Elric!, with a fantastic adventure by Dr. Stephen Schütte, Arioch's Children, one of the best I ever played. Thomas had nightmares from being in prison in game.
Berlin as Germany's biggest city of course was a heaven for role playing (or any other fringe hobby really), with several shops selling role-playing books and paraphrenalia, and several cons being organized, and there also was Nexus E.V., a roleplaying association. At these cons, I attended other play groups' tables, and ran some games too, and through this found serveral new friends and play circles.
One of them was André, a guy from a low-education background, who lived in a bad part of the city, and was very smart and funny, but always embroiled in some financial difficulites or dubious business venture. He tried occutism and magic tricks, and he had not the most healthy eating habits and was heavily overweight. I played turn-based strategy games on the computer with him, Warlords and such, which was fun. He joined our regular group. We continued the Elric adventure, which stressed him when the weird people from behind the mirrors wanted to observe his character around the clock, and then played mostly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay where André GMed, or Call of Cthulhu where I did. Yvonne also brought on Raoul, who was a super nice guy and one of the people running Nexus E.V., and with whom she was together for some time, but later they split and instead she brought her new partner along, and Raoul peferred not to come any more.
At another Con I met both Pittel and Daniel. Pittel was part of a group of people that included another Daniel, a friend of Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen and old-time Glorantha/Runequest player. I played in his Runequest group regularly, and got to meet Niels and his cute girlfriend Claudia, who also was a role player and competitive archer, Daniels wife Kerstin who would not play, but made delicious guacamole crackers for us, Robin who played a humakti duck, and Eini, an old schoolmate of Pittel. We also played regularly at Eini's place in Potsdam im Schwerterweg (Sword Way, a nice street name for a role player), also Glorantha, and Earthdawn (to this day I get an earful from Claudia that I killed her fairy with my necromancer), and we started a large scale battle game which never took off. They also organized Glorantha-related cons, were you would meet people from all over the world, many from the UK.
The otherDaniel had a GM named Frank, who lived with his ancient grandmother in a nice old villa with high ceilings in Wannsee. I would treck out there once a week for a game in his hombrew "Silvermoon" world, playing homebrew rules derived from 1e D&D (I think). In this group I also met Stefan, and a few other regulars.
When Magic the Gathering came out in 1993 and flooded Berlin's role playing scene, I caught the bug too. Nils, who was a mathematics student, introduced me to it, and trashed me with a black vise. Soon I was building lots of decks and playing a lot. Most of the others also did a little, and Daniel and Stefan likewise were into it, and of course we'd meet many other players, including Pischner who for many years ran an MtG blog. That is a different story, though. Pittel disliked Magic because it pulled people away from RPGs. Raoul also sold his cards after a while. I still continued to play role playing games, but not that much any more.
