Quote from: thedungeondelver;408703Champions 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.

No U!

So I think the question is, what game led to the realization there were other possibilities besides D&D?

Background: I first played a little white box D&D, then did wargames, then came back to white box D&D while continuing the wargames.

I can't say for sure but the first non-D&D RPGs I probably came across were Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, Traveller, and (the fairly obscure nowadays) High Fantasy. Not sure in what order.

Pretty early on, I noticed that D&D was like the Old West in fantasy drag, but I liked that. What I didn't care for were the class & level system, alignment, armor class, escalating hit points, fire & forget magic, tendency of characters to be differentiated more by their magic items than by anything else. With AD&D, the implied setting also took on too much of a "kitchen sink" feel. High Fantasy (by Jeffrey Dillow, pretty obscure today) addressed some of these concerns, but we didn't play much of it, and I never heard anyone talk about it again until a few years ago.

Instead I think I really became aware of a wider variety of games circa 1980. That was the year Top Secret was published. It was also when SPI printed a large number of capsule reviews of RPGs in Ares magazine and they published Dragonquest. A friend played some DQ combats with me and commented that it was similar to Melee; from there I spent a lot of time with The Fantasy Trip.

I liked TFT because it was basically skill-based, had no alignment, used an "armor absorbs" approach, only had minor hit point growth (and was pretty deadly due to the critical hit rules), and basically used a spell point system. In both the implied world and the published adventures, it also had a more strongly S&S feel, even though it still had elves & dwarves.

I wasn't completely happy with TFT, though, and besides, the publisher disappeared in 1982. So I went back to a different branch of development, looking at Ysgarth (obscure today) and Runequest II. From that point I basically bounced between D&D homebrew variants, percentile games (Harnmaster, Lands of Adventure, Swordbearer, RQ III), and GURPS, before my RPGing petered out in the early-mid 90's. Actual D&D held no interest for me until I got back into the hobby a few years ago.

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?

Dragonlance was the main reason I stayed with D&D, because it provided a template for playing the game that didn't suck ass.  I had only gotten into D&D because of the idea that it's intent was to tell stories like those in a fantasy movie or novel.  I was interested in characters and quests, not the door to door murder/trick or treat which a standard D&D game consisted of before Dragonlance.

So, Dragonlance turned it around for me, and gave me something I could point to and say that I found entertaining about D&D.

TSR's Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) was my 4th game.  Even though I had SPI's Universe and GDW's Traveller before MSH, MSH was the first game which really seemed aimed at ME.  It was about subject matter I liked.  The mechanics were somewhat emulative.  And the game just seemed to "get" the idea of playing superheroes.

There was a string of really strong RPG stuff in the mid/late 80s.  MSH began it's run and was heavily supported at the time.  Ghostbusters amazed us with how awesome it was.  Mekton II arrived and fixed everything that was wrong with the first edition and improved itself in every way.  Finally, Star Wars d6 came along and was probably the greatest thing I had ever seen.

So, I think that's what kept me gaming: Dragonlance combined with a steady stream of games which embraced the idea of characters, story, and genre emulation in areas where I was already a fan of the subject material.

I came to the hobby through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. I then played Heroes Unlimited for a bit. RC D&D was the third rpg I played.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;408788So I think the question is, what game led to the realization there were other possibilities besides D&D?

Around the same time I picked up the D&D black box, the Portuguese translation of GURPS 2e was released, and a local company put out the two first Brazilian RPGs: Tagmar (a fantasy heartbreaker) and Desafio dos Bandeirantes (a fantasy game set in a mythic version of Colonial Brazil, circa AD 1650).

Tagmar appealed to me because it was darker and grittier than TSR's then bowdlerised output. It had demons, and necromancers, and tits. Horribly drawn tits, but tits all the same.

In a few months I was playing a few other games (Star Wars, MERP, Call of Cthulhu) and reading Dragon magazines... in one of which I read this enthralling ad which told me, with bullet-points, about this awesome game that was post-apocalyptic, and cyberpunk, and fantasy, and horror, all rolled in one. And it was topped by a badass skull-faced robot. Shit, I was 14, how could I resist? And thus started my love affair with Rifts.

The next year, White Wolf came to town, with the Portuguese translation of Vampire: The Masquerade 2e. This coincided with the break-up of my original group, and a gaming hiatus of two years. I returned to gaming by way of the LARP craze, which put me in contact with great people who also loved good, old-fashioned tabletop gaming. Soon enough I was dusting off the old books, and the rest (as they say) is history.

I played one game of (Basic & Expert) D&D in my final year at high school. A friend of mine had just bought this new cult American game and we gathered back at his place to try it out. It made no sense at all but even I was intrigued. The others, not so much and we never talked about it again.

And that was it for ten years or so. In that time I'd moved countries, went to college and got a job. And then it so happened one day I decided to check out a local gaming club. I was found room in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game and over the next weeks we played the Shadow over Bogenhaven adventure. After that we moved on to Star Wars D6 and lots of other games.  

I'm not sure when I next played D&D or variant of. I remember at one point there was one guy who joined are circle who would literally only run AD&D, but until D&D 3e that seemed to be more the exception than the rule.

What is kind of funny is that many years later I met up with this old high school friend again. When I told him I was now regularly playing roleplaying games he gave me the original copies of Basic and & Expert D&D, the very we'd one played that one time all those years ago and he hadn't touched since.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;408788So I think the question is, what game led to the realization there were other possibilities besides D&D?

Yeah, that was my understanding of the original post, too.

D&D Holmes Edition was my RPG intro. Gamma World, as I mentioned above, was my first non-D&D RPG. Before RPGs, I was attempting to play some wargames. Avalon Hill's "Panzer Leader" was my first real wargame after playing various 70s-era games like Sub Search and Carrier Strike.

I was sort of aware of a larger world of RPGs by the early 80s. I found Call of Cthulhu and Dragonquest by then. I was astonished to find an even bigger world of RPGs when I got my first Judges Guild catalog, in which they sold RuneQuest and other games.

Runequest for me... I'd been playing AD&D but complaining how I didn't like classes and levels and alignments and someone suggested RQ...
One read through and I was hooked.
I actually didn't get to play that much RQ though because shortly after I read it and played several games Call of Cthulhu came out and since I was a huge Lovecraft fan I jumped ship over to that... and Stormbringer shortly afterward to satisfy the continuing urge for fantasy.

My gateway was cartoons.  My 10-year-old friends and I were mad about He-Man, the D&D cartoon and Dragon's Lair, so a teacher who'd done a bit of D&D ran some Red Box Basic with us, and we were hooked.

So, technically Red Box, but it was an offshoot of enthusiasm for toons.

and now to actualy answer the OP (failed to do so back @ #29)...
I was exposed to other games by reading Dragon Magazine and seeing them at the hobby store.
Like learning to read it all starts with "Dick & Jane" stuff which just opens the door...variety is the spice of life!

I liked Gammaworld (my first non D&D/fantasy game) for it's similarity to D&D (easy to play) and all the strangeness got my creative gears a turn'n, it sure was a blast! IMO a bit more tongue in cheek but encouraging a wide variety of situations and genre crossing.

Started with original D&D. Dad bought a copy at Gygax's store when we lived in Chicago and he would go to the store some weekends to meet up and play miniatures. I was 8 at the time and my first time to play was probably comparable to a crack-head's first hit.

A few years later a friend of my fathers started to run Chivalry and Sorcery (red book) using the members of dad's gaming group. I really fell for C&S and it's detailed magic system (I've always been partial to magic users).

Finally, when we moved from Chicago to a new town I was old enough to hang out a gaming store and play with my own crowd while dad played miniatures (his first love). At that point I played my first game of RuneQuest and became a Chaosium convert. After that I pretty much started picking up any game that interested me. Even if I never plan to run it, I at least want to read it.

Kind of related...are there any games you miss or wish were more widely played now. I find myself getting nostalgic for The Fantasy Trip. I always admired that system and might one day dust off my copy and run it again.

Moldvay Basic and Fighting Fantasy got me started. Later came Dragon Warriors, RQ and WFRP. These days I'm running DW, planning for Swords & Wizardry and digging OpenQuest, so in a sense I've come full circle.

Got into it after reading Dragon Lance. I told this guy in my kenpo class about the book, and he invited me to their game.

We also played a log of tmnt and rifts. Those are all still my favorite games.

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;408884Kind of related...are there any games you miss or wish were more widely played now. I find myself getting nostalgic for The Fantasy Trip. I always admired that system and might one day dust off my copy and run it again.

I wish Mekton II and Z had gotten a lot more attention and play in the broader world.