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When school started up, he decided to find a group of his own. That first day, he tracked his friends down one by one, pitching them on the idea of a weekly role-playing game. He cornered Bob White. Then Elizabeth Froebel, Chuck Bueche, Rene Hans, and Zabalaoui. One by one, they said yes, although few had any idea what the game Richard was chattering about entailed. But, like Richard, they were a bit geeky and they lived close enough to get to his house easily and quickly. They agreed to come over Friday, four days away.

Amped, Richard paced around the house on Friday evening. Word spread throughout the school, and his small gaming group was now closer to a dozen. He’d spent the week huddled over his notebook paper, mapping his fantastical world. His mother, in particular, had loved the idea, and she prepared dinner and snacks. As the gamers arrived, Richard led them back to the formal dining room table, which the family rarely used.

It seated eight—large enough for everyone to stretch out and eat while Richard wove a fantastic story. Hours passed, and the group continued playing, laughing, and talking, oblivious to the dawn sun peaking through the curtains and unaware of their heavy eyes.

Monday morning, the weekend gamers found each other before the school day began, anxious to relive their weekend game and plan the next one. Throughout the day, they’d see each other in the hallways, classes, and at lunchtime, and conversation turned to the game. Other friends overheard, and poked their noses in, asking questions. Richard preached the game’s virtues, as did the others.

The next Friday, several more gamers showed up. The week after, another batch. Before the end of the first month of school, two games were underway —one in the formal dining room and one in the family’s living room.

Word continued to spread throughout the school, first to the science and math geeks, and then, oddly enough, to other social cliques. Throughout the day, people would wander up to Richard and ask if they could spend the weekend with him, and he was more than happy to have them. By winter, games were being played throughout the house, eventually forcing Helen out of her garage art studio. In its place, she set up two large ping-pong tables, minus their nets, to accommodate more gamers.

The Garriott home became ground zero for weekend gaming. Adventures would stretch into early Saturday mornings, and after brief rest periods for food and catnaps, they’d slowly pick up again in the afternoon. With so many players, the weekend gaming sessions took on a diverse personality. What started as a small group of hard-core geeks turned into a social cornucopia. It caught the attention of others as well. By early 1978, parents started showing up with their kids.

The front porch became the recreation area for smokers and drinkers. The group garnered enough attention that the notoriously conservative Boy Scouts asked Richard’s eclectic group to become part of their organization.

The games quickly gained Richard a new reputation. He’d never been unpopular, but he didn’t participate much in school activities outside the science fair. Athletics didn’t much interest him, and social clubs weren’t really his bag. He was one of the ordinary students that roamed the Clear Creek hallways, desperately trying to get through the day so he could go on to more interesting events.

The weekend games changed that. He was Lord British now. The stars of the weekend games were the Dungeon Masters, the storytellers who devised the adventures. The best game leaders could transport a room full of players sitting in a living room in Houston back in time to an ancient place, where anything was possible. The only limitation on play was the imagination of the players, and these players, in particular, had grown up in a place where the impossible was already routine.

Richard didn’t excel as a DM, but he wasn’t concerned. Every Friday, he’d take his spot at the formal dining table, ready to follow Bueche or White’s lead, his mind starting to drift to the computer. He’d already started writing computer games at school, and he began basing those on the stories and characters that developed in these weekend games. They might have been simple single-player computer games, but they carried the echoes of his friends and his own community from the very beginning. It was the interaction of players that had made his D&D games so powerful, and he wanted to replicate that somehow.

In that desire, Richard had hit on an essential truth: Even if he spent long hours alone in front of his computer writing code, the games he was starting to create were essentially social in nature, as were most games. He’d spent most of his life in a family and a wider community of friends and neighbors who supported each other in the craziest projects they could come up with.

His weekend role-playing games and the computer games he based on them created their own tight communities. As he grew older and his games touched hundreds of thousands instead of just dozens of people, those communities would be replicated on a larger scale.

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