What's Your Secret Origin Story?

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TristramEvans

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So, what got you started in role playing? I'm sure each of us has a tale. That first time encountering funky dice, our first gaming group, the first time you cracked the cover of an RPG book and encountered that strange blend of imagination and mathematics...

Here is mine...

In my 8th year my family made the move from the small suburban town of Kingston, Ontario to the small rural town of Kensington, Pennsylvania. It was here that I made three close friends (not including the girl next door , Carrie-Ann, who always came by wanting to "hang out"); Chris, David, and Seth. And it was these friends that introduced me to RPGs.

I'd been aware of Dungeons & Dragons before that point, though primarily as a Saturday Morning cartoon and toy line. I'd had a friend in Ontario who owned the Red Box, but even though I expressed an interest in playing, he'd always say that he needed his father to "make the maps" or something or other I didn't quite understand, and we'd go back to playing with our He-man or Star Wars action figures. Or M.U.S.C.L.E.s. Thus, my introduction to RPGs didn't come at the hand of that ubiquitous system, rather Chris Thunderberg's copy of a new game called Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

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I was fascinated from the first moment I held it in my hands. Though raised on a steady diet of Arthurian legends, fairy tales, and even Tolkien, I'd never encountered anything like this. It was visceral, Germanic, dark and fascinating. The book was dripping with illustrations, violent and full of black humour. A whole new world rested between those pages. Once, once, I convinced Chris to let me borrow the book overnight. I still remember reading that introductory story on the first few pages, as a group of adventurers encountered lizardmen in chasms beneath the earth. Chris would run small adventures for us during the lunch hour at school, beneath an old tree in the far corner of the school yard. We coudln't use dice, because they weren't allowed by the teacher for some reason, but we didn't need any, it was just a "choose your own adventure" taking place in our shared imagination. I still recall my first character: "Redbolt", a pit fighter (I wanted to play a Chaos Warrior after seeing the illustration of one fighting a Jabberwocky in the book, but Chris said I couldn't be one of those until I got to a much higher level).

From then on I launched a steady campaign of pestering my mother for a copy of the book. The problem was the closest store that sold that sort of thing was about an hour's drive away. And my mom was not the type to go out of her way for such nonsense. But, my ability to be annoying eventually prevailed. The store was located on the top floor of a small building, once probably a small apartment building, but now converted into a sort of mini-mall. A used bookstore took up most of the first floor. Up some wooden stairs that had forgotten what varnish was several decades prior, at the back of a old, musty hallway, across from a small shop selling goth clothing and costumes, was a tiny room, largely taken up by a gametable in the middle. Bookcases lined one wall, packed with gamebooks and boxes, while 2 other walls were lined with various miniatures, as well as bags of dice. A stuffed dragon adorned the counter with an archaic register. The man behind it was an older fellow, with a grey beard, who eyed us somewhat suspiciously. A mother and her young child was not a welcome site in gaming shops in those days, though when she explained to him what we were looking for, he seemed to get in better mood. No random tourist was I, looking for Teddy Ruxpins or Cabbage Patch Dolls.

Of course, I didn't wait for him to provide directions, my eyes locked in on the spine of the book within moments of entering, and I feverishly ripped it from the shelf, clasping it in joy. I then wandered in amazement taking in as much as I could of the other products around the place before my mother's patience wore thin. The man helpfully explained to my mother that I would need certain dice, and he provided a small felt bag to go with them. I tried to convince her to let me get a miniature as well, but she said something about another parent (Chris's mom I think) warning her about lead, and I didnt want to push my luck that day. But the man behind the counter slipped a copy of a Ral Partha catalogue into the bag for me, and gave me a wink.

I have no further memory of that week, as I was lost in that book.
 
I was first introduced to roleplaying when I was 10 years old. My brother (who was 16) invited me along to play a game with him and some of his friends. This was the summer of 1981, and I'd never heard of Dungeons & Dragons before that point.

Without much introduction, we started rolling up characters. And when I happened to roll an 18 Wisdom, I was told that I was going to be a cleric - whatever that meant. After buying equipment, our adventure began with the exploration of a fungal forest, and a delve into a dungeon. I recall our party crawling through tight caverns, and evading bands of troglodytes. At the end of the session, my character found a staff of healing in a treasure pile, and immediately leveled up.

That was the only time I played D&D with my brother's friends, but the experience lit a spark. That fall, I saw various Rpg boxed sets for sale in the Montgomery Ward catalog, and I begged my mother to buy me them for Xmas. That Xmas, I unwrapped the Moldvay Basic D&D book, and the Star Frontiers boxed set. When I learned that a neighbor-friend had also got a copy of D&D, my gaming started in earnest.
 
I was 12 and peripherally aware of the existence of tabletop RPGs via a bunch of kids who played at school during recess but never let me in. (Fuck these guys.)

A few months later a local paper ran a big feature on roleplaying games (it was the popularity "boom" of RPGs here in Brazil, in the early 1990s) and I voiced my interest. Soon my dad got me the D&D Introductory Game "black box" and by Christmas I was pestering him for the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. The rest, as they say, is history.
 
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Was living in London as a tween.
Discovered the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf choose-your-own adventure game books at the local library. Hooked.

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Watched my older French cousin play and finish Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. Daydreamed about writing a Zelda style choose-your-own-adventure book.

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Mentioned this daydream to him during a game of Magic: The Gathering (which he also introduced me to).
He said I should just try RPGs. He explained them to me. Gave me one of his old graph paper fantasy region maps (still have it). Nowadays, neither of us can remember what system he used to play with.

Anyway, fucking stoked. I go looking for a system. I grab the Fighting Fantasy basic tabletop system (the one with the were-tiger on it) because that's what I'm familiar with (and what's in stores, didn't see any D&D until I started visiting the Orc's Nest later). Run the hell out of it with my brothers as players. Then graduate to the more advanced Fighting Fantasy tabletop system:

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Around this time I also discover Games Workshop stuff. Cross-pollination predictably occurs. Good times.

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Guys in late elementary school were passing a copy of A2 around the lunchroom table. I'd never seen nor heard of this, so I asked if I could have a gander. It looked like a comic book, but wasn't. The dialog was written in 3rd person future tense, and talked about "players" doing one thing or the other. I remember seeing things about traps and secret doors, goblins and hiding out in stables...I had to have MORE.

So I asked what it was, and they explained. Didn't grasp it. But, nattering my parents, I got a copy of B2 and some dice. My choice of module was quite serendipitous: there's enough information in B2 that a clever person can grasp some of the basics of the rules, and thus away I went. I didn't have proper rulebooks for a couple more years! But I ran adventure after adventure in B2. The next RPG I played was Champions (version 1). Didn't have a clue! Then played AD&D for about a year or so. By then Unearthed Arcana had come out; my sister was playing a cavalier who was just wicked awesome with lance and bow, as I recall.

I laid off gaming for a couple years during high-school; when I got back in to it in my first years in college (89 or so) I put D&D aside and played Champions 4e, any "giant robot" game I could get my hands on, Rolemaster, MERP, some Star Trek RPG...but none of the other guys were interested in playing AD&D. Most (but not all) of my AD&D stuff went to a used bookstore for beer money.

From '90 onward I had a usual gaming group of one type or another. Then in '99, I got the itch to play AD&D 1e again. I heard that a new version was coming out, and when I saw the books on the store shelf I was intrigued, but it was too different from what I'd known and loved. Wanting to recapture that feeling I had when I first started playing, I got on Paul Stormberg's "Treasure Trove" USENET auction and bought a set of books, and a set of modules. I traded a softback Cyberpunk:2020 rulebook for a copy of Deities & Demigods, unexpurgated. I started finding those things like I was a Katamari...just roll over one and it'd stick to me (I sold off all but 2 in like 2011 or so to pay for a "staycation". At $45 a pop we had a nice day at Disney including a dinner :smile: ). But back to "then". I ran what would eventually become DD1 for my wife. I started up a few different groups with co-workers, and we had a ball. On a lark, in 2000 or so, I sent an email to "ggygax@genevaonline.com" or something and...heard back! That started up many years of correspondence between Gary and I. I eventually interviewed him for my website (you can find the text of it on my 'blog), I uh...what else...oh, I met him in 2004, worked for TLG during that time writing for him. Never got anything published. He died and Gail took back all the rights to Yggsburgh and that was that. The crowning achievement was working on Teeth of the Barkash Nour, which if you have a DMG handy, look up "Teeth of the Dalhver Nahr" - that's basically what they began as. I've seen original Castle Greyhawk notes, folks! :smile:

That should've been posthumously published by TLG, but, again, due to someone's perfidy (not Gail's, but someone close to Gary who tried to steal the whole project for himself...let's just say...if you've played D&D during the 80s you have probably held a product by this person), it did not come to fruition.

But I persevere, and...well, here I am.
 
So I was a pretty big comic book fan and I kept seeing ads from one of those mail order catalogs in comics for something called the "X-Men Campaign Set". (This was 7th grade or so.)

I caved and ordered it, being a huge X-Men fan, as well as the boxed set that followed it, not realizing they were supplements for the Marvel FASERIP RPG. It all looked intriguing as Hell and I kept making up games to play with the included stats, maps and cardboard stand ups, until I got to high school.

In high school, I made friends with a couple of guys who used to play D&D (not together), and one of them owned the AD&D2e core books. I asked to borrow them, read up on them, and started running a game (part sandbox, part story, as I drew up a crude map with various points of interest, but also dropped a quest on them - specifically, slaying a medusa, because I was a big fan of the Perseus story from Greek myth).

Within a few months of running AD&D2e, I walked into my first comic and game shop (before then I got all my comics at supermarkets, Wal-Mart, convenience stores, etc), and found the Marvel Superheroes Advanced set and bought it, so I could finally use those X-Men boxed sets for what they were intended to be used for.

Been at it ever since.
 
I can't exactly remember where I first saw a roleplaying game. It was probably one of three options: it was an AD&D book a student in our elementary school brought in one day, it was an ad in a comic book, or it was at the Hobby Center at our local mall. I remember quite vividly that the store at the mall had a (to a 10 year old anyway) huge rack where it kept all sorts of AD&D books, Marvel Super Heroes books, and other boxed sets. It was like RPG heaven to a kid that age. I loved looking at the cover of the Marvel books. I remember seeing that Art Adams cover for the Children of the Atom X-Men sourcebook like it was yesterday. They had minis, the whole nine yards. The BD Booksellers upstairs also had a three foot wide section top to bottom with RPG books, including quite a few of those old Mayfair Role-Aids products. That's how much RPG product bookstores carried back then.

The first game I bought was either DC Heroes or Marvel Super Heroes. I'm not sure which was first, but I played Marvel Super Heroes with a friend of mine at the local library. I think we played the module that came with it. I was getting into the Lone Wolf choose-your-own adventure books around that time too. I would also peruse the local library's collection of AD&D books. I particularly liked looking through the Deities & Demigods book and marveling at the statistics for Thor and the other gods. 399 Hit Points!? I ended up borrowing a copy of the Mentzer boxed set from a kid at school and ran through the solo adventure with my own character. I didn't have a group to play in, so a lot of times I used either my younger brother or cousins as my players.

The 1980s were a great era to grow up in and the RPGs at the time were a part of that experience. Wouldn't trade that in for anything.
 
It was '78 or '79 when I saw this in a hobby shop:
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By the time I finally managed to get approval, after a couple years of pestering, it had turned into this:
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I opened it up, flipped to the title page of the first book:
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and the rest was history. I read it, rolled up a couple of characters, started playing right there. I got Advanced, discovered Dragon magazine, found Warhammer and Star Frontiers and dozens of others, but Moldvay Basic is the magical one.
 
It was fighting fantasy books that lured me in. Our English class had a scheme where we had to take a book out of the library each half-term (so 6 per year) and they had just taken possession of the first 3 FF books. I took out City of Thieves and then started talking to friends about it. A guy at school was selling what he called 'like the game-books, but more complicated' and for the royal sum of £8 i bought it. What i got was MERP and i spent the summer rolling up characters before i learned that some other folk at school played something 'almost the same as MERP'.

I went to something called 'a session' and was given funny looking dice. This was ad&d and my very first character i rolled was a Ranger and with my very first character i remember being hugely disappointed when i was told to roll a d100 for something called 'exceptional strength' and got zero. That's two 0's on a d100. The GM put me right and said that's the highest you can get 100!

Never rolled a natural 100 for exceptional strength since in innumerable tries. My Ranger, who i named Gilzean only made 2nd level before he croaked, but i was hooked.
 
I was getting into the Lone Wolf choose-your-own adventure books around that time too.

It saddens me a little that it took so long for a bona fide Lone Wolf tabletop system to come around. I would have been all over it as a kid.

By the way, quick reminder that all the Lone Wolf books are free and legal to read online here (with the art scanned in):
https://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books
 
Yeah, I know the site well. I played through the first five books over a couple days. I lost my save after. Thats OK because those were my favorite books anyway and it was the journey to get the Sommersword that rocked.

The spin-off series Greystar is worth a look if you like playing magicians.
 
A friend of mine bought red box D&D when I was 11 or 12. My first character got killed by the first monster he encountered. Soon I was onto AD&D, Runequest, WFRP, Cyberpunk 2020, MERP, Rolemaster, so on and so forth.
 
My experiences echo others here, for sure. But here's my spin on it.

While my father happily shared the Hobbit with me as a child, he wasn't into any of the games in the 80s. But he set me on the right path, for sure.

I can't remember what came first: getting Hero Quest (by Milton Bradley) at Christmas or acquiring my first Fighting Fantasy books. As a family, we played Hero Quest every week. My folks wanted to encourage my creativity, I think (and of course, it was a great excuse for consistent family time).

Somehow I eventually discovered Warhammer Fantasy Battle (2nd or 3rd edition... whichever it was in the early 90s). Then I found WFRP 1e.

Funny thing about that game: my mother was hyper religious and thought D&D was wholly evil. But somehow I managed to convince her to buy me WFRP. Early gaming was a form of creative expression, escapism and rebellion against... well everything.

I still remember my early teenage self getting a strange, forbidden thrill reading the Demonic and Necromantic spell lists, listening to Metallica's Master of Puppets and oogling the evil sorceress in this illustration:

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It was a combination of everything that I was told was evil in the world. As a socially ostracised geek who wasn't even smart enough to be a nerd, I kind of embraced it all.

I still have a soft spot for Metal music, sassy sorceresses and old school Warhammer art. All cheesy stuff, I'll grant you, but oh well.
 
Funny thing about that game: my mother was hyper religious and thought D&D was wholly evil. But somehow I managed to convince her to buy me WFRP.

I fucking love stories of people exploiting parental myopia. :grin:

"What is this thing you are trying to buy!? Is it that satanic game Dungeons & Dragons!?"

"No, it's a book called Vampire: The Masquerade."

"Oh, like those Bela Lugosi films? Ok, sounds fine to me..."

NOTE: I didn't personally have this experience, just repeating it.
 
That's one thing about West End Games that doesn't get mentioned often, the cover it gave to kids for roleplaying with the Star Wars RPG. What parent isn't going to let you play a game based on the movie they just took you to?
 
It was '78 or '79 when I saw this in a hobby shop:
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That's the first D&D I ever saw as well... on the shelves of The Last Grenadier in... Van Nuys I think... next to a lot of other weird looking stuff. I'd dragged my mom in there because I thought it was a toy store... and I loved the miniatures... and the odd hairy guy at the counter who talked about them like they were alive.
That D&D box art stuck in my head... and later on I heard about it as a game that college kids were playing... which added to the mystique. Near the end of High School I finally met some guys who were playing AD&D... and I badgered them till they let me come over and play.
 
I joked about this on therpgsite, but it's pretty close to the truth.

I got into RPGs because of the Satanic Panic.

I was growing up in the rural South, and when the SP hit, it hit hard. People lost their damn minds.

Anyone could be a secret satanist. There were cults everywhere, performing dark rituals in hidden grottos in the woods, in hidden caves near the river, or in the cellars of abandoned houses. They were trading their immortal souls for infernal power.

And all I could think was, "I gotta get in on that!"

Given that Satan was speaking to America's youth through hair metal (oh, you naive little fools) and TTRPGs, I decided this was the way to go. Metal was out, as my parental units would detect that immediately. So, instead, I chose TTRPGs.

I manged to get to the mall to pick up this thing called Dungeons & Dragons (it was DESTROYING our youth), but alas, it was out of stock that day.

But they had this:

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So, I'm like eleven, or something. All I saw was reddish-blonde curls, legs, and guns. So yeah, I picked it up, and ran the crap out of that game for years.

So, SF was my gateway drug, my first RPG crush. It led me to other games: AD&D, FASERIP Rifts, Vampire the Masquerade, and much later, Amber, which became my bread and butter game. I ran that almost exclusively for nearly a decade before I dropped out of gaming all together.

I'd pick it back up around 2012, though. I began looking for new games, figuring out what I liked and what I hated, developing my GM style, and getting to know the online TTRPG scene: RPG.net, then theRPGsite, and now here.
 
Was Star Frontiers still being published in the late 80s? I never saw it in a bookstore.
 
My RPG hobby actually goes back to computer RPG's. When I was younger, in the 6th grade I believe, I played the hell out of Icewind Dale on PC. I also read over the rulebook that came with the game, which actually was fairly informative on the rules system behind the game and the idea of tabletop roleplaying.

That summer I was at my grandmother's apartment and a young airman that lived above her was moving, his wife was largely pregnant and he needed an extra set of hands so he gave me a 10 dollar bill for helping move boxes. He had binder after binder of this homebrew D&D setting and tons of old 2nd edition hardbacks, I remember the cover of the Monstrous Compendium specifically jumping out at me.

I approached the idea of getting some D&D books with my mom but she shot it down for religious reasons. Fast forward a couple of years later and I make friends with these new kids in my apartment complex. Their dad is a really cool guy lets the older brother run a short 3rd edition campaign for us. Of course I had to sneak over under the guise of playing video games because my mother would have flipped if she found out we were playing D&D.
 
I wish Star Frontiers had been a part of my adolescence rather than something I studied wistfully as a museum piece later.

To be honest, you didn't miss much, looking back, it wasn't a particularly good scifi game. Not surprised it went caput while Traveler carries on.
 
Was Star Frontiers still being published in the late 80s? I never saw it in a bookstore.
No, I don't think so. If I recall correctly, Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space was the final release, and that came out in 1986. That was pretty much its death-knell, and TSR then focused its effort towards the Buck Rogers Rpg. SF had about a 5 year run, and there was some quality material released for it.

I think that Star Frontiers definitely had some popularity in the early-ish 80s, when it was available through mail-order-catalogs, like many of TSR's other boxed set releases (Boot Hill, Gamma World, Gangbusters, etc.). It may never have had the popularity of Traveller, but it was and still is a blast to play. There's still a very productive and active fanbase for SF.
 
I discovered Star Frontiers in '92. Had a blast playing it with friends. I had one of the blob aliens as my character. I would have to reread the system now to know what I think of it as a game overall, but that experience with that particular group of friends was some of my best times as a player.
 
Star Frontiers was the bomb. Was kind of hard to get all the stuff limited to Covina Book Shop, Covina Hobby Shop and Waldenbooks, but then we discovered the wonders of the Last Grenadier...
 
I went to stay at my cousins and they were playing D&D. They were playing Against The Giants and they let me run Phoebus from Rogue's Gallery. One of their friends had just picked up the Monster Manual which was new at the time. It was 1979 and I'd just read Lord of the Rings and had loved the mythology unit in school and I was hooked.
 
When I was in 4th or 5th grade my oldest brother came home from college with a drafting tube. He had five huge sheets of graph paper in there that he kept hidden from me. I pestered him about it, and he explained that if I wanted to know what was in there I'd have to adventure to find out.

My cousin and I rolled up characters based on what he told us to do. I was a magic user, he was a fighter. We fought some stirges, and I was hooked.

I kept my character sheet on two pages of loose leaf paper, folded once lengthwise, in a shoebox with a pencil.

Later that summer I got us both burned to a crisp because I thought I could fast talk the dragon that lived on level 3 out of some sort of magic wand or staff.

So. very. hooked.
 
My older brother DMed for my friends and his friends. He was a great DM and a killer DM. He had a special initiative system from Dragon Magazine.I usually played a halfling thief and a harpy came out and charmed everyone to sleep but me. I rolled great on initiative and got two attacks, hit twice, and did 11 damage, enough to kill the harpy and save everyone. My brother was totally okay with the outcome.

On the other hand, I once made it all the way to 4th level. Then my brother's girlfriend dumped him and he TPKed us with a 100 crossbow wielding bandits. His buddy flipped the table and wrestled my brother to the ground to administer nuggies. Good times. Back when DMing was full contact sport.

The first game I GMed was Gamma World 1E. I just remember the four-handed sword and lots of mutations. And the crazy tech charts.

I inherited my brother's AD&D 1E screen. It still has holes in it from when my friends chucked the sharp d4s at me.

I really do like gaming. Glad I don't have to dodge thrown dice anymore though.:smile:
 
Extremely simple: older brother and his friends were playing D&D or maybe AD&D or a mishmash of both, circa 1981-1982, I got roped in, maybe they needed another player, and it was fun, then we got a hold of Star Frontiers and Gangbusters and so it goes.
 
Extremely simple: older brother and his friends were playing D&D or maybe AD&D or a mishmash of both, circa 1981-1982, I got roped in, maybe they needed another player, and it was fun, then we got a hold of Star Frontiers and Gangbusters and so it goes.

What was gangbusters like? I hear so few stories of actual play.
 
What was gangbusters like? I hear so few stories of actual play.
Well, this was around 35 years ago but I remember we were all gangsters and nobody had any interest in being FBI or, for the love o' Mike, a reporter!. Lots of booze smuggling and Tommy gun chatter and inter-mob rivalry and plotting. Haven't played it in a long time now.
 
Nothing too exciting, one of my older brothers got the Red Box, either as a gift or with his newspaper money, and he roped me and another brother into playing B2.

All three of us were drawn into playing between us scouring bookstores, thrift shops and comic stores we secured a pretty significant collection of Basic, AD&D, B/X and Star Frontiers books. I got back into D&D in my later teens with my circle of nerdy metalheads and wannabe punks. From there we discovered Cyberpunk 2020, CoC, Pendragon and Vampire. Got burned out on creeps, powergamers and excessive crunch in my early 20s.
 
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I think I started in 1980, maybe 79, with AD&D. It was definitely before high school. I remember we dabbled a bit with the red book basic, and blue expert, both of which came out in '81. We also dabbled with Gamma World and Star Frontiers and Villains & Vigilantes and Palladium Fantasy. In my first year of high-school I used to play a fair amount of freeform at lunch in the cafeteria - no rules or dice, just players who said what they did and a GM who said what happened and ran NPCs.

I remember a bunch of modules from that era: Keep on the Borderlands, Village of Hommlet, Tower of Inverness, Tomb of Horrors, slaves, and lizards, and White Plume Mtn and the Giants, and Barrier Peaks and more. I had a subscription to Dragon through the early '80s. From 82-84 I was more or less on the TRS treadmill. The first module I ever bought was The Village of Hommlet in or around 1980. The last one I bought was The Temple of Elemental Evil in 1985, which I remember being immensely disappointed by after such a long wait. That was pretty much it for me and D&D.

Shortly after my posse and I discovered Call of Cthulhu, then Warhammer and Talislanta and Ars Magica as they emerged, and those are mainly what we played through the late 80s. In the early 90's it was Ars Magica and RuneQuest with a smattering of other things. The games from this period are still my favourite.
 
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Forgot to say, also, that circa 1984 we had access to a comic book store that also carried a ton of role-playing games and magazines. I remember seeing pretty much every game I've ever heard of at one time or another, not that I had the money to acquire them all, but I certainly picked them up and looked them over. I remember buying Golden Heroes (Games Workshop) boxed set there because at the time I was reading super hero comic books (great era for that) and the game packaging cleverly looked like a comic book even down to the fake UPC codes on the booklets. That was a fun game and pretty innovative with the rules for reputation, investigation , public perception, etc. I still have it as well as both the modules for it. I wouldn't mind playing it again some time. It's really good for lower-scale super heroes, that is, guys around the level of the Thing or Spider-Man or Johnny Human Torch.
 
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In 5th grade a friend of mine introduced me to Gamma World, but then he moved away.
Next year a friend introduced me to Becmi. Had basic and expert sets. He was the gm, I was the only player. He described how easy it was to die and that clerics could restore those precious hit points. I played a cleric. I didnt make it one hex out of specularum before I died, but i've been playing the healer ever since. Even in ffxi and ffxiv i've been healers.
In 7th grade I found basic and expert sets at goodwill for a buck each and convinced my parents to pick it up for me. Finished buying the rest of becmi, and then transitioned directly to 2e. Started GMing and have been the GM for my groups almost exclusively for 3 decades. By the time darksun and spelljammer and the monstrous compendiums and 'The complete ??? handbook's came out we realized AD&D was a money mill and kinda bailed on it. Switched to palladium's heroes unlimited, then rifts, which lasted forever and yes, eventually turned into another revenue generating book mill. New systems came and went (fasa... storyteller... white wolf... fate... cyberpunk 2020, vtm...) , but nothing really pulled us away from palladium.
When all my gaming buddies moved away there was a dry spell of a few years where I did more amtguard than tabletop, joined a new group that gave me some experience with d20, d20 modern, 3e, 3.5, pathfinder, and warhammer 2e. I introduced them to palladium and we've done a dozen superhero or rifts or dead reign zombie campaigns with it.
And that brings me to where I am today.
 
I couldn't tell you the first time I played D&D. I know it involved the Holmes edition and would have to have been in 1977 when I was 5 or 6 years old. My older brothers must have purchased it and needed another player. Lacking any suitable options they picked me. It helped that my middle brother had some artistic talent and made maps I just wanted to explore. Probably simultaneously my best friends cousins introduced him to D&D. We loved it. A year later an older but geeky kid would move to our neighborhood and life would be semi complete.

The three of us and occasionally his sister would play AD&D, board games and program/play computers for the next six or seven years. The older kid started to tapper off with us as his interest in girls increased and being seen with four year younger kids didn't help. But he helped keep me and my best friend on a good path.

Late grade school and middle school would see the addition of five more boys my age interested in computers and RPGs. This is where variety became king. One guy loved sci fi. Through him I got exposed to Traveller LBB boxed set, Mechanoids Invasion trilogy, Aftermath!, Gamma World and randomly Rolemaster first and second edition. Spacemaster too. Oh and he's the one who introduced Runequest 2nd edition. Probably others I'm forgetting. Don't hold the introduction of Aftermath against him he's a good guy really.
He brought with him a friend more into computers but was a hell of a good sport going along and playing whatever we asked with verve. I miss that trait in people.

Another pair of brothers would move to the neighborhood and introduce us to the FGU line of games starting with V&V. I should have realized he was going to be a pain in the ass when he kept showing up with FGU product but I was young and stupid. An entire life of overly complicated games with very few redeeming qualities. Still they gamed with us and despite the older brother constantly making pain in the ass assassin hiding as a cavalier or otherwise talking in a dark husky voice we had fun. Usually by killing him on sight. Ah the good times. They moved away and forgot some of their RPG stuff. Everyone was happy.

I got into Champions around this time and that's about the only game we played where I was the usual referee. Normally it was my best friend. He ran us all through Temple of elemental evil one summer playing five days a week probably a good eight hours a day. Best campaign ever. I miss that group.

Through most of this time we had a local hobby shop in the mall. I carried trains, models miniatures, RPGs and probably some esoteric board games. I know that's where I bought all my Task Force games, microgames, metagames and heritage games products. Great store. I might have cried when it shut down.
Fortunately at about that time my dad opened an office in Seattle half a block from American Eagles. This store was large and the owner was an odd ball German fellow who I swear just bought one of friggin everything someone sold in the RPG department. I'd go there on weekends with my dad so he could work and it was like someone asking you if you wanted to go to heaven for few hours. Um hell yes! I'd get game stuff and then get to go up to an engineering office and draw on graph paper, play around on high end computers and have unlimited access to a photocopier. Life was good. I think k my dad has always felt bad he had to work so much while I was in my middle years as opposed to doing scouting like he did with my older brothers. But I thought he was the greatest and who wants to camp when you can photocopy character sheets and build Champions characters uninterrupted for hours? Screw scouting! (Not seriously I think it's a pretty good organization that's just slow to adjust to the times)
Well that leads to the college years. I wasted those chasing girls. Honestly I should have just kept gaming and being geeky me because I never pulled off cool me.
Geeky me got a good job in software. Open source software was it and hey look D&d is back and open source! Let's do this! The rest is history.
 
In 5th grade a friend of mine introduced me to Gamma World, but then he moved away.
Next year a friend introduced me to Becmi. Had basic and expert sets. He was the gm, I was the only player. He described how easy it was to die and that clerics could restore those precious hit points. I played a cleric. I didnt make it one hex out of specularum before I died, but i've been playing the healer ever since. Even in ffxi and ffxiv i've been healers.
In 7th grade I found basic and expert sets at goodwill for a buck each and convinced my parents to pick it up for me. Finished buying the rest of becmi, and then transitioned directly to 2e. Started GMing and have been the GM for my groups almost exclusively for 3 decades. By the time darksun and spelljammer and the monstrous compendiums and 'The complete ??? handbook's came out we realized AD&D was a money mill and kinda bailed on it. Switched to palladium's heroes unlimited, then rifts, which lasted forever and yes, eventually turned into another revenue generating book mill. New systems came and went (fasa... storyteller... white wolf... fate... cyberpunk 2020, vtm...) , but nothing really pulled us away from palladium.
When all my gaming buddies moved away there was a dry spell of a few years where I did more amtguard than tabletop, joined a new group that gave me some experience with d20, d20 modern, 3e, 3.5, pathfinder, and warhammer 2e. I introduced them to palladium and we've done a dozen superhero or rifts or dead reign zombie campaigns with it.
And that brings me to where I am today.
Ooh...Heroes Unlimited...I actually have a soft spot for that game. I think Palladium's combat rules are a big improvement on D&D and make super hero martial arts fights a lot more fun than just "I roll to hit vs. AC." Lots more back-and-forth.
 
I discovered Star Frontiers in '92. Had a blast playing it with friends. I had one of the blob aliens as my character. I would have to reread the system now to know what I think of it as a game overall, but that experience with that particular group of friends was some of my best times as a player.

"Blob aliens"? How dare you, sirrah! Dralasites are people too! :clown:
 
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