What got you started in gaming?

[Dominique]

I post this thread over on the Blackwyrm boards http://www.blackwyrm.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=54, and figured why not post it here also.

[ghost-angel]

My Dad .. who said "You should try this Dungeons and Dragons thing, I bet you'd like it." to which I said "I don't think so." mostly because do any nine years olds listen to their dads? So he got me the Red Box Basic Set anyway. never looked back.

Though .. I almost quite around '95 as I got completely fed up with both AD&D2E and WhiteWolf ... when someone handed me the BBB, I was sold in two minutes when I reached the PointBased concept, classes and levels be gone!!

So... thanks Dad.

[BigJackBrass]

For me it was a family boardgame, Treasure of the Pharaohs, which seems to be one of those games from the 1970's we've all forgotten about. The premise was simply that each player took the role of an archaeologist (represented by a moulded figurine whose huge nose seemed to be holding up his pith helmet) and had to penetrate the pyramid to retrieve the golden deathmask before the other players. Easy, except there were loads of deathtraps; and because this was a 3-D game the traps and the pyramids were working models, with pivoting pitfalls, spinning sarcophagi and so on.

From there it was the smallest of leaps to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and the world of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, then like many people a friend and I tried the D&D basic set. It didn't take long, even at that age, to realise that D&D was limited and a bit illogical, but it was very enjoyable nonetheless so we looked for other RPGs (which were almost impossible to find in our town back then).

[input.jack]

Being newly-minted 7th graders, my two best friends and I saw a store called "Metal Men" in Oklahoma City, and we decided to see what it was about. It was the first time Id seen miniatures, but Ive always been fascinated by tiny little people (toys and so on), so I liked the idea.

We found that there were the expected Napoleonic soldiers and the like, but we also found some Elves and Frog-men, and I asked the guy behind the counter what it was all about.

At the time I thought he looked odd; he was heavy-set, with long shaggy hair and a dark beard, wearing an old black t-shirt, and I thought "How could someone become such a strange creature?"

He informed us that the fantasy figures were mostly used for a new game called "Dungeons and Dragons".

I heard the name and was hooked.

I bought a set (a small white box, containing three tan-colored booklets and some -really- bad artwork), and we went to my house to try to figure out how to play. My friend Miles read the rules (he was better at game rules than Jimmy and I were), and we discovered RPG's together.

We gamed all through Jr. High and High School :D

That first foray into "Metal Men" was in 1976.

Now its 2005, and =IM= a heavyset guy with long shaggy hair and a dark beard, wearing an old black t-shirt......

Weird, huh?

[ghost-angel]

I should ammend ... my first real touch of Gaming was when my Dad taught (attempted rather) me several Avalon Hill games.. for any who played the original and felt confused as an adult - try it at age six.

Battle Of The Buldge is now firmly entrenched in my psyche as a mind numbingly painful experience .. but I won once dammit!!!!

And backgammon. I love that game so. Best board game ever.

[Barton]

Avalon Hill games (Midway) as a in High School. Then a relation of mine worked for Tactical Studies Rules (yes early TSR) showed us D&D (1978). I was hooked. My brother and I played D&D for many hours, I was the GM of course. Then in graduate school a friend GMed a supers game with 2nd ed. Champions. I was somewhat hooked. But real life got in the way, but I got back into this a big way four years ago. Now I am totally hooked, and now GM Hero for a group and at GenCon Indy, CODCON, and RockCon. It is a great hobby, and it helps recharge my creative batteries.

[Cancer]

We got started in gaming with a copy of AH's Blitzkrieg on Christmas morning, 1967, I believe. (I might be a year off; it could have been 1968. It was definitely Christmas morning, though!)

I did some PBM stuff (Nuclear Destruction from Flying Buffalo) starting fall 1974 while in college, though I ended up giving that up 4-5 years later, after I went to grad school.

We started RPGs in June 1975; a high school friend came back on leave from the Army and gave us a fast, rough intro to D&D Classic (the brown faux-wood box). A few months later, an article in ... whatever the precursor to Dragon was ... suggested the game-world concept rather than merely dungeon-crawling. And from there we really took off. I took a long break in grad school (having a fire in my apartment that consumed my gaming stuff sort of enforced that ... I still think wistfully about old Foulstink Dungeon sometimes) but got back into it later.

[Captain Obvious]

I saw some kids at school with the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, and after browsing through them a little, I had to learn more. I ended up getting the red box (caught in the odd paradox that Advanced D&D was not the next step up from D&D, but was a totally different game). Later, I got my own AD&D books, and was avidly against any other RPG for years.

Then, one of my friends got me Star Frontiers, and I became avidly against any non-TSR RPG for a few more years. We played Boot Hill a lot too at that time, and I really wanted to play Gamma World, but never got around to it.

Later, we ended up branching out into other games...The Arcanum, Warhammer FRP, Marvel Super Heroes...a lot of other stuff. Eventually, I picked up a copy of Champions one of my friends had, and was browsing through it, and decided it looked pretty cool. I made a character and insisted we run a quick demo combat, where I promptly got my *** handed to me. But the flexibility stuck with me. Weeks later, I had to go get my own copy.

Later, after the BBB came out, I began to think of myself less as a roleplayer, and more as a Hero gamer. I've played a few other games since then, but nothing scratches my itch like Hero.

[Blue]

Mythology. I had a teacher that taught Greek Mythology in 4th grade and she'd give everyone a page to color in colored pencil while she told a myth.

Cut to 5th grade. I've had to move to a new school and there's this guy (who was a bit of a punk) who had the Monster Manual. Right there on the cover: Centaur, Medusa, etc! I had to have a copy.

Ironic then that my first purchase would be Gamma World. It seemed that all the people I played with already had the hard-backed books for D&D and several wanted to play GW, so I was talked into it. Great game. Made me popular with the geek set for a while.

[McCoy]

An article in Psychology Today. It described role playing games as a way of playing With others without playing Against them. After family bridge games that had almost led to pistols at dawn, that sounded intrigueing.

[Edsel]

My first mature game was Avalon Hill's Tactics II, a friend introduced it to me when I was in 3rd grade (I am now 43 so you can do the math). From there things proceeded to Luftwaffe and Panzer Blitz and when this new thing "D&D" showed up we had to give that a try as well.

[JohnTaber]

In the 6th grade (i.e. 1978) I heard some people talking about D&D in school. I asked my Mom about it and she got a copy of it for my brother and I. We both loved it.

Started with Champions in 1981 when one of my gaming friends said his older brother played it and like it. When I saw the point based system where you could BUILD the character you wanted to play I was enthralled. Been a Hero fanatic ever since... ;)

You can read all the gory details here (http://www.usandacat.com/herohq/gameresume.htm). :D

[Blue]

My first mature game was Avalon Hill's Tactics II, a friend introduced it to me when I was in 3rd grade (I am now 43 so you can do the math). From there things proceeded to Luftwaffe and Panzer Blitz and when this new thing "D&D" showed up we had to give that a try as well.
I remember Tactics II. I'm not a big proponent of boardgames but I liked this one. The reason: I always seemed to beat my brother and his friend (who owned the game). It made no logical sense. I was just kind of idiot savant at it.

Today I don't even remember how the game went.

[concord]

I was a fan of sci-fi literature and had just gotten hooked on fantasy literature... Lord of the Rings and Elric of Melnibone... I was also into model rockets, cars and planes... went to the hobby store to look at some models... saw these interesting looking boxes from companies called SPI, Avalon Hill, TSR and GDW... asked about them... the guy working at the store asked if I had read LoTR... I said yep and he pointed at D&D and said that it was a game that let you play in a world like LoTR... he pointed at this little black box with a red line and the word Traveller on it and said that allows you to do the same thing for sci-fi... I walked out with a little white box and a little black box... and so it began... :)

[Duke Bushido]

The guy on the news told me it was evil and would lead to cults, ritual killings, anarchy, and occasional minotaurs.

Instant sell!

[Vanguard00]

Back in sixth grade or so (1980-ish) my friends sold me on the idea of D&D Basic based solely on the tie-in to our favorite books (at the time), Lord of the Rings. They still called 'em 'hobbits' back then, too, and not Halflings, and every character was a complete and utter rip-off of some book or movie character. As our literary horizons expanded in the sci-fi/fantasy world, so too did our gaming tastes. Gamma World, Star Frontiers, various Steve Jackson games...

It was but a small jump for me to cross over into Champions because, hey, I like comics, and I get to be a superhero!

The rest, as they say, is history.

[sinanju]

I arrived at the College of William & Mary in Virginia in the fall of 1977. A couple of days later, the college held "interest night", when all the clubs at the college manned tables in the student union building for freshmen to sign up if they were interested. I made a beeline for the Science Fiction Club table.

Which is where I discovered one guy sitting there, rolling strangely shaped dice and cackling over the results (he was playing out some off-camera action in a D&D game he ran). He and the other members told me all about this thing called "role playing" and Dungeons & Dragons. I didn't quite grasp all the details, but I was instantly hooked. I hung with them until the event closed down, then followed them back to the GM's dorm room where I rolled up my very first RPG character ever and promptly got slaughtered by a ninja.

"What's your armor class?"
Armor class? I need armor?
"What weapons do you have?"
Uh...I hit him with a chair? I need weapons?

Nonetheless, I was hooked. The idea of being able to PARTICIPATE in the sorts of amazing adventures I'd only ever read about before was just too cool for words. I kept playing with three of the core members of that group all thru college, and then right up until 1991, when I moved from Virginia to Oregon (and I still drop in to see them when I fly back to visit family).

[Lord Mhoram]

For me it was the summer between 5th and 6th grades. A good friend of mine who was gone for a year moved back from Kansas with this new game - D&D. I started playing with him, his older brother, and his older brother's friend. I remember B-1 then B-2
My first go at GMing with the first Ed of Gamma World when it came out.

We then moved on to the hardcovers.

Pretty much stayed a TSR zombie until I found Champions in 1985 at the University of Oregon.

[tkdguy]

I used to enjoy reading about Mythology as a kid. Of course, I got into the anime and ninja shows in the 70s. Then I became a fan of the Arthurian Legends. Still, I wanted something more... fantastic. Then I heard about Tolkiens works and suddenly had a new obsession.

Then a friend told me about this game called Dungeons and Dragons. I was confused at first, but after looking trying out a game or two, I was hooked. I finally had a venue to tell all the stories I wanted to tell. I made a few mistakes because I bought a Judges Guild module before buying the rulebook. I thought "hp" stood for horsepower, rather than hit points. My friend had a good laugh at my expense.

[Nolgroth]

Funny how so many got started around the 6th grade level. That was me too. I had just moved to a new school and the person who was to become my best friend invited me to the school library to play Dungeons and Dragons. I was handed a mage character and was instantly hooked, even though I was really hesitant to actually waste any spells once they told me I could only use a certain number of them before they were gone. A wizard with a dagger doth not a dangerous foe make.

From there I bought my own copy of the Dungeons and Dragons basic set. It was updated with a really cool red dragon on the cover of the box. Eventually I would purchase almost every book I could get my hands on for the next two decades. Branched out into Shadowrun and then World of Darkness stuff (though I instantly hated the moody goth atmosphere of the WoD - rules were fun though) and eventually into HERO 4th edition and the concurrent Fantasy HERO rules. I stayed with HERO system and HERO games from then on, only diverting once and while to pick up something interesting from somebody else. Tried d20, but didn't like it all that well.

The coolest part about the whole thing is that my parents supported my hobby, even though they were under a lot of peer pressure to keep me from "Satan's Work." My parents actually took the time and effort to see what it was and wasn't doing for/to me and elected to just not interfere. I love 'em to death for that.

[starblaze]

Good for you, my Dad hated it.

But anyway, my first experience was back when I was 14 years old and my brother Roger brought the game home from college. It was the big red box set with the red dragon on the cover. I don't remember too much about it except that I was playing a hobbit who got killed when a giant rat bit his head off.

After that my other brother Jim, my friend Mike and I played the game every chance we could get. I picked up the white box set and then eventually got the AD&D stuff after getting Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry and the first Dieties and Demigods. Then I played Boot Hill and Gamma World (first edition is still the best IMO).

Then when I graduated High School and went to college I picked up a copy of Villians and Vigilantes. Then some time after that I picked up first edition Champions and was hooked. Rarely played V&V after that.

That went on for awhile until I sort of got religion and was led to believe that RPG's were of the devil and didn't play for about 8 years. Eventually I got away from all that and one day while hanging out at Waldenbooks I found a copy of the BBB and got back in the saddle.

[Phil]

Found a little blue book in my local library, titled "What is Dungeons and Dragons" back in 1985. Read it and was totally fascinated. Remembered I'd heard a couple of kids at school talking about this D&D thing, introduced myself to them and never looked back. Far as I know they stopped gaming years ago, but I'm keeping the flag flying for all of us :D

[Spence]

Got trapped by a historical war gaming group at a shop called "The Bunker" in Texas. After an interesting time of Grenadiers, Knights and blowing up Sherman's someone said, "Hey? What's this new thing called D&D about?"

And the rest is history :D

[Mad_Ernie]

My best friend in 8th grade and I were both new to the Jr high school we attended and he was very much into games. We started with SPI's War of the Ring and some Avalon Hill games he had. Then he came across H.G. Wells book "Little Wars", so we got a bunch of little army men and started playing war on his bedroom floor. By 9th grade, it was 1979 and D&D was coming in-vogue. We were both Hobbit and LotR book fans, so he suggested we try this new game. He DM'd and I played 3 characters simultaneously. That was the basic game. Later on he got the 1st edition AD&D book, and several of our mutual friends in high school got into it. Soon after that came Champions for me on April Fool's Day, 1982. The rest, as they say, is history.

:cool:

[Ghost Archer]

I was working at a library during my junior year in high school, that was 1971, when the librarian gave me Blitzkrieg from Avalon Hill. I still have the game in the closet along with another 150 or so of its offspring. RPGs seemed a natural next thing to get into.

[Samuraiko]

Started playing coz it looked neat, and anything that questionable being played by a group of kids going to a private Lutheran school ALWAYS sounds like a good idea!

Also kept playing coz I got to spend time with boys and my mom didn't complain... much.

Later kept playing because I enjoyed my characters and telling stories... then became a GM while in college and found out I really was good at it.

Met several friends (and several boyfriends, plus my husband) through gaming. Learned some interesting hobbies, developed unusual interests, discovered scads of useless trivia, and generally had a great time.

Wouldn't trade it for anything.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko

[bigdamnhero]

Wow, feelin' all nostalgic now. Hadn't thought about Boot Hill in decades... :D

Yup, I started in 5th grade too. My best friend's older brother played some new game called D&D, so we "borrowed" his books and gave it a whirl. (Thank god he didn't smoke or steal cars or jump off buildings!) Munchkiniest damn games you ever played, we really had no idea what the hell we were doing, but we had a total blast. My first purchase was Chainmail (still have it) followed by the original 4 paperback supplements. (IIRC wasn't #4 called "Gods, Demigods & Heroes", not "Deities & Demigods" at that time?) Maybe a year later they started putting out the AD&D hardbacks and there went all my allowance money for the next several years.

Early favorites were AD&D, Top Secret & Traveller, followed by Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha. But really I'd play damn near anything. Added wargaming to the mix in Junior High, starting with Tactics II. :)

Got to college in the early-mid 80s and was trying to design my own RPG system because none of the existing systems would let me do what I wanted to do. Then a buddy suggested I try something called Fantasy Hero because it sounded like what I was trying to do (only done much better!).

So it's been roughly 2 decades since I could look at another gaming book without thinking how cool it would be if converted to Hero. :D


bigdamnhero
"I've never been this near to a woman before. It makes me want to do something. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is I want to do a lot of it!"

[stu2000]

When I was in 5th grade, there was a newspaper article about D&D (about how it was a fun new kind of game, oddly enough.) My mom pointed it out to me, and we scoured the rural SC countryside till we found a train store that had it. I periodically entertained my friends with it through middle school. But in high school, we moved to Denver, and man--they had a D&D club at my high school. That was the best! The Arduin books were out, and there were whole shops full of that stuff! we played Traveller and Car Wars and all kinds of things. It was nuts. In a lot of ways, gaming to me is still about that crazy creative energy from way back then.

[geekvoid]

My big sister. Since she wouldn't let me touch her red boxed set and books, I had to go and..."borrow" them when she wasn't paying attention so my friends and I could play. 20 plus years later, I don't have to steal her books anymore. Tho, as an underpaid EMT in NYC, I DO have to borrow money from her from time to time...

[Dr. Anomaly]

I started reading adult-level SF & fantasy when I was 10. ("Adult" level meaning things like Andre Norton's Star Rangers, Zero Stone, Crystal Gryphon, and so on.) I got started reading them then -- I had a good enough reading and comprehension at that age to be able to do so, fortunately -- because of my father. He got tired of me asking about the pictures on the covers of the novels he was reading and one day just closed the book, handed it to me, and said "Here. Why don't you find out for yourself?"

Not long thereafter, I saw the pinkish (was supposed to be red, but some of those early print runs...) boxed set of Basic Dungeons & Dragons at Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby. Reading the box made it sound like instead of just getting to read fantasy novels, I'd get to be in them, so I decided to give it a try.

The rest, as they say, is history... ;)

[SatinKitty]

I had my Big Epiphany when I read Lord of the Rings and knew I was One Of YOU. Can't remember when, but it must've been high school. My thing was acting and I would someday be a roleplayer, not a numbers cruncher. After that I hung with the High School D&D club, but did not play. I did take book recommendations from them such as "Thomas Covenant". One of the players was a big "Lady Killer" in school and when he visited other schools and I spent as much time with him as possible, but he was not that interested in women. No, he wasn't Gay (I don't think). My boyfriend in High School was another member of the club.

When I got to college I decided I wanted to learn to play, and began telling everyone I liked "Sword and Sorcery" stories like LotR and wanted to learn to play. By the time I had been at college two weeks, everyone firmly believed I was a practicing Satanist and Witch who REALLY REALLY had powers. The fact that I was elected to play the Witch on the School Band's Wizard of Oz Homecoming Float didn't help, either. Someone even once said to his buddies I had looked at him funny and he had fallen down. It would be silly except everyone REALLY believed it. I kept this rep throughout my four years and beyond. You figure it out.

In 1980 or 81, one of the Professors who ran D&D games for children introduced me to his son who taught me AD&D as well as a seventeen-year-old ultimate killer DM could. I played with him for three years never knowing how really bad he was. His adventures lasted about two minutes each. I also dated him for three years (blush). :o

It was OddHat who introduced me to Hero in 1988. I had had trouble the year before with a group of very sexist, abusive men and it was fun to not argue with such men, but to blow them away. As I said, I mostly am into the role-playing and stories behind characters. OddHat and I have been very happy ever since. :)

[Matt Frisbee]

I was the classic mythology buff in grade school and had actually had a go at Beowulf in the fifth grade, but I was a youngster then and my interests varied widely back then. In the seventh grade, our English class tackled The Hobbit and I asked the teacher if there was any more. Naturally, she pointed me at Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I ate the stuff up.

That year was also the time my oldest brother, who was working as a civilian contractor in the military, introduced by to the classic wargame where the Romans take on the Gauls (the name escapes me), but we played that one at least five times on the dining room table. He introduced me to his other wargaming buddies and although I sucked at the games, at least nobody kicked me out of the group. When you're 13, war seems pretty cool, right?

So, I was properly primed when I ran across gamers in my home town who were kicking the tires of AD&D. That summer, I detassled corn to get enough money together to buy the three tomes of the system, and by the time junior high was over, I knew at least 20 gamers from around the area. We also had a really good game store in town which made it even easier to get completely addicted while being exposed to multiple game systems.

Back in the early 80's, being a gaming geek got me ostracized during high school (okay, having a lack of social graces as well as being a gaming geek got me outcast -- whatever), which was just fine by me since it gave me more time to game and incentive not to hang around school any longer than necessary.

My high school experience was marking time until the weekends so I could take a sleeping bag and my gaming stuff over to my friend Jason's house where we and a half-dozen other hard-cores would game our brains out in all night sessions in his basement. :)

Matt "Wishing-I-could-do-it-all-over-again" Frisbee

[Chuk]

An article in Psychology Today. It described role playing games as a way of playing With others without playing Against them.

I'm pretty sure I read that article, although I think I might have already been playing. A friend (who I'm actually meeting up with in about an hour and a half) played with some older friends of his family, then tried to describe the game to me. This was probably 1980, maybe early 1981. We kind of tried to make our own game (which ended up be more like a board game with multiple boards and very simple rules). I also saw the ads on the backs of comics, and one day (after having moved to a new school in a new town), a son of my parents' friends ran me through part of the Village of Hommlet AD&D module. Soon I got the Basic Set (only because when I bought Gamma World, the box was empty :-( ), and the rest is history.

It was less than a year later that I started with 2nd edition Champions (first borrowing a friends, then buying my own copy of 3rd (plus Champions II and III).) Point based vs. levels and classes all the way.

[bigdamnhero]

only because when I bought Gamma World, the box was empty :-(
Empty box? :eek: Dude, I would still be in therapy. :D


bigdamnhero
"Raise the defensive shields!"
"An excellent idea sir but with just two minor drawbacks. One, we don't have any defensive shields, and two, we don't have any defensive shields. I know that is technically one reason but it was so glaring that it is worth mentioning twice."

[Tempuswolf]

I bought a copy of the AD&D Monster Manual not knowing there was a game in '78. There had been three monster catalogues, children's books, (I wish I could remember the titles; I can remember the layout: three monsters per page with a drawing and description) at the public library that I habitually checked out; I thought this was something along those lines. The stat blocks seemed odd. My auxillary parents (the parents of the friend I spent so much time with, I eventually had a regular spot at the dinner table) bought a boxed set of D&D for my friend and his brother and there was no turning back.

[Mentor]

About 1978. I was a military wargamer in high school and my first year of college I joined something called the gaming society. At the same time, one of my drinking buddies was also the brother of one of the founders of the local Sci Fi fan group and was able to get play test copies of Steve jackson games which were just being released in Austin. My buddy mentioned that he played in a game call Dungeons and Dragons and we should try out one day.

I went to school the next week and in a political science class I saw the class Marxist with the rule booklet to the SJ game Melee, which which he was considering for some revisions for his D&D campaign and even though I was the class conservative, I asked him about. Since we were both getting degrees in Poli Sci, we had several classes together, so we weren't total strangers. The department was really scratching their heads to find out that I went over to his and his wife's house twice a week to game, given our diametrically opposed political views. It really worked out well as he was always willing to play the Soviets against my Americans in military wargames, too.:D

[memorax300]

I got started on gaming through a D&D club in my high school. Before that I had no idea what an rpg was.

[pinecone]

I got into gaming via Stellar conquest...I was a sci-fi and fantasy reader as well as into military history, so when I saw an advert for a sci-fi war game in the back of Boy's life (the boy scout magazine/journal) I was going Shazam!...After buying the game (and playing like 75 solo games) I got a flyer to sugscribe to a game mag published by metagamimg (the space gamer) and in issue 3 there was an advert for a weird little game called D&D....I bought it and a year or two later I spotted someone carrying a copy. Up till then I thought I was the only one! Lo these many years later I am still a hard core gamer...and I owe it all to the boy scouts...:)

[st barbara]

I was at the World Science Fiction Convention in 1975 when one of the visiting Americans mentioned "Dungeons & Dragons" to us Aussies. One of the locals here in Sydney got hold of a copy of a copy of the original published rules and we started playing (I remember that my characters died a lot in the early games !). Then a bookshop in Sydney which specialised in Military books ("Napoleons") got in some copies of the original set of 4 books ("Greyhawk" was available at that time, but none of the other supliments). I bought one and a couple of weeks later opened one of the earliest RPG's in Sydney. Some years later I discovered the old game "Super Hero 44" and frm there I moved to the second edition (I think it was) of "Champions" which I ran for a while before giving up gaming for a long time. Then I met another friend who ran a "Vampire" campaign for a while, which led to meeting other people, one of whom was running a (modified) version of "Champions". I created "St Barbara", my cute little Danish energy projector ,and the rest isd history !

[KA.]

For me it was the desire to find people that would bring me closer to Satanism.
This was in the late 70's, so you couldn't just go on the internet or look in the phonebook under Church of Satan.
Of course I realized that it was only a game, but I was sure that it would put me in touch with people who knew about real magic.
Soon I was part of a coven and we were sacrificing our neighbors' children in exchange for dark powers.
Many of my friends committed suicide when their characters died, and most of the rest of them ended up murdering their parents in ritual bloodlettings.
But the rest of us are still working hard to bring about Satan's reign on Earth.
:rockon:











What?




Sorry, feeling a bit bitter.
Just the other night I was watching CourtTV and Catherine Crier was doing a report on the murder of Pamela Vitale, wife of Daniel Horowitz.
http://www.courttv.com/news/2005/1022/horowitz_ap.html
The suspect is a 16-year old boy, who sounds pretty screwed up. So, of course, they had some idiot on who had written a book about Teens, Satanism, and Dungeons and Dragons.
(This is not mentioned in the story above, but I watched it last night.)
Now I don't know if there is any evidence that this kid even played D&D, but that doesn't matter.
It is time to heat the tar and gather the feathers and take the torch to gamers everywhere.
Will this crap ever end?


KA.

[Funksaw]

I stared playing in 2000. I was at a really rough point in my life for a while, having been rode out on a rail from a 3rd rate college that decided to take the athlete's word over mine, and I needed a fantasy escape, where problems were simple, solved with violence, and good usually won over evil.

So I became hooked on... professional wrestling.

I started really getting into it. Followed the career of Mick Foley, watched every week... even ordered the PPVs.

And I read the news websites. Then I heard something about White Wolf suing the character Gangrel over trademarks or something. I download the quickstart to see what exactly a "gangrel" was, and I liked what I saw - started playing online.

[TheRavenIs]

I started with the little brown books for D&D in the late 70's. It was a friend of a friend that got me started. Then I went to UK in 1980, and was playing alot of games. Space Opera, Traveler, V&V, D&D, then I found Champions at the local gaming store.
I loved that in Champions you could create a Character. I loved that, brought the game back home with me that Thanksgiving and got my gaming friends at home to try it and well....from that point all my friends became just as bad for wanting to play Champions over any other type we played. We still played alot of games, but Champions was the main game.
Had a falling out with most of my friends that gamed. Started a smaller group. Had more fun. Got back with my old gaming buddies and I fought to only play what had become Hero System.
Now I play with a group that plays only d20 and Hero. Most of them owe me in an indirect way of getting them into gaming, as I was the one that got the people that got them into it started, So I am the old man with the shaggy white beard, dark clothes, strange sence of humor, that even after being out of gaming for three years until this past April, that they all still ask about things Hero.
I love that, except being the old man. Even when three of the other six are in their 40's as well.

[Lamrok]

Like a lot of other folks on the boards, back in the 70's I played wargames. My wargaming pursuits were all solo, alas, as there was never anyone around to play with (except my brother who wanted nothing to do with any games or sports.) So, at the age of about 14, I was reading "Strategy and Tactics" and saw a mention of "Dungeons and Dragons" in their games ratings in the back. It seemed intriguing - unlike any of the Civil War and WWII games I was obsessing over. Then, a bit later, I was in a hobby store with my grandmother, and saw the boxed Basic Set on the shelf. She bought it for me. I took it home, read through it, poked around at making my own dungeon and rolled up a few characters. But, since there was no one around to play with, it didn't go too far just then.

A year or so later, I was talking on the phone to a friend, and for some reason, it came up in the conversation. I told him it wasn't something he'd be interested in - for some reason I clearly remember that moment - but that just got his curiousity fired up. We got a few other friends together (I had just gotten my driver's license - at age 15) and played at another friend's house (this other friend was actually Bozimus/Aglar who used to post quite a bit here on the boards.) And, that was that. There have been quite a few twists and turns over the years, but that first session, in which I massacred the whole party with a bunch of giant spiders, was the beginning of a long association with these types of games.

[Eoywin]

I started gaming about 10 years ago when I was first in college. I started with online gaming. I then started playing table top D&D.

Soon after I got sucked into the local larp group and I did that for 2 years, until out of character crappiness got in the way.

I haven't gamed for a couple of years now beyond some really sparadotic online gaming... so I'm really excited to be playing in a game again.

[Enforcer84]

Aaron DeGlanville and Alex Ramsey taught me how to play D&D in the sixth grade. It was a downhill spiral from there.

[bblackmoor]

A girl that I fancied (Jade Bauer, she of the leg warmers and octagonal glasses) played in the D&D club at my junior high school (later to be renamed a "middle school"). I never got anywhere with Jade, but I've been roleplaying ever since. That was... 1981 or 1982, I believe.

[bblackmoor]

Will this [blaming D&D for antisocial or violent behavior] crap ever end?

Among a certain subculture, no. But fortunately, authorities and reasonably-sane people don't take it seriously anymore.

[Arac-4105]

My first taste was the ol' Basic D&D boxed set, my brother bought it for me one year at Christmas or something. He'd even inked the dice for me. I read and re-read the rules over and over. Never played the darn thing, but had fun reading it.

What really got me going, though, was the James Bond RPG by Victory Games. Just before school let out for the summer, students were given a choice of watching a movie in the school auditorium or sitting quietly in the art room. I had the game with me in the art room and a couple friends were interested, so we played the little "choose your own adventure" in the back of the rulebook. A good time was had.

My first encounter with Hero and Champs was in 1988; I was at college and somebody I'd met at the local game convention invited me to his place to work up characters for a campaign he had in mind. I got hooked quickly, and that led to my lousy grades and the small collection of RPGs I have today.

[Super Squirrel]

I can't believe I never answered this...

I was at KBToys and they had a bargain bin with one of the expert D&D Rules. I had been debating between some old TMNT comics and the box and ended up getting the box even though it wasn't the basic rules.

It was kind of hard to follow, not knowing the basic rules but it got me interested enough that later I found a place that sold the basic rules. I picked them up. I didn't have anyone to RP with until the 7th grade. Adam Bowker decided to run a campaign with us. The game lasted about three sessions but the most memorable moment game from the third game. We came to a broken rope bridge crossing an underground river. We tossed a grapple to catch one corner of the bridge and we improved and used some rope tied to a pick to get other other corner. Afterwards, Adam commented how he wondered how we were going to get across.

I realized that this game was not your normal game. And I was truly hooked to Role Playing from then on out.

So Endeth Part 1

[MisterBaldy]

My best friend at the time Alan Chiras. He and I got into the hobby as board wargamers around the same time, in 1975 with the old Avalon Hill game Tactics II. We played many different games through the years.

I got into roleplaying around 1978, with the old D&D (white box) and Traveller, when I went to Origins '78 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was there that I met a long time aquaintance John Terra and Pat Flory. I also got involved in playtesting for SPI around then (which Pat Flory got the ball rolling on), and Alan Chiras and I worked pretty close (over the phone anyway) with Steven R. Donaldson, Redmond Simeonson and Jim Dunnigan on the Cityfight project...amongst other things. I also did some work playtesting stuff for TSR.

I pretty much got out of board wargaming in 1991-92, and have been pretty much an primarily RPGer since 1983.

I am looking to get back into board wargaming...but RPGs are my true gaming passion.

[mraley]

My first term at Auburn University. I was determined to make some friends in college (never really had any in high school), so I introduced myself to a barefoot girl in a long skirt who was sitting in the hallway outside my Psychology classroom writing a letter on parchment paper. Somehow the conversation progressed to LOTR and then D&D. (I couldn't tell if she was a classmate or the class project!) She introduced me to the people she gamed with, and that was it. Twenty-eight years later I'm on my second husband, fifth or sixth gaming group, third profession and who knows which system, but I still game with the fellow who DM'd my very first D&D session. And the crazy girl from Psych class is still my closest friend.

[Gummibear]

Among a certain subculture, no. But fortunately, authorities and reasonably-sane people don't take it seriously anymore.

Besides we have new and better things to blame.
Black trenchcoats
Internet
Video games(all of them, not just the violent ones)
:P

[bblackmoor]

Twenty-eight years later I'm on my second husband, fifth or sixth gaming group, third profession and who knows which system, but I still game with the fellow who DM'd my very first D&D session. And the crazy girl from Psych class is still my closest friend.

That's really cool. I do still know one of the people I started playing D&D with all those years ago, but we move in different circles and I only speak to him once or twice a decade.

[Lord Mhoram]

Twenty-eight years later I'm on my second husband, fifth or sixth gaming group, third profession and who knows which system, but I still game with the fellow who DM'd my very first D&D session. And the crazy girl from Psych class is still my closest friend.

Nifty.

I lost touch my my original game crowd a few years after high school - (we'd started gaming together in elementry and Jr High). But the group I met in college (21 years ago) I still hang around with - one of my early champs GMs is in my group right now (after him being missing for almost a decade); my wife who was my second Champions GM (still married and gaming after nearly two decades).

[Troll]

Read Lord of the Rings and bought the SPI wargame based on it. About that same time Metagaming came out with Melee and Wizard which was soon followed by The Fantasy Trip. My buddy and I pick that up and a few Mirco Quests, Death Test, Grail Quest, etc. and I was hooked. Played a bunch of TFT in high school and once I got to college I tried DnD, which I never enjoyed, Call of Cthulhu, V&V, and a new super role playing game called Champions. Been gaming ever since.

[Thag13]

Read Lord of the Rings and bought the SPI wargame based on it. About that same time Metagaming came out with Melee and Wizard which was soon followed by The Fantasy Trip. My buddy and I pick that up and a few Mirco Quests, Death Test, Grail Quest, etc. and I was hooked. Played a bunch of TFT in high school and once I got to college I tried DnD, which I never enjoyed, Call of Cthulhu, V&V, and a new super role playing game called Champions. Been gaming ever since.

I am amazed how our stories parellel. I first game I really remember was a pick up game at ChattaCon in Jan '79 It was a Gamma World game. I had a blast and got the game next week.

I remember fooling around with D&D a little bit, but we went to Top Secret and Hero as soon as it came out.

Been playing ever since

[John T]

An invitation from a couple of HS friends, one of whom, ironically enough, had the last name of Long. No relation to Steve AFAIK. ;)

[ross_winn]

It all started with D&D as a teenager. Everybody was doing it, and I had this huge need to feel accepted. It was once a week after school, just me and a few friends. A few weeks later somebody dusted the D&D with Arduin. I was completely freaked out for a few days until I came down and realized I liked it.

After a few months sometimes it was twice a week. I lost whole weekends to overindulgence. I was shotgunning Traveller and Other Suns. I was still making it to school every day. I was still getting my work done. As a matter of fact my grades got better.

I got caught rolling a character in the library and managed to ditch it in the periodicals. I lost a whole summer. Space Opera, TFT. One night it was really late and we had been doing V&V all night and somebody pulled out Champions. It was like liquid sky. I was out of my mind.

My parents found me in bed with my clothes on clutching a copy of Cyberpunk. My Dad didn't know what to do and my Mom was in denial about the whole thing. I moved out a few weeks later to stay in a house with some "friends".

Now I'll do almost anything. Little Fears still scares me, but some days I have to rub some Nobilis on my hands just to keep the shakes away. One of these days I will finally go Over the Edge, and I might never come back.

[Mantis]

I was a WWII history buff. Started board wargaming as a result of this interest in High School. The guy I wargamed with got AD&D and started GMing, so that's where I started roleplaying. I also picked up Traveller and refereed that. After I left school, I joined a wargame club that also had a lot of roleplayers. One of them started a Trav campaign so I joined in; then another group member started a V&V campaign, before switching to the brand-new first-edition Champions rules. Apart from one brief period when I joined an AD&D campaign, it's been Champions/HERO for me ever since!

[Beetle]

When I was in 7th grade two of my friends bought D&D (the 70s blue box with the dragon and archer on the cover iirc). Pretty soon we were all roped in, using a home-made map and Risk pieces for miniatures. Good times. We played mostly D&D with some other TSR games thrown in (Gamma World, Star Frontiers), I didn't learn about non-TSR stuff until college.

[Thia Halmades]

My start was pretty much from birth; this stuff captured my imagination because my mum would read me fairy tales and Brother's Grimm. The grim version, where the evil queen gets nailed into a barrel full of boiling oil and rolled down a hill into the ocean, never to be seen again. Booyah.

I discovered that despite being able to get into stories (vignettes, LOTR) I had trouble caring beyond a certain point; my passion was to craft my own story, and I'd been doing since the idea of putting words on paper crossed my mind. When I was ... 12? 13? I'd run into a guy at High School who was dating the chick I had an immense crush on (Jr. High & High School were in the same building) and despite breaking up with her, he and I remained friends for quite some time. He introduced me to gaming, got me a seat at my first D&D game, and then - one fateful day - I met Jason.

Jason was in the Martin's Aquarium down in Jenkintown, where I spent my afternoons on their arcade games (Castlevania, how I love thee...) spending the quarters I'd stolen from my dad that morning. Conversation expanded into "Yeah, I know about D&D." To which he replied, "Well, we're going to do Shadowrun, wanna do it?" "Er... sure!" And voila. From Shadowrun, back to AD&D, to White Wolf, to d20, and now - finally - HERO 5th.

[ApocalypseZero]

Strange, all I can remember were giant robots, some transformable, and then, I was here. :)

Actually, it started with Battletech (CityTech, BattleTroops, etc). Once that little game mixed with an slight obsession for the Robotech cartoons, and then the purchase of the Robotech RPG, things didn't stop. But I am still wondering why I went from something like Robotech to Rifts to Werewolf to D&D to Exalted to HERO Fantasy to Champions. Of course, Robotech and Rifts never really stopped in all that.