I was old School before YOU were old school.......

 So, right.   Here is why I'm paraphrasing the wonderful words of the Tubes....Its not just that I started pretty much in 1975 with three little books that explicitly mentioned Balrogs (more on this later), Ents and Hobbits; it's not just that the only other guy I know personally that has played longer than me has a brown box that he bought from EGG on the basis of it being a chainmail expansion. Nor is it that I never needed an OSR clone* because I still own multiple copies of the original rules, and use them whenever I want to run D&D.  ...It's not even that basically, I've never liked 1E or 2E and firmly considered B/X to be kiddie sanitized marketing tools. 

Hell, it's not even relevant that I'm old enough to want to quote the Tubes on my Blog......

See, those things just mean that I'm an ancient opinionated grognard blowhard who is  ....well, opinionated, possibly undersocialized, certainly too damn sure of himself, and has been playing games since the internet really didn't exist unless you were a colossal technical geek, as well as a gaming geek -and being a gamer had nothing to do with the crude computer ported video games you played. 

Here is why I was OS before you were OS:  In the mid 1980's, back when ADD was all the rage, and the edition wars were about B?X vs ADD......

(and let me tell you, without the forums and blogs and websites, you had to work your ass off to be a divisive polarizing black-and-white-thinking shit-stirring partisan about editions.)

......my buddy and I decided that it would be really cool to run an old fashioned D&D game, using the three little books and some hunt and peck from the supplements.    And we did. For several years. We called it the Nostalgia game at first, but it was really really always the real D&D game to us.

We did this when D&D as a CONCEPT Was Barely Ten FrikkinYears Old ; Gary was still at TSR (abeit fighting with the Blumes and Lorraine Williams and on the way out).  TEN YEARS OLD

yes that's right.  Less than eight years after AD&D was on the Market, He and I were all nostalgic for the simpler retro days of D&D.  .......and that was more than 25 years ago. One quarter of a century ago we were consumed by the desire for a simpler ruleset that was less than a decade old.  We were loons. 

 He is currently posting his campaign stuff on his blog, including (so far) the campaign intro and guidelines, and the surprisingly effective set of house rules for playing my unselfconsciously gonzo OD&D rules approved BALROG. Named Nesbitt.  Read here.  I so command it.

That children, is why I Was a Punk before You Were a Punk.

*Note that I still buy them , run them and play them; and as we know, shill willingly for Swords and Wizardry. That is because I am A Hopeless Case. And they are Excellent rules.  And, well...hopeless case.  Me.  Y'know.