Phil Hirons

My name is Phil Hirons.

I'm a senior.

There's a junior running around.

I live in West Warwick, Rhode Island, which is a small mill town which was once rich and now poor.

The first time I heard about the game was when I saw the package box in this toy store.

I said, gee, that looks interesting.

And I read the blurb on the box and this is something the kids might like.

1976.

I don't think I ever went through that stage.

We started playing and the kids loved it, and the neighborhood kids loved it, and the grownups loved it, and it just kept blossoming from there.

I used to run games at the Jewish Community Center, had some kids who attended this private school.

Some of the kids from that school were in my classes at the JCC, but they wanted to continue to play and their schedules didn't mesh.

So they talked to the school and got the school to contact me and see if I would be willing to run a game there, which I did for 17 or 18 of the 20 years I was there.

So I was the chess instructor and the chess coach and also ran the D&D games.

It'll be 50 years come summer.

I will be 84 in March.

Sub-campaign, if you want to put it that way, seven years, counting both sections.

It's about as varied a mix as you could get.

He came in with his cowboy hat and leather jacket and this box of figures and these dungeons that he'd built.

Everything.