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AshDesert
2010-11-28, 03:25 PM
A simple question out of curiosity, how did you start playing pen and paper RPGs?

I first started playing in 2006 when someone on a WoW site I went to linked OotS during a discussion on webcomics. I looked through the SRD to see what some of the D&D jokes meant and got really interested in the game. I convinced a few of my RL WoW friends to play while I DMed. If you've ever seen 4 new players and a new DM with no one experienced at the table, it's quite the site. But it was fun. We all got more educated about the game (mostly through this site) and started branching out into other games, and I've been hooked ever since.

HunterOfJello
2010-11-28, 03:43 PM
A good friend of mine who I rarely saw was always talking about how awesome d&d was and how he wanted to play again, but couldn't find anyone. While inebriated, I ended up agreeing to DM for a group if he could find people. I loved Neverwinter Nights and agreed to try it out.

I borrowed his books and bought some of my own to learn the rules and how to DM. We eventually started a game with 3 players playing A Dark and Stormy Knight (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20050329a) which went really well. Unfortunately that group got slowly larger with too many friends joining in, not because they were interested in gaming, but because they didn't want to be left out. The group was unmanageable for a new DM who couldn't hold the attention of 6 players at once (especially when only 2 understood the rules enough to take simple combat actions without assistance). Things went their natural and expected course and the group fell apart.

Later, other groups and players became involved and the current group consists of 3 people total from the original group and that's it.

oxybe
2010-11-28, 03:45 PM
Legend of Zelda. Dragon Warrior. Final Fantasy.

you'll notice the distinct lack of numerics or titles after the games. i was weened on the originals, baby.

from there my older cousin told me of this game of fighting mans and wizards. i didn't get it at first but the idea+concepts stuck in my young, pre-teen mind.

jump ahead a few years when magic the gathering is finally out and the TCG boom starts. this, alongside the "Fighting Fantasy" books, start peaking my interest more and more.

then one of my buddies, Matt, gets these books from his uncle: "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons". i still remember the two of us sitting at his dinner table for an entire weekend deciphering these arcane rules. we never fully figured them out until years later.

we then got our MTG buddies together and gamed.

Dr.Epic
2010-11-28, 03:50 PM
Legend of Zelda. Dragon Warrior. Final Fantasy.

I'll see your classic fantasy video game series and raise you quite possibly the greatest fantasy epic film trilogy. I started playing sometime after I saw Two Towers in theatres.

Mordokai
2010-11-28, 03:53 PM
A guy on a local forum asked if anybody in the vicinity is interested in starting a group. More jokingly than not I told him I'd be up for it, if a couple more people could be found. Much to my surprise, we really found three more of them and we started a group. That was back in 2006. Since then, only two of them are still in our group and really, quite a lot has changed since then. But I never regreted it :smallsmile:

Melayl
2010-11-28, 03:58 PM
I'd been into fantasy literature since I could read, before my older brother got me started playing with the OD&D rules when I was in 4th grade (that'd be in the 80's...). I didn't really play alot until junior high with my brother as (a quite sadistic) DM and the 2E AD&D rules.

I also did quite a bit of gaming with my cousin and his homebrew gaming system (a superhero meets traditional fantasy kind of game).

I don't get to game much anymore, but I still enjoy it.

absolmorph
2010-11-28, 03:59 PM
I got interested a few years back, but ended up being unable to play with people in person. So, I looked around and eventually found someone who was willing to give me a little introduction (level 1 paladin with 3 NPCs running through a short adventure in a PbP game). More than a year later (last September), I found a 3.0 game and joined that. It went on hiatus a while back when the DM got too busy, and hasn't started up since.

Now I'm DMing my own game and playing a bard in 2e and a sorcerer in 3.5 (but that game may change to 4e, which will mean my character will be retired and I'll pick up a Paladin).

Feliks878
2010-11-28, 04:00 PM
Back when I was in highschool my group of friends and I were turned onto it by someone (who would eventually become my girlfriend and now my fiancée, a few years later). She had played 3.0 with an older cousin before this and a few of the people in the group had experienced a little bit of it. This was back in ~2002.

After a few years of DMing in high school and then university, we've been playing nonstop ever since, like clockwork. Wouldn't give it up for the world.

Akal Saris
2010-11-28, 04:08 PM
Back in 2nd grade I read some pick-your-path adventure books, and came up with the idea of running my friends through star trek pick-your paths, so I would say something like "the klingon is attacking your ship!" and give my friends 3 choices of actions.

Later I went to camp and the counselors played D&D together. I just sat and read the Monster Manual every day, and when I got back from camp I decided to start running my own game of D&D, based on what I had picked up by watching others play. And I never really stopped playing afterwards, even as I eventually learned how to play "real" D&D :P

Otacon17
2010-11-28, 04:09 PM
I just started playing earlier this year. Me and 3 of my buddies had always been interested in D&D, seeing as we were all big fans of fantasy novels and RPG/SRPG video games. We'd never gotten around to buying the books, though, for a few reasons, the main one being that we weren't certain what we would need to play. Then, a new store opened up in town that specialized in comic books, TCGs, and tabletop games. A couple of employees told us what we would need and I ended up getting the 4e PHB, DMG, and MM as graduation presents.

Siosilvar
2010-11-28, 04:11 PM
I played Baldur's Gate and liked it.

Dad showed me his 1e AD&D books.

boj0
2010-11-28, 04:13 PM
In 1998 or '99 I was playing Quest 64 and Warlords a lot; being the kid I was,
I started making up rules for fantasy monsters and adventurers. The woman who ran the day care center I went to noticed my notes and doodles and showed me the AD&D Player's Handbook, cue the next twelve years of my life becoming a huge addict to RPGs. Then my friends got me into Warhammer 40K, so I actually went backwards in my gaming: Video Games -> PnP RPGs -> Wargaming

Mordokai
2010-11-28, 04:23 PM
I played Baldur's Gate and liked it.

That was my first experience with DnD as well :smallsmile: Of course, it being AD&D and my first PnP session being 3.5. there was a little confusion present, but I quickly got a hold of it.

I mean, suddenly you have AC 19. Dude, that sucks! :smallbiggrin:

Ser_Olmsted
2010-11-28, 04:39 PM
I used to play Hero Quest with my dad when I was little, and my other friend used to play D&D with his brothers. We found some miniatures, and scraping together what rules we could remember between the two, we came up with a game, using my living room as the board. The counter tops were cliffs, the pool outside was the ocean, underneath the piano was a huge cave, the coffee table was a giant castle. Eventually we gathered up a ton of things for a garage sale and I bought my first D&D book, the Player's Handbook for 3.5e. Best decision I ever made. Now, about ten years later, I've got around twenty hard copy books and 15 gigs worth of PDF e-books.

TaliaJacta
2010-11-28, 04:40 PM
I found the 3.5 D&D rulebooks in Barnes & Noble and thought they looked cool. It just spiraled from there.

Katana_Geldar
2010-11-28, 04:53 PM
I became a fan of Darthd and Droids and that inspired me to buy the Star Wars Saga Edition core book. Then I asked a friend if she wouldn't mind playing it with me and the rest is history.

Cicciograna
2010-11-28, 05:26 PM
I've always been a fan of Fantasy novels, as my mom enticed me since youth with the reading of LotR. But I began playing RPG relatively late, when I was 15, and almost by chance: one day I was at school, when I saw some of my friends preparing characters concepts and sheets for a D&D tournament. Out of curiosity I asked them what was that about, they told me about D&D and proposed me to join their group: it was the marvelous time of 2nd Edition, and in the first session I made my most beloved character, a Dwarf Fighter/Cleric with 18/00 Strength and 19 Constitution!

Dust
2010-11-28, 05:32 PM
I was in the Cub Scouts at the time I believe, but I might have been younger. I remember watching several of the older 'leaders' playing AD&D, and to this day all I remember about it was that it seemed HARD. They were haggling over the price of a cursed item or somesuch.
When I was older, I purchased a set of D&D books for myself but never found anyone to play with, and simply spent hours poring over the rules and imagining what fun it would be.
It wasn't until I was in my early 20s I moved and found a local hobbyshop that encouraged players to hang out there. The rest is history.

J.Gellert
2010-11-28, 05:39 PM
Went to a friend's home and saw his older brother playing Baldur's Gate (which I would later call Baldur's Gate 1). Fell in love with it instantly, even if I had no idea exactly what it was.

A few months later, that friend bought me the game for my birthday.

A while later he said "Oh, by the way, all this is based on that tabletop game...".

Then later again he let me borrow his AD&D 2nd edition (revised, but I didn't know all that then) books.

A few years later we had a big fight and never talked since, but I owe him this, at least. And Heavy Metal, too, specifically Blind Guardian.

---------

That is, unless you count Hero Quest! Which should count, only it took me more than 10 years to discover the rest of Warhammer.

AshDesert
2010-11-28, 05:40 PM
So I was talking to my dad, and apparently I started playing RPGs when I was two. Apparently my brother saw him and his friends playing AD&D 2E and asked him about it the next day. He said he made two basic characters for us (and handled all the dice rolls) while we described what we did. He even showed me the old sheets (he is incredibly organized and has all his sheets from back in the 80's when he started playing). I learned something new today, yay me!

Accersitus
2010-11-28, 05:45 PM
About 9-10 years ago, I started at a new school where I didn't really know anyone.
One of the first days I noticed some of my classmates discussing Baldur's Gate 2,
a brilliant game I enjoyed too, so I joined in the conversation.
Before that i had never played PnP RPGs(but enjoyed reading fantasy/scifi
books, and fantasy themed computer games), but when they asked me if I
wanted to join them, I was curious, and agreed.

That is pretty much how it started, and I have been playing RPGs with them
since then.

Lord Bingo
2010-11-28, 06:02 PM
I started playing D&D with the red box when I was about 10 years old back in the late 80's. Like a lot of kids me and my brother was into fairytales, magic and monsters -dragons mostly:smallbiggrin: so when our cousin, who was about our age, brought over that wonderful red box and his basic english skills (we did not start having english in schools until the year after) we dove straight in.

Morbis Meh
2010-11-28, 06:02 PM
I played old school zelda and FF but didn't really get sucked in until Legend of the Dragoon, and Final Fantasy Tactics. My girlfriend finally got me playing dnd once I hit university and it's one of the few things I look forward to during the week.

Tvtyrant
2010-11-28, 06:05 PM
I started playing AD&D 2E in first grade with my best friend's dad and older brother acting as DM's; my first character was a dwarven Cleric, a position I have literally never left. I have DMed the last 3 campaigns because my old group got into booze and drugs out of high school.

I play 3.5 mostly, though I am gravitating towards E6 and thinking about creating a WoT game using the Arcanist class from a Netheril book to act as channelers.

didub
2010-11-28, 06:05 PM
An affinity for complex board games led me to pick out the DnD 3.5 starter pack for my birthday. My uncle DMed the first time. Me and my best buddy played every chance we got after that first taste, with me DMing crappy solo adventures for him. Then we started a regular group with my uncle, my friend, and my dad. We finished that (slightly less crappy) campaign last year at level 20. Haven't started the next long term campaign yet.

Swordguy
2010-11-28, 06:27 PM
This guy (http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showcreator&creatorid=6) is my uncle; I got introduced to D&D over Christmas week of 1984. He got me a copy of the Red Box (now sadly disintegrated) the following year when I was 5, and the BattleTech Boxed Set (along with some minis for both D&D and BattleTech) for Christmas of 1986. I've been playing both P&P RPGs and Tabletop Wargames ever since.

valadil
2010-11-28, 06:28 PM
It was 1995 and I was failing to adjust to middle school. Each day at lunch I'd sit at a different table and be glared at, mocked, or just plain thrown out. One day I ended up at a table full of kids playing with funny looking dice. I never left.

gbprime
2010-11-28, 06:40 PM
I read the Lord of the Rings in 4th grade. (My mom was always pushing me ahead of my grade level.) Afterward, she started looking for something in the same genre for me and bought me the D+D Basic set. By the next year (1980!), my friends and I had formed a D+D club in middle school. And we were battling our way through the Keep on the Borderlands and the Isle of Dread.

By 1982, the "D+D is Satanic" media blitz was in full swing, and my mom was trying to talk me out of it without actually forbidding it. I talked her into letting me attend a regional gaming tournament at Virginia Tech, and 12 year old me came home with a foot tall trophy for being in the first place team. So much for talking me out of it.

31 years of d20's and counting. :smallcool:

WeLoveFireballs
2010-11-28, 06:46 PM
4-5 years ago I had money and no idea what to buy. (A problem gaming solved for me :smallbiggrin:) I went to Barnes & Noble and looked through the board games. I bought the starter set and we played those characters through half the free adventures on WotC and then into red hand of doom for a while. The group of just my dad my brother and me eventually fell apart and a year later we had a full group. Now my group has kinda disintegrated and I'm hoping to find a new one some time.

We played those steriotypical characters, Regdar, Armil, Eberk and Lidda straight up to level 9. I found out was roleplaying was some 2 years into gaming.

Balain
2010-11-28, 06:47 PM
About 25 years ago when I was about 10 a neighbors cousin was over and introduced me to the redbox D&D I made an elf. I was hooked and my parents bought me the red box set for myself. Shortly after I found 1st edition AD&D and then I was really hooked.

Anterean
2010-11-28, 06:48 PM
back in 1996, the local role- and conflict game club made a summer activity for kids in the local schools (such as me). Join the moment it was over.

Tengu_temp
2010-11-28, 07:15 PM
I was a big fantasy fan - I played a lot of fantasy videogames, been playing Talisman since I was 5 or 6, and my parents reading me the Hobbit was one of my first memories ever. I've read articles about roleplaying games in some of the videogame magazines I used to read as a kid. They were fun and intriguing, so I decided to buy my own roleplaying game - WFRP, the most popular system in Poland back then. It was summer 1998, I was 12.

Dreadn4ught
2010-11-28, 07:22 PM
A friend of mine accidentally left behind a book called "dungeons and dragons for dummies". I started reading it and got addicted. Now that I think about it, it's kinda funny how I started by reading a "for dummies" book.

Sindri
2010-11-28, 10:13 PM
When I was seven, my parents let me join their 1st ed. AD&D game. I've been gaming for about 2/3 of my life now, and have introduced dozens of new gamers.

olthar
2010-11-28, 10:29 PM
I don't remember the years behind stuff, but I played Dragon Warrior, Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy when they first came out in the US.

I also started playing D&D with my parents when I was 6. When HeroQuest came out my parents switched me over to that (and also got my sister to play).

I also quit d&d at the end of high school for 7 years. I picked it up again last year mostly because of this comic. A friend linked it 4 years ago and it just took about 2 years for me to become interested enough in d&d again to find people who played.

marius\tobius
2010-11-28, 10:39 PM
the first time was at a halloween part at my brothers house and everyone was playing paranoia i joined had a blast then we moved on to a dark herasy game and i was hooked
that was a year ago

zyborg
2010-11-28, 10:44 PM
Surprisingly, my mom told me about it. When my college's Gaming Club put up flyers about it, I asked her if she knew anything about it. She then told me how she used to play it all the time, and some of the stories about what happened. So, I decided to check the Gaming Club's D&D game out.

Remmirath
2010-11-28, 10:51 PM
I wandered into the living room late one evening when I was around six, and noticed that my mom was DMing a game of 1st edition AD&D for her group. I thought it looked fun and asked if I could join, they decided to let me, and so I did. My memory of it is a little bit fuzzy other than that, though I do remember some details of that first campaign still, and I certainly remember my characters.

Gabe the Bard
2010-11-28, 10:56 PM
I played a little D&D and Call of Cthulhu in high school, but our group didn't meet very consistently and it was hard to keep a long-term game going. So I would say that I started playing in earnest after college, when I came to South Korea for a while. My girlfriend at the time had a group of friends who were really into AD&D and 3.5, and they were kind enough to let me join their group.

My Korean was terrible back then, and everyone was speaking in Korean and playing with home-printed, spiral-bound translations of the core rulebooks. Our campaigns were often story heavy, so they were hard to follow at times, but little by little, my Korean got better and I got more into the game. I still credit D&D with having helped me improve my Korean, even if a lot of my vocabulary has to do with rolling saving throws and crawling through dungeons.

kyoryu
2010-11-28, 11:02 PM
Can't remember what got me interested, but I picked up a Red Box in the early 80s at a Walgreen's.

Fhaolan
2010-11-28, 11:18 PM
My uncle belonged to a wargaming society in Ontario. The society belonged to the International Federation of Wargamers, and through those connections got one of the 1974 white box editions of D&D. I think he still has it somewhere, but I haven't seen it in years. When I was 9, he got newer edition of it, the 1977 blue-box edition and gave it to me for Christmas.