I wanted to post this as a followup to a thread that I started last week, asking people what their first non-D&D RPGs were, but I did not want this to get buried in a thread that already has dozens of replies. Besides, this is important enough an issue on its own.

What is it that made you want to stop playing D&D at the time that you started playing something else? Was it just the genre or did you find something lacking in D&D? Conversely, did you find something overwhelming about it, making you want to try something simpler?

In my case, it was both genre and the rules. I wanted to play something other than plain, ordinary fantasy. That is what led me to Gamma World and from there to TMNT, Traveller, Twilight 2000, and others. However, the attraction of Rolemaster was its flexibility and its skill basis; I liked how each and every character that I created was more unique than one that I could have made with the pre-Unearthed Arcana AD&D 1st Ed. rules.

Quote from: Walking Paradox;409972I wanted to post this as a followup to a thread that I started last week, asking people what their first non-D&D RPGs were, but I did not want this to get buried in a thread that already has dozens of replies. Besides, this is important enough an issue on its own.

What is it that made you want to stop playing D&D at the time that you started playing something else? Was it just the genre or did you find something lacking in D&D? Conversely, did you find something overwhelming about it, making you want to try something simpler?

In my case, it was both genre and the rules. I wanted to play something other than plain, ordinary fantasy. That is what led me to Gamma World and from there to TMNT, Traveller, Twilight 2000, and others. However, the attraction of Rolemaster was its flexibility and its skill basis; I liked how each and every character that I created was more unique than one that I could have made with the pre-Unearthed Arcana AD&D 1st Ed. rules.

I didn't stop playing D&D in any real sense. Other games are a way to try something different. In practice I could only ever really play about two games "at a time" but D&D cycled in and out of the mix like any of the other games that were "keepers."

I continued to play D&D...just wanted to try new approaches and genres!

I didn't so much stop playing D&D as did it really start. When I first got into roleplaying I joined an existing group of gamers so I players whatever they were playing which included WRFRP 1e, Star Wars D6, Call of Cthulhu various homebrews.  D&D just didn't feature in the mix. I didn't own any games, did really know what was out there. First game I ran was Amber which in retrospect might seem an odd choice, but it worked.

Eventually D&D found some play time in our group as new people joined. I even ran an "Orcs of Thar" campaign but it wasn't until 3e that D&D seemed to start to crowd out all other games, and not in a good way.

Quote from: Cole;409979I didn't stop playing D&D in any real sense. Other games are a way to try something different.

Same here. I never did stop playing D&D (except for a 2-year period in which I did no gaming whatsoever). Not even at the height of the local White Wolf/LARP craze.

[strike]I was[/strike] I'm absolutely fascinated with the idea of role-playing games, and the opportunity to discover new games, new rules, new settings, new characters, etc. is a blast.

It was Hawkmoon and Stormbringer to me. I had no other motivation than the fact that I really fell in love with these games after looking at their covers and wondering what these mysterious, gorgeous boxes could contain. And then CoC, RuneQuest, Star Wars, RoleMaster and on and on.

Quote from: Walking Paradox;409972What is it that made you want to stop playing D&D at the time that you started playing something else? Was it just the genre or did you find something lacking in D&D? Conversely, did you find something overwhelming about it, making you want to try something simpler?

I feel like I've been talking about this many times on this board and elsewhere so I'll try to keep it short. D&D fantasy basic assumptions rub me the wrong way. I don't care for Vancian magic, alignments, classes and other aspects of the rules. I don't care for the type of fantasy implied by D&D rules, whatever editions. Complexity wasn't the real argument back then but nowadays I would cringe at running games as complex as 3E or 4E.

Quote from: Walking Paradox;409972What is it that made you want to stop playing D&D at the time that you started playing something else? Was it just the genre or did you find something lacking in D&D? Conversely, did you find something overwhelming about it, making you want to try something simpler?

I have never played D&D, I was always content with RuneQuest for a very long time.

I've given the question more thought and, while my memory going back that far is not flawless in terms of chronology, my first couple of RPG purchases post D&D included Middle-Earth Role Playing, TMNT & Other Strangeness, and Ghostbusters, probably MERP being the first as it was advertised in ICE's "Tolkien Quest" Fighting Fantasy-style gamebooks. The draw being in any case the setting offered rather than anything about the game/rules per se.

I also got a bunch of by then out of print early 80s TSR era modules at $1 apiece at a Sears Surplus store around that same time, which included Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Boot Hill, and Gangbusters stuff, which led me to track down the current versions of SF and GW. But I think I made that find after I already owned MERP (which I didn't love, but which suggested other ways to do "basically the same thing as D&D.)

I also had a copy of Ian Livingstone's "Dicing with Dragons," found at a salvation army, which had a chapter giving 2 or 3 sentence snippets describing which RPGs were on the market Ca. 1985 or so; this was how I found out about CoC, Stormbringer, and RQ. I bought Cthulhu largely because of the evocative title - when I got it, it was 100% different from the game I expected - I had imagined something that, perhaps ironically, was more along the lines of the dreamlands stories. Buying CoC and Stormbringer motivated me to find and read HPL and Michael Moorcock's books, not the other way around.

Quote from: Darran;410036I have never played D&D, I was always content with RuneQuest for a very long time.

Never played it habitually, or "never even played one game of it at all?"

Depending on whether or not you bought the idea that Arduin was a different system, that was the first one after D&D. I never bought that argument, though. I played T&T and Traveller at about the same time. I loved them both fr being very different than D&D.

But the first game that I wanted to play to the exclusion of D&D was Runequest. In our D&D club, there were two very cute girls that played RQ, and I had not yet met a girl that layed D&D. In high school, that's enough.

I know several good reasons to like RQ. And I've heard a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the idea that girls liked it better than D&D, but I've never seen any in-depth, peer reviewed scientific analysis of why that might be.

Quote from: Cole;410060Never played it habitually, or "never even played one game of it at all?"

Never played it and I started in the hobby in 1981.

I was put through a game one afternoon of D&D a couple of years ago but it was a very dull experience for me.

Quote from: Darran;410094Never played it and I started in the hobby in 1981.

I was put through a game one afternoon of D&D a couple of years ago but it was a very dull experience for me.

How did you get into RQ, by the way?

Quote from: Cole;410097How did you get into RQ, by the way?

I was introduced by my older brother and his friend back in 1981.
I was drawing some treasure maps at the time, just having read Treasure Island, so he thought it would be ideal for me.
They were introduced by a friend at school, after they took the piss out of him for bringing a game to school.

In the UK at the time Game Workshop had the rights to reprint RuneQuest and had it distributed to not only their own chain of shops but to all major department stores, toy shops, game shops and other hobby stores. They really pushed the boat out getting it out there. They even had a range of box set miniatures as well as supporting it in their RPG magazine White Dwarf.

To me RuneQuest was the hobby. We always stuck to the Chaosium stable of games like Stormbringer, RingWorld, ElfQuest, Call of Cthulhu, and Pendragon. Company loyalty all the way!:)

Quote from: Darran;410101I was introduced by my older brother and his friend back in 1981.
I was drawing some treasure maps at the time, just having read Treasure Island, so he thought it would be ideal for me.
They were introduced by a friend at school, after they took the piss out of him for bringing a game to school.

In the UK at the time Game Workshop had the rights to reprint RuneQuest and had it distributed to not only their own chain of shops but to all major department stores, toy shops, game shops and other hobby stores. They really pushed the boat out getting it out there. They even had a range of box set miniatures as well as supporting it in their RPG magazine White Dwarf.

To me RuneQuest was the hobby. We always stuck to the Chaosium stable of games like Stormbringer, RingWorld, ElfQuest, Call of Cthulhu, and Pendragon. Company loyalty all the way!:)

Sounds good to me. I scarcely met a Chaosium game I didn't like.