I got introduced to gaming with AD&D played on a Boy Scout campout when I was 12, back in 1981. I remember my first character was a fighter who, when bitten by a werewolf, bit the werewolf back. The DM decided my character caught a disease which ultimately killed him. I didn't mind, the playing of the game was fun enough.
When I was looking for D&D in the stores, all I could find and afford at first was Basic/Expert D&D. Now that was close enough for me, and when my Uncle Eddie saw me playing that at age 12 - he bought me the Taran Wanderer series of books by Lloyd Alexander. Great influence on my young mind those fantasy books were.
In Middle School, we played what D&D we could get a hold of. Yet everyone tried hard to own and play AD&D. Not because we thought the rules were any better (we really didn't have any idea of how to measure the quality of a RPG at that age), but because as adolescants we wanted to be considered more adult than we were and AD&D was what the older kids were playing and we wanted to be part of that "advanced" crowd.
A year after I found RPGs, I found Classic Traveller. From reading a lot of Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, and Niven the game really resonated with me even though it was months before I could convince my 12-14 year old gaming friends to try it (the new had not worn off of Basic/Expert D&D, AD&D, Gamma World, or the gonzo AD&D/Gamma World mash-ups we played).
The need to buy AD&D books led to my first jobs of mowing a lot of yards and getting a paper route. My first Gamma World rulebook was a badly mimeographed copy produced at the local High School and purchased for $5. The Yankee Peddler game store in Knoxville became my favorite place to visit.
I remember when the TV movie Mazes and Monsters aired and how the people at Cedar Bluff Middle School had became concerned by it. Going so far as to have a concrete plug poured into a cave entrance near the school. How the daughter of a Baptist minister would regularly come by our games at school and tell us that we were going to Hell for playing D&D. How my Mom was worried that D&D was rotting my brain and causing me to hang out with an undesireable crowd.
So what do the rest of you remember about the yesterydays of your gaming?
What do I remember?
Blood and suffering and pain and most of all the lamentations of the women.
With a side order of mangling and mayhem to liven the mood.
Oh... gaming. Right.
Um: Christmas of 1985 (hadda be, but damn it feels off), two books, a week of no sleeping.
Cue flashback to... maybe... a month earlier. Adoptive older brother-person running a game for the munchkins so we could get a taste. I made a rogue because I liked the idea of being cunning and viscous (and occasionally vicious). Cue painful lesson about hiding in shadows (its not a super power!) though no forthcoming explaination for why I fail so miserably in the main tavern as the hooded robed dude sends us on a quest! Cue cave with portcullis trap, an asshole NPC (2nd level something, never told), and an attack by hellhounds that almost killed us, and may as well have because the game ended right off and never (and I do mean never) started up again.
Cue flashback of flashback (in, of all things, a flashback thread... whoa) to a few weeks before when the adults are telling tales of searching corpses for gold teeth. Curious behavior leads to questions, answers forthcoming. Follow the breadcrumbs and you won't need more details, Kinky.
End flashbacks: and here we are today. Blood and Death and Pain, with a side order of Maiming and Mayhem.
Oh. I said that already.
There was a gaming club at High School.
They played this game called TRAVELLER,...and this girl named Vena was a player......
My first TRAVELLER PC was named Travis Morgan. I think he was a Scout. (I had been reading a lot of Mike Grell comics back then)
- Ed C.
My first "tournament" DnD game was at the Boys Club of Norfolk VA. Our DnD club did an overnight there, and we played Hidden Shrine of the Tamoachen in groups of 3 (there were 15 of us and the DM, who was the adult). The goal was to get as far as we could into the dungeon in the 2 hours each team was alloted. My team won, and we got to keep the characters as a prize :) I played the big barbarian feller with the toothy sword. That night was also the first time I ever saw a personal computer and a computer game, the DM guy had an Apple with a DnD-like game of little colored squares that represented monsters and characters walking around grey lines that represented passages. Man that was a long time ago.
I recall that crazy energy, the total, unconditional and uncritical devotion to roleplaying. Things the all night sessions - and that wasn't at university, that was when I was already working - and I remember really, really committing to my characters, passionately sticking to their personality and motivations even if it meant missing out on most of the adventure.
Gee, what was I thinking?
I started gaming around my birthday in 1983 (when I was turning 9).
I remember, for many years, not really playing any sort of longterm game, ever. It was always trying out the new game. And I very very rarely played, as I was the "first kid on the block" to get into RPGs and pretty much the only person to ever buy any books, so I'd have to recruit and teach everyone the game, and organize the sessions, and... pain in the ass organizing pre-teen activity on that scale.
Along the way were some real disasters... like when I tried to get people to play Runequest but the character sheets had those nude silhouettes on them so the players just drew nipples and dicks on them and we never got to playing. I was pissed.
I knew these three brothers who gamed so I'd often go over there Friday after school and not return home until Sunday evening. We'd do role-playing, play Ultima and Wizard's Crown and Bards Tale as a group activity, and do all sorts of related activity.
I don't even want to know how awful the actual games were from that time period.
A move to Florida in time for me to be 13 and go to high school led to gaming with people that had been playing without me for the first time, as well as joining games of older (30+) people. I ran more extended campaigns of AD&D and Marvel Superheroes (I remember I had TWELVE PEOPLE around the kitchen table one time, all with randomly generated superheroes... crazy!) especially, while I played in games of Justifiers and Bureau 13. We experimented with other games but never for very long.
I started the RPG club at my high school (which really was the RPG/Battletech/Chess club) that survived after I graduated. No, I never had a date in my high school years. :P
When I left home and went to college in late 1992, it was almost impossible to find a D&D game. Somehow Vampire, and soon afterwards Magic, had gotten into the gamer scene in Atlanta (White Wolf was right there in the 'burbs...) and I couldn't find a D&D game to save my life, and I couldn't recruit people to play any of the games I liked to save my life. I read the Vampire book and thought the entire premise was shit (I was envisioning a Van Helsing character... but then... urban trenchcoat wearing vampires? What the fuck is that? I still don't understand how/why that would be appealing), and played Magic once. After finding out you had to keep buying cards to really play it seriously (you should have heard the reaction when I suggested that the one guy with the deck could just shuffle and deal his cards to people when we played... :P) I never bothered with it or other CCGs again.
Through the rest of the 90s, the only real gaming I got done was when the WWF RPG was released. I was into Japanese and Mexican tapes at the time so it was woefully inadequate for the kinds of styles I wanted to play, but it worked well to enjoy ourselves in a general sense. I started some online pro wrestling promoter games and things like that through local BBSs in the 90s as well.
I do believe I participated in two AD&D sessions (2e) in the late 90s, with the same group. I played one session, ran another... then the people all disappeared. I guess it was me intruding on an established game group and I had a completely alien play style... :p I attempted a 2e game with my girlfriend and roommates in 1996-7 sometime, but that fell apart when my girlfriend wanted to be a ranger but didn't roll scores good enough to be a ranger. Hissy fits ensued.
In 2000 I got the AD&D 3e books when they came out. I read through them, thought, "What is this shit?" and sold them.
In about 2003 I was sick and tired of going to the gaming store and finding absolutely nothing I wanted to play so I thought I'd write my own game. I really thought that was my only option. It didn't occur to me to play old editions of a game, or to look for older games on Ebay or anything. The new game got as far as a manuscript and sending it to outside playtesters in late 2004 and that was it.
I registered on RPG.net and the Forge in May 2004 and Dragonsfoot in February 2006, to give an idea of when I got clued in to various things online. I had been online going back to 1993 but it did not occur to me to look for online RPG resources on the net. I do believe I was reading the forums in 2003 and just not registering and participating for awhile.
I moved to Finland in late 2005, and in early 2006 decided that enough was enough, I WAS GOING TO GAME, and I was going to use AD&D 1E. The ideas and progress of that were chronicled here (http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-254121.html)(that 1982 start date for gaming was incorrect: 1983 is the correct year).
Several years of constant gaming with a revolving door cast of players (ranging from ages 15 to 34) and message board and blog theorizing and arguing later, here I am.
Last year I published my first RPG book, sent it around to various "old school" publishers as a courtesy, and ended up getting the book picked up for re-release and retail distribution by Goodman Games. wooo!
Now I am 34 and live in Helsinki and I have a regular Sunday group where we play BFRPG, and tonight is the second session of the new online Labyrinth Lord game I'm running.
Good times, and I must say I am happier with my gaming in the past few years than at any other time in my life. Nostalgia and rose-colored glasses my ass.
Almost all of my early rpg memories are bad. Horrible DM's (myself included), lame modules, lack of people to play with, characters that died like flies, never getting past 3rd level, boring and pointless game sessions, catpissman players - it's really amazing that I've stuck with it. I didn't have a reasonably decent campaign until the mid 90's playing AD&D 2e. Since then, things have gotten progressively better though and I'm pretty happy with my gaming now.
I already wrote about this, and am not too old to remember doing it. Since it isn't interesting to anyone, it doesn't need repeating. Let's just say I came from a very different time via a very different road.
-clash
Quote from: flyingmice;306303I already wrote about this, and am not too old to remember doing it. Since it isn't interesting to anyone, it doesn't need repeating. Let's just say I came from a very different time via a very different road.
-clash
Then just give us a link so that people like myself who are interested can read what you wrote.
Quote from: jeff37923;306305Then just give us a link so that people like myself who are interested can read what you wrote.
Bah! I can't find it. Basically, in November 1978, on my 21st birthday, my mom bought me the then current edition of D&D, because I had just quit music after many years of playing. Loved it. That week I went out to the game store and bought the new game Traveller. Loved it more. My GF at the time had a friend who ran a D&D game. Joined for one session, and realized I wanted to GM, not play. Got a group together to play D&D. Wildly successful. Heavily modded D&D. Had 17 players coming every week at one time. Ran it for 20 years. Got to hate running it. Wanted to run other games. Group wanted D&D. Disbanded the group. Started new group to play NOT D&D. Began designing own games. Began publishing games. Up to here and now.
What I remember is struggling to make D&D into something it wasn't. Modding rules, improvising, re-writing everything. I felt like a salmon at spawning time. Now my gaming is a joy and delight. I run whatever I want, and my players are enthusiastic about everything. The last few years have been wonderful.
-clash
Started playing when i was 11. Introduced my class to D&D then AD&D.Games are great AD&D was great 2E kits were great Top Secret was great, Traveller was great. I wrote my first game when i was 12 based on 200AD SF tropes then followed it up with a Gor game with complex combat ruels just to use my d20 a mod on traveller to run Ace Garp and interstellar trucking.
Best memories - my signiture character , Silk . playing the ruby kingdom games with Kull. Running Hulk vs The Thing fights in physics classes. My freaky fairytale adventure when Hansel and Grettle were thugs terrorising the poor old wich, Jask was a n outright theif and the 7 dwarves kept Snow White chained up by a tree in the garden. Our first Chthulu game and the session where we had a tea party for 3 hours game time where nothing happened. Hunter (homebrewed bladerunner game) and the contuning adventures of Dragard d'bard. Then finding the Wod and modding it using chruch knights and the wonderful madness that followed.
Oh and i loved Magic and the whole goign to the virgin megastore and seeing 50 guys sitting around playign games on the floor and trading cards. And the hours we played that game. And the 48 hour warrior knights game and the , and then.....
fucking loved all of it :)
oh and the muder mysteries and ...
Hey I forgot about Amber how could I forget that Amber wow.
Quote from: ClashNow my gaming is a joy and delight. I run whatever I want, and my players are enthusiastic about everything. The last few years have been wonderful.
No time now to list the unmittigated history, but as to respond to this...
I think I have to agree. I have tons of great memories, but the gaming the last 3-4 years have been just tremendous. Everyone gives a flying fuck about their group (I run a few) and about the ruleset.
I think I was 14. I read an article in a paper about this cool thing in which people got around a table and pretended to be characters from LotR or something. I actually remember a quote from said article, saying "...and if someone gets annoying, no one's gonna kick him out... but what character could resist being thunderstruck a few times?" Then, at 15, new highschool, I see a guy with an AD&D PHB, I ask him about it, next saturday we meet, play, etc. And then yeah, the all-nighters, the all-nighters until noon, Shadowrun, Paranoia... My group actually went on holidays as a whole once, and we had six parties running at a time... no, seven, one per member plus one (I ran two). We would play two to four sessions a day, sometimes six hours each... Those guys, three of them didn't know shit about the rules or anything (we were playing 3e at the time), but they ran it anyway... It was so, so great. Now's cool, too. But I mostly game with one group (twice a week), me or someone else run occasional sessions, and I'm forever planning... So far, so good. And the best is yet to come.
I remember receiving the Holmes Basic D&D set (the version with 'chits') for my 10th birthday in 1980. I tried running my parents through the module B2, using the Caves of Chaos map as the 'game board'. I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
Later I met a friend who knew roughly how the game was supposed to play, as he had an older brother who played AD&D. I also read the Moldvay Basic D&D rules, which were much clearer than the Holmes version. We played a BD&D/AD&D hybrid. My first 'successful' adventure as a DM was B1. My friend's character was a druid, and had a halfling fighter side-kick. B1 became the template for many of my earliest adventures.
Shortly afterwards I moved to a new school, and started gaming regularly with a couple of friends I made there. Lots of fun games, including many poorly run D&D/AD&D modules, were run regularly on Sunday afternoons. Two of my favourites were N1 and X1. I also have fond memories of many 'mega-dungeons' and homebrew settings of my own design.
Most of my high-school gaming involved GM'ing MERP, as I became somewhat obsessed with Tolkien at that time, although we tried many other games (Cthulhu, Star Frontiers, GUPRPS, etc.). My most successful campaign during this time was a summer-long one (we played almost every day) set in the early Fourth Age.
I didn't game much during my undergraduate University years. I remember the occasional Basic D&D game. During my fourth year I was a player in a semi-serious Rolemaster (2e) campaign.
Throughout graduate school I continued to 'follow' certain game lines (ICE's Middle-Earth and Rolemaster stuff; some Basic D&D stuff, including the RC; certain GURPS source books; etc.). I played only sporadically during the 1990s, however.
I ran a short Rolemaster campaign in the autumn of 1999. I later ran a 'proper' year-long 3e D&D campaign with some fellow graduate students throughout 2001-2002. I later got a job in the Bay Area, and ran another 3e campaign there from 2004-2005. Afterwards I ran a short C&C campaign, as I had become disillusioned with 3e at this time.
I moved to Ireland in 2005, and gamed sporadically there for three years, with two different groups. I also ran a couple of PBP games.
In 2008 I moved back across the Atlantic, and now divide my time between Toronto and Milwaukee (I'm a prof at the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee). When I'm in Toronto I run a Swords & Wizardry game (heavily house-ruled) with a couple of old friends. I also have contributed to the 'old school' fanzines Knockspell! and Fight On!. Right now, in addition to my Toronto group, I'm trying to start up an online S&W game with the guys I gamed with at graduate school (2001-2002).
Man, I can't imagine anyone is interested in all that! :sleeping:
Late evenings in Gary Gygax' study. Five players in raptrous silence listening to the caller and Gary, and building a world in their mind.
Going to Gen Con and playing American Civil War Miniatures immediately followed by D&D and not seeing anything strange about this.
Roaming the dealers room at Gen Con and looking at this huge room full of gaming stuff and thinking "this so SO COOL".
Hearing about this new game called "Traveller".
And 30 years later discovering all over again why I love brown-box D&D; I love its minimalist aesthetic, its presentation as a bare-bones set of campaign notes, and its overall feel of "Add imagination and go apeshit".
I've had it up to my circumcision scar with "rules-heavy" rulesets. I'm enjoying gaming with OD&D more now than I ever have, and more than I've enjoyed gaming in thirty years.
I discovered the game when someone was huddling in next to the building at elementary school "running" a game, using a single d6 and made up rules inspired by D&D having been overheard. I played a guy with a halberd, and a lantern and eventually fought a minotaur. After some time I figured out the game was "D&D" and picked up basic D&D at the grocery store (they sold boxed games, this was Basic D&D in 1981ish.)
My mom required she read the game before I got to play. Being a bit worried of course as all mom's are of things people said are "dangerous", she let me keep it and play, basically seeing is at harmless. I learned abotu AD&D in the 5th grade, and switched to that picking up a PHB, and then a DMG (for 1.00 at a store switching from broad format to being just a "jewelry and high class stuff" store) and then next month got a MM. (If only I'd had a little more allowance when I got the DMG! But they didn't have MM books there, so i had to go back to the toy shop.)
I spent a lot of my time drawing rope, weapons, lanterns, when I wasn't playing, my people were still poor unless I used a reference but equipment I had down for an elementary school player.
I wrote my first RPG at 13, inspired by a "magic in the world" book I liked. It had classes and levels. You could play a Sorceror (Technomagic), Mage (Magic), Theriomorph (were critter), Doppelganger, Psionic (Mind powers), Psychic (Mind powers and magic.) I didn't even consider non-powered classes and my first playtest this was fixed with Warriors and others...
In junior high I discovered an ad for Wargames West catalog. Which allowed me to expand beyond Arcanum ("for D&D"), Gamma World, and Star Frontiers which I'd picked up at the local bookstore.
I enjoyed playing and running games, I eventually recruited my sister, and she played a lot of basic D&D with me as a GM.
In High School I was introduced to Marvel. It wasn't the first superhero RPG I owned, I'd picked up V&V thanks to its advertisements in Dragon and ran it several times. But when I played MSH I was blown away by its speed and how ti felt right for superheroes.
I loved discovering new games, reading the rules and making characters, but I always ran them eventually, otherwise what was the point?
My mom is proud of me for writing games, I still love Basic D&D, and took it out and ran it for people who started with 2E, and now regularly play 3.5E. I showed them why I loved it, and its simplicity. I've been picking up things like Labyrinth Lord and now Spellcraft and Swordplay, wanting simple and cohesive versions of BECMI D&D (nothing wrong with it, but I like rules that flow from one mechanic.)
I'd still play MSH today. I like H&S better for supers, but that doesn't' mean I don't recognize other good games in the same field. I still run it from time to time, just for fun. (Random rolls PC's sometimes add to that fun..:D)
In elementary school, during a book sale, picked up this coloring book that had a dragon on it. Plus you could play the game inside! It was the D&D coloring book. (1978? or 1979? I think.)
The next summer stayed with a friend in Rhode Island. He introduced me to a great "new" game called Dungeons and Dragons (Moldvay Basic). My first character was Scorp the Elf. He died in the Caves of Chaos when a spider fell on him, bit him and then I missed my save vs Poison. Scorp II was born soon thereafter. The game timeline went like this: D&D->AD&D->Rolemaster->Runequest II->Stormbringer.
The memories which most stick with me are not so much the gaming but the fantastic summers we had around the gaming. We would get up, watch TV, eat cereal and then either a) go to the beach, b) go skating, c) play tennis, d) play kick the can, or e) play with micronauts and then in the afternoon play D&D late. Magical summers for a pre-teen.
It's interesting that most of the people that responded thus far started playing at such an early age. I didn't start role-playing until I was a senior in high school. I graduated in 1985, so I started playing in the fall/winter of 1984. I hung around with my buddy Todd, who introduced this new kid, David, who had recently moved from out of state.
David introduced both of us the role-playing games. I was already familiar with the concepts of fantasy and science-fiction stories. My grandfather turned me onto fantasy and science-fiction paperbacks, and so I was an avid reader back in those days.
My gateway RPG was 2e Gamma World, and he used some photocopied materials from the 1st edition of GW. I can't remember where we played first, either at his house or at the school library during lunch. I think we played at his house first on a weekend, and then started to play at school during lunch hour. I remember that I had a humanoid with wings, and that in an escape attempt from a Gren village, we inadvertently burned it to the ground.
Shortly after starting to play GW, he introduced us to Star Frontiers. We had a ton of fun with this game. My buddy Todd played a Yazarian (sp?) who was a demolitions expert, and pyromaniac. I played a Dralasite (sp?) doctor who was addicted to pain medications. Great fun.
David then introduced to 1st Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I created three characters at the same time: Chang the Madmonk (LE Monk), Swiftelf (CE Elf Thief), and Cudgel the Cleric (LE Human Cleric). I still have the original character sheets.
IIRC, we played GW and SF concurrently and then played AD&D. I remember driving to David's house on the weekends to play. It was great freedom to drive on my own to my friend's house. Oh yeah, he had really awsome gem dice. When I purchased my first set of dice, it was an Armory set.
Shortly after high school, David died in a plane crash. I started playing AD&D with some friends from high school. I met some new friends and was invited to play RuneQuest III with them. I was blown away by RQ because it addressed some of my dissatisfaction with AD&D. I played both AD&D and RQ concurrently, and eventually brought the two groups together through several people. The guys that I play with today are from that second AD&D group and the RQ group, and are my lifelong friends.
The strange thing that initially got me into gaming was seeing a copy of White Dwarf in the magazine rack of my local railway station. I was 11 and i can't remember where i had been too, but it obviously wasn't that nice, as my mother bought me the mag as a 'treat'.
I loved it, bought basic d&d and the rest is history.
My life fades, my vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. Most of all,..... oh, sorry...right gaming past....
My gaming past was good (just like high school). Started out with Runequest than switched to BECMI and having been playing ever since. My gaming now is great.
Regards,
David R
Played once with my older brother when I was too young to understand it all.
With some friends at high school got Roleplaying introduced as an alternative to sport in Summer (since I enjoyed playing the Rugby kind during winter) and my reintroduction into gaming began. Started a short game of 2nd Ed D&D but didn't hit my strides till I played Rolemaster (really good GM and group). Still have a soft spot for all those RM skills in my cynical heart.
Twenty years later still playing happily :)
Wait a minute... lemme put on my cool rose-tinted shades for a bit.
Let's see... The first game always stays with you, for some reason...
Drafted by the local college guys to serve as sword fodder (They heard about my interest in wargames from another friend and invited me over for the weekend to sit in on a few rounds). For me it was a cleric/fighter in a home-brewed D&D game that was set in a post-apocalypse Spain, where magic worked and tech was (mostly) dead. Very early 77. We killed the dragon... yeah! in our first session. Didn't have clue what to do with the 47,000+ GP it had hoarded, so we took as much as we could carry and struck off into the wilderness in search of a city where we could hire more help to haul out the treasure lode. First session ended with me in the claw of a Giant Crab on a cliffhanger. Died almost instantaneously at the beginning of the second session and became friends with character generation... Second character didn't last long either. Crushed by a falling door in a megadungeon with simply enormous spiral staircases that led ever downward into the depths of a maze from which there was only a very slim chance of finding your way out again.
First Campaign as a GM began about six months later. Homebrewed a tropical archiapeligo empire, late bronze age. With galleys, slaves, amazons and lots and lots of undead of every stripe and a few new ones we invented.
Then there was Traveller... Insta-death in the vacuum of space. Starships, hijackings, piracy, and mayhem.
Then we branched out. Played in a variety of homebrew campaigns, most involving dungeons, and a few involved wilderness adventures, most short, with only a few legacy characters, and most characters having glorious and fatal epic melees. Then we discovered mail order and the fanzines like Dragon magazine, Other Worlds, White Dwarf, Pegasus, and an explosion of other fan mags, and Judges guild supplements. All pretty much like blogs these days, except our allowance was never the same. We played lots of wargames as well. Squad leader was an instant hit, and we played Squad Leader Campaigns. Submarine, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Richtofens War, The Third Reich, Panzergruppe Guderian, and a slew of SPI games. Since none of us could afford all the games and supplements, we each purchased what interested us, and then moshed that into games we would play, houseruling inconsistencies all the way.
We maxed out our gaming from 79-82. I definitely remember running my original homebrewed world, with massive battles, castle assaults, petty wars between lesser titled warriors, and plenty of naval and aerial battles loaded with magics. About this time I remember playing in my friends worlds... Tom had gotten ahold of one of the supplements of Dave Hargraves, and click-clicks were running around, along with priests of Katang, and other dark nameless warrior and Wizard cults whom sought only to slay us instantly or
trap us into the depths of some hopeless hell.
There was the summer I worked all summer at the ranch, and came back to meet my friends a week before the start of school and dropped $450 in one day making a round of every hobby shop in town, and even taking a ride up to Bonnie Brae in Denver. You could buy alot of games for that amount in 1981, though it doesn't seem like much now.
I had a new homebrew world that year as well, a whole continent mapped out. I remember running a D&D/Traveller campaign where the D&D characters were kidnapped by spacefaring rogues and indentured into service. The players managed to kill everyone onboard the freighter they were on, and it crash-landed cause no one knew or could figure out how to fly it. They went on (a few of them, anyway) to become space-faring warlords and brought a battle fleet back to conquer their homeworld. Didn't quite work out like they planned, but they did manage to off the BBG that had originally trapped them and sold them into servitude. The Dragons and Wizards ripped the starships to shreds.
My friend Tom ran a D&D Star Wars Campaign. We modded vorpal blades to serve as light sabers, used modded psionics rules for the Force, used a Mosh of Traveller and 1E Gamma World to conduct modern and spacecraft combat and designed our own starships to work in that framework. It was a blast! I played a Jedi in that campaign and we rescued Yoda from Dagobah shortly after Skywalker left, when Vader came looking for Yoda.
My other friend Tom started running Mods,and we slogged through Tomb of Horrors and Hidden Shrine of the Tamoachan just before Halloween that year. We usually brought two or three new characters each, to each of these games, and often ended up rolling another character or two during the game. So many interesting ways to die in these mods...
[Removes tinted-glasses]
Hhrrmmm? Yep. Nothing rose colored about it. Our characters died often, so we didn't get too attached to them, and any character that made it through more than four or five adventures or sessions earned a well-deserved Legendary status.
Quote from: tellius;306505With some friends at high school got Roleplaying introduced as an alternative to sport in Summer
My primary school (in Brisbane) set up a red-box Basic campaign as maths/metrics/lateral thinking exercise, and I was hooked from there.
We did a lot of D&D in highschool, with some Rolemaster, TMNT, Robotech and a good dose of WHFRP and 40K.
In our very first adventure, the entire party climbed up a mooring rope, through a porthole and into a slaver ship. Then we all got out our 10' poles.
The teacher who was DMing helped us retcon awesomely to justify how we got them through the porthole, explained the difference between 10' and 10", and instilled in us a deep appreciation for living in a country that uses metric.
I can't remember my first PC's name (I was ten), but I remember my friend's: Sister Slime, hardcore female cleric who beat enemies down with a length of chain. 100% distilled awesome.
Quote from: Drohem;306396It's interesting that most of the people that responded thus far started playing at such an early age.
Yeah - same here. I was 21 when I started, and I'd been out on my own since I was 18. I find it impossible to get into the heads of kids who started so early. To me roleplaying has always been an adult game. This even though my present group is almost all kids.
-clash
Quote from: flyingmice;306566This even though my present group is almost all kids.
Clash, compared to you, everyone is a kid :D
Regards,
David R
Quote from: David R;306567Clash, compared to you, everyone is a kid :D
Regards,
David R
Well, except Old Geezer. I have to raise my walker in respect to him.
-clash
I first heard about D&D when I was very young (1990s). My brother played in a game, and I recall begging him to take me along, but he never did. In Middle School I got to play Hero Quest thanks to a teacher's assistant. My first "real" taste of D&D was thanks to the PC game Baldur's Gate, which has probably been the greatest definer of my image of D&D. It wasn't till I was 17 and in my last year of high school that I got to go to my first real game session, thanks to my coworker.
It was AD&D2e, and I rolled up a half-elf cleric. They were using Skills and Powers, but it seemed pretty complicated to me, so I just got a Minor Hindrance as a Phobia of Crowds. The DM introduced me to the party by having my character save the party's gnome wizard from a vine trap in the woods. My character then followed the female gnome to where the rest of the party was--in the nearby city of Waterdeep. My phobia was brought up, the DM rolled a die, and must've rolled the worst possible number because my character was fleeing in terror.
It just so happened, however, that the gnome wizard had an 18 Strength and was able to chase me down, lasso me, and knock me unconscious. Great first experience, I must say.
The funny thing is, at the time I was trying to get the group to try 3e, since I had heard about it and figured the newest edition was always an improvement over earlier ones. Nowadays, I'm pretty sure that group is playing mostly 3e games, while I have since gone back to pure old-skool goodness.
Quote from: flyingmice;306566Yeah - same here. I was 21 when I started, and I'd been out on my own since I was 18. I find it impossible to get into the heads of kids who started so early. To me roleplaying has always been an adult game. This even though my present group is almost all kids.
-clash
That is interesting. I have very much the opposite dynamic.
Igbar group ages 44, 43, 42, 42, 36, 35, 40, 29.
Miston group ages 43, 43, 42, 42, 29.
(the 29 is my wife, who play in both groups...obviously, she is the outlier, as well...)
Quote from: flyingmice;306577Well, except Old Geezer. I have to raise my walker in respect to him.
-clash
Raise yer WHUT?
Oh, WALKER. Whew.
* cleans out ear trumpet *
But I know what you mean about thinking of RP as an adult pastime. Gary was my first GM; Rob Kuntz, Tim Wilson, and I were in high school (over 16, though, so we could drive) and Ernie Gygax was 13. But EVERYBODY else was an adult, and Gary treated us just the same. Gary was, in fact, the first "grownup" ever to treat me like an adult.
My second gaming group was all college buddies... and last Saturday we gamed together...
Quote from: Old Geezer;306788My second gaming group was all college buddies... and last Saturday we gamed together...
Dude... that IS something. What, 20+ years and still at the same gaming table? Holy crap...
Quote from: SunBoy;306930Dude... that IS something. What, 20+ years and still at the same gaming table? Holy crap...
It's probably closer to 30 years, Sunboy.
When we were younger and gamed, it was all about the game. The longer you go, the more the social end of it catches up. i'm aware now that no matter how important the gaming is, this is also the glue that keeps many of us together.
One of my 2 groups I run is some of my earlist players. The particular campaign we are playing is 26 years old. we were playing together before that.
it's a fun game. but as you get older, it becomes a fun game, great memories, and a social bonding agent.
It was The Jr High Library in 1976. It was five weeks to end of school. I saw some people I kind of knew playing or working on playing. I wanted to join. The owner of the books said "No. My books, My Game". "Fine, I will make my own." Thus starting me down a long and tortured road of game design.
Eventually I did play some over the summer and next year. We played everything but D&D (EPT, RQ, Traveller, John Carter, and a version of Star Trek if memory serves). I was always game to play and willing to be a test rabbit for any game. Eventually I got into a D&D game and discovered "gah, these other ones are better".
Eventually, it was freshman year in HS, I got to run. I was running The Fantasy Trip (because it was so much cheaper than those expensive AD&D books). That spawned a campaign that lasted 8 years or so, and ran anywhere from 8-20 players. Cidri was great. Arth was better.
I was "that other GM". I thought games should match their source material - novels. So we had characters with written histories, personalities, and goals. I forced everyone to come up with something. Games had plots (though most people didn't seem to care...). People gained experience points for roleplaying and solving problems, killing optional. (Love the Fantasy Trip EP chart). If you found The Dungeon in my world, you discovered two things. One, it had already been sacked by other people and Two, you were in the wrong place. (Eventually the Ochre Door came to Arth and more dungeoning ensued http://strolen.com/viewing/Ochre_Door ) .
So my memories of early gaming were being "the guy everyone wanted to play with", guiding people into trying to have a novel experience, and trying to push my craft of RPGing and story telling (while pushing others to do the same). I also remember resistance from people who just wanting to kill things, those who could not handle the non tolkien elves I was using (Moorcok's Corum of the Silver Hand), and those who thought all gaming was Tolkien Fantasy or not gaming at all.
The games ran across the gamut. Bushido, Champions (and other Hero Games), Any other supers game I could find, Top Secret (which was replaced by Stalking the Night Fantastic), and Fringeworthy. (My time with TriTac the company was durring this time. I wrote and playtested Tri-Tac supers). Mine were the non-D&D players or the non fantasy players. I was running twice a week from Junior Year to my third year of Jr College. Things tapered off in college proper. I had a Stalking Campaign that Things that ran three weekends a year, for 2-8 games per session. That ran for 10 years or so. It started as "select players" from my Stalking Demos playing in "my game", and moved on to a regular campaign from there.
(Worked for Tri-Tac and Hero (in the ICE era) to limited success. )
My Game Design took the fore for a while (with alternating Champions games). Continuum (not the Time Travel C0ntinuum) was published on a small run. We found out our guy with the money really didn't have that much. Flirted with a couple of companies and idiots with a dream and shallow pockets. Griffon games was a great idea that my portion would not be realized for years. One guy owns a set of my rules ; to this day, 15+ years later, swears he will publish it.
My players love the playtests. They loved Supers, Nippon (so much so that my 3 week playtest became a 2 year campaign), Pulp Heroes, Anime Mecha, Psionic Horror, a brief dip into Valdemar, and a couple of other things.
Gaming at the table disappeared when the kids were small. I stayed online and just played around.
So I have a new guy. He says he has money. We will see. If not, this time it is POD and PDF for sure.
Get a contract.
Quote from: MoonHunter;307138-snip-
Wow. Sounds like loads of fun. Um... off topic, but is this anime mecha of which you speak for sale or download on PDF? If I were in your shoes, I'd put them up in PDF form and use the profits to save up for a print run of the best seller by way of lulu or something.
Back on topic.. I started reading the books and wanting to play around when 3.5 was about to come out. My friend Drew let me read through the 3.0 MMII and I just loved the illustrations. I was a sucker for good drawings/paintings of freaky monsters even before being introduced to D&D... I've been drawing stuff like that since I was like 6. By the time I started playing, 3.5 was out and everybody had switched. I played now and again with folks at the math/science charter school we shared a building with (I was in the arts magnet school), but I didn't get to participate in most games because I lived way out in the suburbs and couldn't drive.
When I moved here to Atlanta for my senior year in highschool I got two games together, both of which fizzled after maybe a month or two. First I was elected DM without my knowledge and improvised an insane dungeon that the PCs woke up at the bottom of. They fought their way up to the top before that went poof... maybe they weren't interested in leaving yet? I'm still not sure. The second game had a bunch of my stupid houserules, a bunch of custom NPCs, and a bit of a railroad plot that rarely lasted as long as it should have (as in I ran out of "what comes next" and just had the characters fight each other to pass the time). Fizzled. And there was one other campaign I played in (DMed by one of maybe three who could or would DM) that was unfortunately boring. Patrick ran a few decent one-shots in D20 Modern and D20 Star Wars.
After high school there was a dead year or two or three (wasn't counting) punctuated by Gen Con Indianapolis in... what, 2007? The one where they made the 4e announcement. In that time I came here. Later, an ex girlfriend convinced me to get a game going. I invited everybody I knew that gamed, a few that I didn't know were gamers until they caught wind of it and asked to join, and a few newbs. I posted most of it and brainstormed for future sessions here on the AP forum, and it helped alot. That was last summer.
Since then there've only been a few one shots, plus some on and off forum gaming. I'm trying to muster the energy for a new game, but I'm feeling a bit dry. For the time being I'm thinking of running a one on one with my girlfriend using Star Wars Saga just to get going again, but I'm always intimidated by star wars 'cause I don't know shit about the setting really.
Quote from: LordVreeg;306933It's probably closer to 30 years, Sunboy.
When we were younger and gamed, it was all about the game. The longer you go, the more the social end of it catches up. i'm aware now that no matter how important the gaming is, this is also the glue that keeps many of us together.
One of my 2 groups I run is some of my earlist players. The particular campaign we are playing is 26 years old. we were playing together before that.
it's a fun game. but as you get older, it becomes a fun game, great memories, and a social bonding agent.
Too true, LV! While my original group is no longer gaming together, three of the kids (high school & college age) in my group are the children of people in that group. We are all still friends and get together at least 3 times a year.
-clash
Quote from: Old Geezer;306788Raise yer WHUT?
Oh, WALKER. Whew.
* cleans out ear trumpet *
But I know what you mean about thinking of RP as an adult pastime. Gary was my first GM; Rob Kuntz, Tim Wilson, and I were in high school (over 16, though, so we could drive) and Ernie Gygax was 13. But EVERYBODY else was an adult, and Gary treated us just the same. Gary was, in fact, the first "grownup" ever to treat me like an adult.
My second gaming group was all college buddies... and last Saturday we gamed together...
You rock, Geezer! If we ever bump into each other at GenCon or someplace, we'll have to compare war stories! :D
-clash
Quote from: Sigmund;306276My first "tournament" DnD game was at the Boys Club of Norfolk VA.
Dude, we probably crossed paths at one time or another! Lived in Norfolk from like 77 to 85, went to Crossroads Elementary, Arrowwood Academy, Norview Junior, and then Granby High before I moved. Spent a lot of time at the Boys Club on Sewell's Point Rd, but never saw any gamers there!
Anyway, I was introduced to D&D at age 11 in the summer of 1982 through a friend as we were walking home. He started narrating a scenario where I was a warrior with armor and a sword and I ran into a goblin. I remember trying to talk to the goblin (not really knowing what a goblin was) and it attacked me. After I killed it, I was encouraged to loot its body. I was pretty much hooked after that.
My first character was an elf (default fighter/MU in the Basic boxed set) named Hunter. Really creative there. :)
Same friend intro'd me to Boy Scouts (and weed) and we ended up playing with another group of kids at scout camp, having to sneak off into the woods to play because of the D&D devil worshipping panic that was starting to sweep America. I remember that game we dug a pit to trap 20 gnomes (I thought gnomes were good guys, but was laughed down by the other kids who said only in Basic D&D, not AD&D). Anyway, they fell in the trap, we doused them with oil, and burned them alive. Yay, scout camp. :)
Got hardcore into D&D and AD&D, found some other friends/gamers, and hung out mostly at a Ward's Corner game store called Campaign Headquarters. It had RPG and wargame gamebooks up front and gaming tables in the back for use by customers, one of them a huge piece of plywood covered with foam hills and varied terrain.
Still have to stop in there and buy something (usually dice) when I make it up that way every few years. Lots of good memories.
Pete
Quote from: pspahn;307313Dude, we probably crossed paths at one time or another! Lived in Norfolk from like 77 to 85, went to Crossroads Elementary, Arrowwood Academy, Norview Junior, and then Granby High before I moved. Spent a lot of time at the Boys Club on Sewell's Point Rd, but never saw any gamers there!
Pete
Rockin, and you've written one of my fav games ever (Miami Nights). I went to Brandon Jr. and Green Run High in Va. Beach.
Quote from: SunBoy;306930Dude... that IS something. What, 20+ years and still at the same gaming table? Holy crap...
36 years.
I'm gaming with somebody I started playing D&D with in fall of 1973.
Yes, pre publication. Christmas break I went home and bought the rules.
Do they go on the internet?
Quote from: pspahn;307313I remember that game we dug a pit to trap 20 gnomes (I thought gnomes were good guys, but was laughed down by the other kids who said only in Basic D&D, not AD&D). Anyway, they fell in the trap, we doused them with oil, and burned them alive. Yay, scout camp. :)
You were both wrong. Gnomes are NEVER the good guys.
Trapping 20 gnomes in a pit and immolating them? You were wrong, but you did good. And you were lucky, very lucky...
RPGPundit
Quote from: Old Geezer, flyingmice, LordVreeg-on years of gaming with the same people-
...holy crap. I mean, wow. That's mind-boggling.
D&D wasn't actually my first game - I had bought some little chit tactical game called Star Force that had an ad in it for Star Frontiers. Progressed from there eventually to Red Box D&D once I got sick of not understanding 90% of the Dragon magazines I'd buy for the one Star Frontiers article. "What the hell are Hit Dice!?!" Then settled into AD&D for the high school years, really just me DMing a couple friends. We tried branching out into "finding other gamers" exactly once, and got invited over to this guy's house that was decorated with exercise equipment and Satanist videos. After that our stance was clarified; gaming was something our existing circle of friends did for fun, we were not looking to hang out with people just because they gamed.
Although like the OP I also had a Boy Scouts first D&D experience... Totally freeform, no dice or rules, just narrated by a DM in the back of the car as we drove. "I'm an elf with a crossbow" was all the character concept *and* stats required. Everyone had either Blackrazor or Wave and player-on-player violence was a constant threat. It was before getting into Star Frontiers, but I don't count it because it didn't really lead to further gaming as it struck me as pretty spazulous at the time.
And then there's the "got back into gaming" story... I didn't game in college between the demands of classwork and the needy college girlfriend. Then after, moved off, wasn't motivated enough to look for a gaming group per se and people tend to avoid "I'm a gamer" in polite work conversation. But the Magic craze was on, and a friend got into it and soon we had six or so people that would get together and play with our hundreds of dollars of cards each... Finally one day I said, "You know, we have a group of people, and we're getting together for hours at a time to play this damn card game - I know I'd rather be roleplaying!" Turns out everyone else had played D&D at some point back in the day too, so we boxed the cards and had a proper gaming group for about ten years!