'round here, circa 1992-1994, these were the games that occupied both our own gaming group, and the FLGS game table schedule. In no particular order:

• AD&D 2e (Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms were everyone's favorites, followed by Ravenloft; Greyhawk was obscure, Dark Sun praised but seldom played, and Spelljammer derided).


• BECMI RC (a 1980s Red Box Portuguese translation, intended for the Portuguese market, was probably the first Portuguese-language RPG product, and it introduced a lot of people to RPGs around here).
  
  
• D&D RC (along with BECMI, generally looked down by the AD&D 2e-playing, Dragonlance- or FR-loving majority)


• GURPS (first RPG ever to get a Brazilian Portuguese translation, and very popular on this account; I think it was 2e, with the fucking ugly bald purple androgynous head on the cover; we played Fantasy and Cyberpunk mostly, Supers got translated but didn't really catch on, and Space came along a bit later).


• A couple of local fantasy RPGs (one was a bog-standard fantasy heartbreaker, notable in part for preserving a strong AD&D 1e vibe -- complete with demons/devils and crappy and risqué B&W art -- in the heyday of 2e; the other was actually a fairly interesting game, with players as explorers in a Colonial Brazil, circa 1650, in which myths and beings from European, African and Native folklore were all true).


• MERP.


• Rolemaster (very often played with MERP setting supplements; "RoleMERP" was our shorthand for this).


• Star Wars (WEG/D6, of course, the closest thing to a popular SF game back then).


• Call of Cthulhu (very often talked about, but I didn't get to play it until 1998, I think).


• Shadowrun (came out in 1994, methinks, but never did catch on, at least not with our group or at the FLGS).


• Rifts (only ever heard of 2 people running it, and I was one of them; the other, sadly, was the local catpissman).


• Marvel Superheroes (TSR/FASERIP, of course; very popular with the local comics crowd, Claremont-era X-Men came out in Portuguese at the same time, and were huge around here).
  
  
• DC Heroes (Mayfair/MEGS; considerably less popular, but it did have a following).

Note the absence of Traveller, Runequest, Champions and TMNT&OS, among others. Our gaming scene was funny that way.

The rest, as the say, is history.

B/X D&D
AD&D (1e)
Thieves Guild
RuneQuest
DragonQuest
MERP
Rolemaster (2e)
Hawkmoon (Stormbringer 1e variant)
Call of Cthulhu

World. Of. Darkness.

The 90's was a golden age afaic.

In the eighties, I was in high school and college. We played tons of stuff. Bread and butter was AD&D scattered, scrambled, and fried with Arduin, the Secchi "Compleat" books, and whatever else we found interesting. We also played a bunch of Top Secret, Traveller, and if we wanted girls to play, we broke out Runequest. We tried FGU games whenever we could, but never went with them very long. Champions was popular, but Hero never took off with me until Justice Inc. and Espionage! Superhero games never grabbed me.

In college we diversified into Call of Cthulhu, and would still play lots of D&D and Traveller. I played some Stormbringer and Elfquest. But sometime in college, the Space: 1889 family of games came out. Man--that was it for a while. We played the crap out of it. We had a very large set of campaigns integrating Sky Galleons and the other games. I had only done a little wargaming in high school, but I fell in love with it here. I still love small fleet ocean/sky/space games. That's my favorite outside of roile-playing. But yeah--at school I was inundated with the history and the literature, and the games seemed like a natural response.

The nineties was that after-college, finding stuff to do time. Computers were not ubiquitous. I considered them mostly a nuissance. The internet had not yet metasticized. I moved away from the Space: 1889 group to Colorado Springs, where the combination of military and high tech business had spawned a huge community of gamers. There were a couple nice shops in town, but in 1990, Compleat Games and Hobbies opened, and quickly became the dominant store and the central point in the scene. And Vampire came out, and brought in a huge contingent of new gamers. Magic came out soon after, bringing more. If you put a 3x5 card on the bulletin board at the game store, you would have a group. It was not uncommon to have a regular group, a group for playing Vampire, and a bunch of gamer friends who would show up if you picked up something new to try it out.

For several years after college, I worked erratic hours at several human service jobs, but still had time to do lots of games. Among the different groups, and one short-lived club called The Pheonix Society, we mainly played Arduin, Rolemaster, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, GURPS, Twilight 2000, Call of Cthulhu, Merceneries Spies and Private Eyes, World of Darkness, CORPS, Rifts, and Torg. If someone wanted to break out oddball games like the old Judge Dredd or Buck Rogers or BattleLords of the 25th by god Century, we would. One guy--I forget his name, but he was good at what he did--drove around all the time with plastic file boxes of Marvel Superheros stuff in the trunk of his car and would throw together a game on a moment's notice. We had lots of that.

In the later nineties, we started to sort out according to seriousness. I started working fewer jobs and going to school at night for my special ed. degree. I continued to hang out with the friends I'd made, but we didn't play quite as often. We played lots of Castle Falkenstien, Kult, Nephilim. When Hong Kong Action Theater! came out, we went a little nuts with that and Feng Shui. We started doing our one-shots and con games primarily with GURPS and Fudge. We played lots of Tunnels and Trolls--usually when we were getting together for weddings or reunions or New Year's or what have you and wanted to play something short and fun. I played a lot of Duel. It was my quick-start game for a while. And I really loved Wooden Suits and Iron Men, combining Space: 1889 and BattleTech as it did. In the nineties, I played the hell out of BattleTech and Star Fleet Battles.

And I continued to circulate among my gamer friends and at least try out whatever new thing they were fired up about. So I was exposed to tons of games and steeped in the culture, as I imagine most of you were.  

It's strange to me now, though. I've settled into school teacher life. My youngest child is 18 and largely independent. We have more options for gaming than ever. We have incredible tools for communication. we can play by post and online table and all kinds of crazy stuff--but it feels like it's harder to me to get a game together on short notice than it's ever been.

I know that's largely perception. And this is, by definition, a nostagic thread. Just seems ironic, is all.

In the 80s it was D&D (Basic by Cook & Moldvay), AD&D 1e, and Star Frontiers.   In the 90s it was Hero System/Champions, Mechwarrior, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020, the occasional game of V:TM or NightLife, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play...erm...not sure what else...WH40k but that's hardly an RPG...late late 90s got back in to 1e AD&D (and haven't looked back...or forward as the case may be).

Once I used to join in, ev'ry boy and girl was my friend
Now there's revolution, but they don't know what they're fighting
Let us close our eyes, Beyond their lives go on much faster
Oh no, we won't give in, let's go living in the past

Jethro Tull

-clash

AD&D 1E
AD&D 2E
Gamma World (1st through 3rd)
TMNT + After the Bomb
Cyberpunk
Cyberspace
Spacemaster
Runequest
DC Heroes
Marvel Superheroes
V&V
Rolemaster

I'm sure that I am missing  a few others.

Quote from: VectorSigma;493443Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP).  

For someone to download the rules, have 'em printed up and bound?  That's a helluva holiday present.

heh, I have it one better. I have a three-volume hardcover set that contains ALL of the available online pdfs (so pretty much the entire gameline). Cost a pretty penny, but completely worth it.

For me...

The 80s

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition
Marvel Superheroes
Star Wars D6
Ghostbusters
Swordbearer
Call of Cthulhu
Dragon Warriors
DC Heroes
Mechwarrior
Ars Magica
Chill
Harnmaster
Car Wars
Star Frontiers
ALF: Luncheons & Flagons
Teenagers From Outer Space



The 90s

Prince Valiant
oWoD
Castle Falkenstein
H.O.L.
Tribe 8
Planescape
The Everlasting
Nephilim
Earthdawn
B.E.S.M.
Pendragon
TORG
Kult
Amazing Engine
Everway
Fading Suns
The 23rd Letter
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
Baron Munchhausen (storygame)
Forgotten Futures
7th Sea
Marvel (Saga)
Witchcraft
Unknown Armies
Puppetland
Story Engine
Over The Edge

Quote from: TristramEvans;493556heh, I have it one better. I have a three-volume hardcover set that contains ALL of the available online pdfs (so pretty much the entire gameline). Cost a pretty penny, but completely worth it.

How does one go about acquiring such a thing? I really only want the two advanced books and the FF compendium, but as i said earlier they are very difficult to find out side of ebay.

Quote from: TristramEvans;493557For me...

The 80s

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition
Marvel Superheroes
Star Wars D6
Ghostbusters
Swordbearer
Call of Cthulhu
Dragon Warriors
DC Heroes
Mechwarrior
Ars Magica
Chill
Harnmaster
Car Wars
Star Frontiers
ALF: Luncheons & Flagons
Teenagers From Outer Space



The 90s

Prince Valiant
oWoD
Castle Falkenstein
H.O.L.
Tribe 8
Planescape
The Everlasting
Nephilim
Earthdawn
B.E.S.M.
Pendragon
TORG
Kult
Amazing Engine
Everway
Fading Suns
The 23rd Letter
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
Baron Munchhausen (storygame)
Forgotten Futures
7th Sea
Marvel (Saga)
Witchcraft
Unknown Armies
Puppetland
Story Engine
Over The Edge

I still play most of those games. Fuck, reminds me how out of touch I am with the current trends :eek:

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Aos;493564How does one go about acquiring such a thing? I really only want the two advanced books and the FF compendium, but as i said earlier they are very difficult to find out side of ebay.

PDFs of the entire gameline are all available for free online at http://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/.

I just paid to have them printed and bound to my specifications.

Any printshop will have a variety of options (avoid chains like Kinkos and find an independent one). You could probably get a no-frills spiral bound copy of the main rulebooks & FF companion for under $20.

Quote from: David R;493566I still play most of those games. Fuck, reminds me how out of touch I am with the current trends :eek:

Regards,
David R

Eh, current trends are mostly just new editions of older games I tend not to like as much as the originals (though the recent reprint of Dragon Warriors as a hardcover was pretty sweet, since my paperbacks were all but disintegrating), and FATE games. Cubicle7's Doctor Who and The One Ring are the only new products I've been interested in in a while. ( I guess there's nWoD, but I just got Changeling: The Lost and ignored the others, and even that was a few years ago now.).

I skipped the whole D20 phase. And I tend to be more interested in free online games than what the industry is offering these days.

I missed the 80s though to having been too young then to RP much, but as for the 90s...

Quote from: thedungeondelver;493478Rolemaster

captures it best for me, to the end of that 'era'. The 2011 reprint of Campaign Law (German) is great, because its section on 'the internet' is charmingly out of date - pointing out how slow connections are, that they are pricey if you use them too much, and how you can't expect people to really reply to emails under a day. Those were the days. Not to mention how out of date the whole design is, clunky to the extreme, encounter-centric design nowhere in sight, and as such all the better as a healthy counter balance to most other stuff I play and read these days.

Quote from: TristramEvans;493572Eh, current trends are mostly just new editions of older games I tend not to like as much as the originals (though the recent reprint of Dragon Warriors as a hardcover was pretty sweet,

Yes, that's my favourite 'retro' product too, though as hinted at above, for me it's not about re-discovery of familiar things long missed since.

1980s

- 1E AD&D, Holmes D&D, Moldvay/Cook B/X D&D
- Runequest
- Marvel faserip
- DC (Mayfair)
- Cyberpunk 2013
- GURPS
- Top Secret
- Gamma World

Most of the games besides D&D/AD&D, were short lived campaigns or evening one-shots.


I didn't play any rpg games during the 1990's.