her daughter Abby
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Lise (R) and her daughter Abby |
"I got my first copy of the old three book, boxed set of Dungeons and Dragons back in 1977 (it was a gift for my 13th birthday - something I had requested after hearing it discussed at 'show and tell'). I tortured my family trying to run it for a few weeks (without ever having played myself), then happened upon Greyhawk, got together a few friends to play, and have never stopped."In Junior High school I got together an (all girl) group of friends, and as a group we also joined WmFRoG (Wesley Methodist Fantasy Role Gamers). Frog was a great place to game, more than fifty people showed up each week - adults and teens, male and female, from all over the Washington, DC area. It was with Frog that I first started going to gaming conventions, and thinking about designing games.
"It was in my senior year of high school, while visiting potential colleges, that I first met future members of The Amazing Institute of Blowing Things Up, Shooting People With Death Rays And Other Cool Stuff. (That would have been September of 1982). That contributed to my deciding to go to the University of Maryland, where I eventually majored in Role Playing Games (and minored in playing Spades). That's also where I met Steve Kramer, who first joined my Champions game, then ran a wonderful Champions game that I joined, and, eventually married me.
"Soon after that, while trying to come up with stuff to put on a personal web page, I came up with the concept of Women in Gaming - an organization which has since outgrown me and is being run by Lisa Hartjes at RPG Times. I am fairly certain that was in 1993, as one of my early articles dealt with the challenges of pregnancy and gaming (both in-character pregnancies, and pregnancy of gamers). I have been (and still am, actually) trying to work out intergenerational gaming, as my daughters are now developing the attention span to add numbers, rules and dice to their gaming (they have been freeforming like champs for YEARS now... I really should write down more of the scenarios I overhear). So far, I can say with certainty that I do NOT want to run Champions for them - I am not comfortable encouraging my youngest to use violence to solve problems. (She can play super heroes all she wants, I just don't think it's appropriate for me to run it for her.)
"A couple of years ago, I lost my regular Saturday Night gaming group. I found a number of very good groups, but for various reasons I bailed out of each after only a few months. It was while I was whining about my gaming withdrawal to Jeffrey Holmes that I was first invited to sit in on one of the Institute's games. I'm thrilled to have been invited back, and look forward to playing with my friends here, old and new."