[Shostak]

My excellent big brother bought OGRE through the mail after seeing an ad in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. After having hours of fun for only a couple of bucks on that gamble, we bought the Melee and Wizard microgames. After a couple of years, we picked up the basic boxed set of D&D, the one with the red dragon on the cover, and got a dungeon-delving group going with neighborhood friends who were already seasoned TFT gladiators. But I never liked D&D's magic system, and I thought Melee had more believable and intuitive combat, armor, etc., so we switched back to TFT as soon as ITL, AM, and AW became available. Nobody seemed to mind (except one parent who had shelled out for every single hardcover D&D book for her kids). We played TFT (in homebrewed settings, not Cidri) until I bought GURPS 1st ed. sometime around '86, but by then we were all scattering off for college.