Creativity was stressed. We had to write a journal, and we had classes on... meditating I suppose is the closest thing, although it's not. Controlled daydreaming. Role-playing was part of it too. Brandon and I were in GATE, maybe Jack too. Some amount of acting, reading popular fiction. Lots of stuff that's you wouldn't think would be covered in a standard English/Social Studies class.

Anyway, 8th grade was when all five of my friends were going to the same school at the same time. We played a lot of stuff together, although no long term campaigns. By the time I go to 10th grade only Mike was left. Dennis transferred to a smaller high school with a better math program. Brandon as I've mentioned moved to Auburn, 40 miles or so North of Sacramento. Rigo moved to some other part of Sacramento. Jack moved I don't remember where.

So it was just Mike and I, perhaps that's why we bonded. Thinking back, I think that the only class I ever had with Mike was Freshman Physical Education in high school, and that only for one semester because he joined ROTC to get out of the PE requirements. Other than that we never had a class together, so it's amazing to me that we stayed friends.

There were other people in high school. Doug Palmer and Curtis were a grade behind. A couple of others, my memory is not that good. We played some RPGs but it wasn't that big a deal. Car Wars was popular for a while, easy to play during lunch. Mike, Doug and I joined the school chess team. We were all about the same ability. Our captain was pretty good. Doug second board, Mike third, me fourth. It was a messed up year, we only played half the matches, the other matches being forfeits by the other teams. We were Metro League champs, although chess is a rather informal activity in our high schools.

As I've mentioned in some other journal entry, in classes I saw the same set of 120 or so people out of a Freshman class of 450 or so. There's a weird relationship with your classmates. You see them every day, talk to them during and between classes. Do projects together. But other than that, you don't ever see the majority of them. I liked them and talked to them and did things at school with them, but only saw Mike and Doug and Curtis out of school.

We played a lot of games. BattleTech and Succession Wars. Lots of computer games on my Commodore 64. Anything multiplayer. Reach for the Stars, Lords of Conquest, MULE, and a few others that I don't remember. More Star Fleet Battles, Champions. Not wargames, or miniatures.

One of my bigger game projects was gaming the big war in Star Frontier's Knight Hawks game. It was the good guys against the Sathar. Space combat, moving units around trying to protect the space lanes. Gaming out the battles. That was fun. Succession Wars also took a couple of sessions to finish. We also tried Federation and Empire, the SFB strategic game. An hour or so a player turn. Big stacks of counters.

That's some of my gaming experiences when I was young.