How did you get into Fantasy Gaming?
I am guessing that for most of you, it probably started with D&D?
I grew up in the UK, so my first experience of a Fantasy background was Warhammer Fantasy, or more precisely, Advanced Heroquest, which was pretty good, but probably in the end squeezed outta existence by D&D. Games Workshop focused on tabletop wargaming anyway and I ended up playing both Warhammer Fantasy (Skaven and Empire) and Warhammer 40K (Chaos Space Marines, Blood Angels and Imperial Guards) in my teenage years. I still keep an eye on the developments, but unfortunately I feel the minatures have become absurdly expensive and I don't particularly like the current development of the rules system (big tanks, bigger tanks! big monsters, bigger monsters!).
So any other major avenues into your current hobbies? Maybe Tolkien's Lord of the Rings?
I grew up in the UK, so my first experience of a Fantasy background was Warhammer Fantasy, or more precisely, Advanced Heroquest, which was pretty good, but probably in the end squeezed outta existence by D&D. Games Workshop focused on tabletop wargaming anyway and I ended up playing both Warhammer Fantasy (Skaven and Empire) and Warhammer 40K (Chaos Space Marines, Blood Angels and Imperial Guards) in my teenage years. I still keep an eye on the developments, but unfortunately I feel the minatures have become absurdly expensive and I don't particularly like the current development of the rules system (big tanks, bigger tanks! big monsters, bigger monsters!).
So any other major avenues into your current hobbies? Maybe Tolkien's Lord of the Rings?
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a friend of mine told me he had this really cool game & i had to try it...
he pulled this pink box out and....
Baldurs gate is what got me really involved
After college, I stopped playing as I began to adjust to having a career and living independently. I graduated and started my career in about 1990, so I'd say there were about five or six years after that I wasn't doing or thinking about anything D&D.
Around 1995 or 1996, I started to remember how much I used to enjoy video games, so I splurged on a Sega Genesis CD system. I tried several games, but I soon zeroed in on one almost exclusively - Dark Wizard. It was a fantasy strategy war game like Fantasy General.
I played Dark Wizard for almost a whole year, and I started to prefer to spend most of my weekends doing that instead of going out like I had in my early 20's. I was around 30 years old at the time.
After Dark Wizard, I found the PC games, which were still a fairly new thing at the time. Just having a PC in your home, and having a dial-up internet connection, was a new thing.
I started with Heroes of Might and Magic I, because it looked a lot like Dark Wizard, except more colorful and better. Then I tried Might and Magic 6, which brought back all the pleasant, fun memories of my D&D days. Now, I could play D&D without having to find a group of other people to play with, which is kind of hard once you're in mature adulthood.
I went from there to HoMM 2 and MM7, and after that, it was about 1998, so I got Baldur's Gate as soon as it released.
I'm 48 years old now, and I still spend most of my free time playing Might and Magic, and Baldur's Gate, along with some other games in the same or similar genre.
Some people would think that's kind of sad, that I never outgrew spending so much time with fantasy. But, hey, I'm a happy camper. Isn't that what's important in life, to do what makes you happy?
But as for fantasy gaming, I also really liked Dungeon Keeper. I miss my little pet dungeon.
Now it's D&D and Warhammer around every corner.
In terms of gaming I think the first game I got was Diablo 2. I was hooked after that. I spent countless hours levelling up my characters and "rushing" other peoples characters. I think it was the whole concept of "the more you play, the stronger you become" that did it for me.
I then went into Final Fantasy and the like and I think to date most of the games I have played have revolved around Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Somehow their worlds seems far more appealing to me than the real world. Is that wrong?
Super Mario RPG - Up until this I had no interest or knowledge of the RPG genre. After playing this I had to play every RPG game I could play which inevitably led me to find Quest 64 (highly underrated N64 game imo), Pokemon and then Baldur's gate. Granted, my 8 year old mind at the time thought the solution to everything was haste + left click and fireballs...but meh it was fun!
Also Magic: The Gathering. Lots and lots of Magic: The Gathering.
My introduction to computer RPG's came some 15 years later when a friend of mine back then introduced me to Diablo II. The same friend told me how enthusiastic another friend of his, a Dungeon Master in my current hometown, was about Baldur's Gate and I bought the 4-in-1 boxset 4 or 5 years ago. I did try to pick up PnP AD&D with the last mentioned Dungeon Master, but nowadays I suck at make-up dialogues in fantasy settings (old age? medication? my depressions? too busy with the real world? - I don't know what caused it, but I lack the creative fantasy of my youth) and like pickable dialogue options more than sitting at a table with my mouth full of teeth (it's a dutch expression for not knowing what to say).
TLDR;> I was introduced to paper RPG's long ago in the eighties, but after a very long time without RPG's only picked up computer RPG's very recently.
FIRE OF WRATH!
It didn't even have dice in the box. It came with a set of chits you cut out to simulate dice. B2, Keep on the Borderlands, came with the box, and it was the first module I had played. I played a female fighter named Zenobia, with Bright Red Hair and Green eyes, and she was Lawful Good (I understood the Alignment Chart as having two axes, even back then, even though the game only used Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic as alignments).
The two other players I met that summer played Chaotic Elves, and when we played the module, they planned to sack the keep and kill all the merchants and officials. I being Lawful Good, couldn't allow that, and sneaked off during the last watch to warn the Keep about what they planned. They assumed my character had been killed by animals during night watch, and when they showed up at the Keep and were asked, "Friend or Foe?", answered, "Friend."
They were told, "You lie!" and killed with Ballista Bolts for their trouble. Needless to say, things were a little iffy at the game for me after that. But I did find other people to play with, and would buy modules at my local Waldenbooks. And to be honest, I was hooked for life very shortly after playing for the first time. I'm 46 this year and have been playing ever since.
(Incidentally, those weren't the only party deaths I was responsible for. When I got into High School, I joined the local group and I rolled a female wizard. I was first level, I had one spell, Magic Missile, and I briefly didn't pay attention, until I heard a snake was attacking one of the party members. I shot my spell and killed it, only to find out that the snake was actually our Druid. OOOps! He was rather upset, as you can imagine.)
I have a ton of stuff, including, up in the attic, some notebooks back from when I was a teenager that have D&D Art Covers. There were four (?) different designs. I think I have two left. I used them in High School. But they are in with the D&D stuff I keep in the attic that has the original world I designed and made back in High School.
Bg at 12? Mmm. No.
Hobbit at 11? Mmm. No.
Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone books at 10? Mmm. No.
I remember telling fantasy stories with my cousin each other without any playbook. When we confront an enemy, the one who told the story gave a riddle to the other. For example: "to defeat the giant scorpion tell me 15 wood species!". That was good times, full improvisation, pure rpg. At 9 years old standard:)
My other rpg experience was with the company named Beholder Kft. I played a role play game in letter by them, internet was not so wide spread in that time, we didn't have a computer. I had to write command lines on a paper form, and they generated the story and sent me in letter. I think that there is still a living community from this, just internet based now. They have a collectible card game also (like Magic The Gathering), i played that too.
My first Forgotten realms experience was R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books. I first played pen and paper rpg at 12 with my cousins. (It was M.A.G.U.S. , a D&D like game on my language.) I was DM several times, and i had good ideas, but was an awful DM otherwise, looking back at me today. For example, i killed one of my friends character in sleep for story fun. No save, no worry!
To be honest, i think, that my fantasy affection begun with fairy tales, when i was a little child. Some people grow up, some remain a kid
The concept of creating your own party. Of distributings classes and abilities. The pause button. When trying it I didn't even know it was an RPG. I didn't know that games had genres.
I still remember it. After 16 years.
Thanks for creating this thread and for necromancing it. So many good memories.
I must confess, however, that I'm going off the genre a little bit. Maybe it's all the modern anime-influenced artwork, and the WoW terminology that seems to have infected everything, or maybe it's because there just hasn't been a good FRPG around for years, because too many of them go the Diablo route of just non-stop action with very little actual RP going on. Whatever the reason, I find myself becoming less excited about FRPGs, and more excited about remakes of classics like Elite: Dangerous, and the new Midwinter. I know, I know, heresy...removeth myself from thy sight and flagellate myself until my wicked thoughts be from my body purgéd.