My first D&D experience came in 1979 and I have been an avid player and designer every since. But my first non-D&D experience came in the rapid introduction of 5 games at once: Marvel Super Heroes, Top Secret, Car Wars, MERPS/Rolemaster, and Gamma World (I think I got to play in at least 1 session of each for the first time in the same week). That was back in 1987. After a few years in college I found a regular gaming group in 1994 (that I still see) and played Battlelords, Rifts (and all of its incarnations), WEG Star Wars, GURPS, World of Darkness (and all of its incarnations), Paranoia, CoC, HOL, and a whole bunch more that I can barely remember.

I still own most of these (plus a bunch of other playtest systems I got way back when through the Escape Ventures Playtesters' Association). Now I run my company's flagship game (Destiny6) almost exclusively, though I occasionally pull out a GURPS Supers, Rifts Anti-Coalition, or a heavily modified D&D 3.5e (internally we call it Eternal Heroes).

Quote from: Walking Paradox;408583What I am wondering here is what was it that made people stumble upon other RPGs, and made them want to keep playing them. To me, having played many non-D&D RPGs is what marks someone as a "hard core gamer." So, what was your first non-D&D RPG and what made you start playing it?

I started playing role playing games when my much older cousin introduced me to First Edition AD&D playing T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil Solo, mostly. I was so hooked I kept asking him to run games as he stayed at my parents' home during his engineering practicum there.

Then, a few months later, for Christmas, he actually bought for me the Dark Eye Initiation boxed set, and that was my start running games on my own. I recruited players amongst my friends at school and starting running it. Then, I think the first game I bought was Red Box Mentzer D&D, which I also ran around that time.

All this somehow is part of my first RPG experiences.

But really the game that first hooked me outside of the initiation sphere was Hawkmoon. I was looking at the box and its strange illustration regularly when, while visiting my grand mother in the Ardennes, I would walk to a local gaming store in Charlesville Mezieres. The box seemed so intriguing, as well as the supplements. I finally bought it months and months later. And what a formidable game that was...

Quote from: boulet;408622The source might be European folklore but its treatment/filtering/focus feels very American to me.

That's because it is. Very American, that is.

Quote from: boulet;408622The source might be European folklore but its treatment/filtering/focus feels very American to me.

Yeah, interesting point. I'd never thought about it that way, but in a way D&D,  is all about social, economic and geographic mobility which is so fundamentally not what feudalism is all about.  As attitudes go it feels much more Wild West/Pioneer Spirit than Medieval Europe.

The first RPG I ever owned was GURPS 3e Revised Basic Set -- it hooked me with its promise of being generic and universal. I read that sucker cover to cover and played the solo adventure in the back(the one where you pick Dai Blackthorn or that girl who likes shiny things and loot some rich old guy's house while he sleeps) to death.

The first RPG I got to play with real live people, though, was D&D 3.0, back in 2000 when it first came out. If anything, that should have turned me off of role-playing since I still don't like D&D to this day, but somehow I persevered and . . . now I get to play 3.5 and Pathfinder. I don't let the fact that I think the system we're using is stupid stupid stupid get in the way of the fact that I like the guys I play with and playing pretend w/ them. I keep that little bit of info to myself.

Con gaming a few years back is what really hooked me, though. I finally got to go to a big con -- Dragon*Con -- with some friends and we signed up for a few games I never got to try before. Primetime Adventures, Dread(the one with Jenga), Monsters & Other Childish Things, Wushu Renegades, Don't Rest Your Head . . . yeah, some of the best gaming experiences I ever could have hoped for were had. I'm hooked for life.

Quote from: boulet;408637Ain't got no love for Tolkien personally, so I didn't even have that last branch to slow down my fall from D&D flirtation. Notce though that most French gamers don't have the issue I have with D&D tropes.

On the other hand, not all Americans are down with them, really.

Well at some point in France it was actually fashionable to hate on D&D as a retarded, childish, obsolete RPG to play.
I'm sure it still is in some circles.

Champions was my first "alt game" (still love it).  And I love AD&D.  Don't like it?  Go jump in the fucking lake, I say.  And take your "weird fantasy" notes with you, thanks.

Quote from: Soylent Green;408678Yeah, interesting point. I'd never thought about it that way, but in a way D&D,  is all about social, economic and geographic mobility which is so fundamentally not what feudalism is all about.  As attitudes go it feels much more Wild West/Pioneer Spirit than Medieval Europe.

Yo,

I thought it would be better to create a new thread to explore this idea (the cowboy/US mentality in D&D clashing with history) over here.  I liked both threads, so it might do us good to keep em separate.

Quote from: Benoist;408693Well at some point in France it was actually fashionable to hate on D&D as a retarded, childish, obsolete RPG to play.
I'm sure it still is in some circles.

I think we had some of that here too, though. I think that I may even have participated in it a little in the 90's. I can remember particular discussions about how AD&D seemed to have rules in it that were designed to make it less fun, and how we would never play it again. I'm so distant from 1e now the only rule I can remember being extremely frustrated with was the no swords for clerics rule. Especially since, literally, every DM I'd played under felt the need to enforce it. In retrospect, though, my frustration was pretty silly- at least in this case. Oh- this just in- I think alignment is goofy and the hit point/armor  rules suck. Also Hobbits. And... well lots of things.
My current fascination with S&W WB is kind of based around tearing it down and rebuilding it.
Beyond that I could never really dislike 1e as much as I do 3.x, regardless of how fashionable i might appear.

I'd like to know what the exact "American tropes" under discussion here are , though. There are several things about classic D&D that I don't like, but I'm uncertain as to their particular "Americaness."

Quote from: Benoist;408693Well at some point in France it was actually fashionable to hate on D&D as a retarded, childish, obsolete RPG to play.
I'm sure it still is in some circles.

Well, ask about any older player of Das Schwarze Auge...

(The younger ones might not care as they never hear about D&D proper. 3e isn't available anymore, 4e failed in Germany, and they may not connect the D&D = Pathfinder dots. Plus: Pathfinder is published by same publisher as DSA...)

Quote from: Benoist;408693Well at some point in France it was actually fashionable to hate on D&D as a retarded, childish, obsolete RPG to play.
I'm sure it still is in some circles.

As I said before I tried to test the water of D&D gaming every couple of years with different groups and different ruleset. After like a dozen failures I feel confident to say that D&D is just not for me.

When I played in club there wasn't a huge divide between D&D players and others. IMO it was GMs who were married to D&D or not. Some players stuck to D&D but most would at least accept a mini-campaign of L5R, Hawkmoon or whatever was the flavor of the day game once in a while. I never noticed an actual hatred toward the hardcore D&D crowd. Sarcasm and stereotypes? Sure, guilty as charged myself. But we would welcome players whatever they were known to play beforehand. I think in the end gamers I became friend with were those who felt the need to change games and settings at least 3 or 4 times a year. Hardcore D&D folks didn't seem to have this issue at all.

I'm pretty sure it was Gamma World for me. My group and I were still reeling from the high Star Wars gave us, and we were hungry to play a big space opera game. Of course, Gamma World wasn't it, and we quickly found Traveller soon after. Gamma World stuck with us because it was basically compatible with D&D, and allowed us to port over all kinds of high tech stuff. Traveller helped us a bit with the star-hopping we craved. It all quickly melded together into one big conglomeration of a game.

I started with wargames, AH stuff primarily (SL, Rise and Decline & Panzerblitz) and then found (the original?) Chainmail,silver and black cover spiral bound,and was intrigued by the fantasy supplement in the back(being a fantasy lit. freak).AD&D 1ed. was out but I started with CM and then the supp. books Blackmoor etc. Solo play and study. First actual group play was D&D (blue book?) in 80/81. Gobbled up the AD&D books (1st. was MM from Toys R Us!)

Next up Gamma World 1ed., ICE Arms law/claw law supp.,Fantasy Wargaming,Top Secret, Boothill 1st ed., T&T (2/3 ed.?), Elfquest and Traveller...perhaps in that order...I still study as many game systems as I can handle but only run a few select ones, I would gladly play any of the above.

I grew up sometimes playing boardgames with my dad.  Normally mass or near mass market ones.  I read books on monsters and ghosts and aliens, and GOBS of those Choose Your Own Adventure books, many of which were from the Endless Quest series.

In 8th grade (88) I got a Commodore 64 computer and one of the first games I bought for myself was Ultima 1.  

IT KICKED ASS.

As I was doing this, a friend got the D&D Red Box.  Which I didn't get to play because my mother believed the shit she saw on the TV.  (Then again, this is a woman who could be misled by a 13 year old who got held back 3 times into thinking the school was calling.  She was not a bright person.)

But I also fell into the lap of the Crystal Shard novel because it was advertised on the back of a GI Joe comic and it looked cool.

I had my electronics taken away for the spring when much of the latter was happening and somehow I got a TSR Hobby Shop Catalogue in the mail.

My birthday involved me picking up Avalon Hill Runequest and Battletech, though the first RPG I bought I actually cut my teeth on and learned was D6 Star Wars, with sneaking my friend's Red Box books into the house as a second wind.  

A copy of Pool of Radiance on the 64 and showing my parents its not suicide inducing SATAN GAME and she got off my back.