I'm 24 and quite new to Baldur's Gate. I kept hearing and reading about BG when I was playing Dragon Age: Origins (which I enjoyed) because all the reviews and press kept calling it BG's spiritual successor. I bought the 4 in 1 box set and intended to play through the whole saga, but I recently switched out my PC for a Mac, thus rendering said box set useless. I think I was around halfway through Baldur's Gate when I couldn't play anymore, but I really loved it. It is completely engrossing. I've always wanted to play D&D but I've never found the right people or been bold enough to bring it up to friends, so I really enjoyed being able to play a CRPG that everyone says is the closest to the actual pen and paper experience.
Almost 24. I borrowed a copy of BG1 at 12, but at that time I was still playing Ultima Online a lot, so unfortunately I havn't played it seriously until BG2, for which I became crazy so I wanted to play again its predecessor
25 here. Baldur's gate came with my first pc in 1999. At first I thought it was an educational game and then I got to Friendly Arm Inn and had my but handed to me a few times by the assassin and didn't try it again for a whole year.
Second time round I payed more attention to the classes and proficiency, felt very satisfied beating that wizard and was like Well what the hell do I do now?" and 13 years later I'm still playing
Turning 27 soon and Baldurs Gate was one of the games I loved coming home to and playing straight after school. Played the game so many time that I have never gotten tire
I'm 24 and quite new to Baldur's Gate. I kept hearing and reading about BG when I was playing Dragon Age: Origins (which I enjoyed) because all the reviews and press kept calling it BG's spiritual successor. I bought the 4 in 1 box set and intended to play through the whole saga, but I recently switched out my PC for a Mac, thus rendering said box set useless. I think I was around halfway through Baldur's Gate when I couldn't play anymore, but I really loved it. It is completely engrossing. I've always wanted to play D&D but I've never found the right people or been bold enough to bring it up to friends, so I really enjoyed being able to play a CRPG that everyone says is the closest to the actual pen and paper experience.
Well due to the low requirements of BG maybe you can run your 4 in 1 set in a virtual machine on your Mac ?
As for p&p AD&D I have no idea where you live but often there are clubs or stores where fans gather parties to play weekly or 2 times a month. Could be great to finally play p&p and meet new people :-)
I actually didn't discover BG until 98 and didn't buy my first copy until 99 or '00. But definitely have so many fond memories. My friends give me crap since I replay it a few times a year. Of course he preferred NWN which I didn't because its overall lack of a party. (Note: I enjoyed IWD because I could at least make a party)
Well due to the low requirements of BG maybe you can run your 4 in 1 set in a virtual machine on your Mac ?
As for p&p AD&D I have no idea where you live but often there are clubs or stores where fans gather parties to play weekly or 2 times a month. Could be great to finally play p&p and meet new people :-)
I hadn't considered trying to run virtual windows. I'll look into it, thanks. I would definitely like to check out some game stores. I tend towards insularity, but it really is something I've always wanted to try. Some people want to climb Mount Everest. Some people want to finally write a great novel. Me? I just want to play a little DnD, Lol.
55 here, so i win, or lose, whatever. I've been RPGing ever since the original mimeographed DND shipped in a baggie, and ZORK was big on the IBM360. I've met plenty of senior gamers on WOW, DDO, and IRL. Trust me, geezers know geezers. Thing is, we wont usually tell you our real age cuz you will think us slow of reflex, addled, or needing UrbanDictionary to say hi. Neither are we ordinarily compelled to palaver on social media; I just didnt want yawl to be too misinformed about the gaming demographics. If you do meet a polite and gracious gamer online, just might be your gmom. She WILL lie about her age knowing that the entire guild will otherwise know within a day, offer to get her a walker, and start excluding her from raids. Seen it plenty.
It really has been a decade since I"ve played BG, BG2, IWD, and PST - just too much bother to run them on modern machines. So heck yeah I'm excited about BGEE! Wanna play it with my kids. Personally, DarkSouls has better challenge factor and Torchlight2 is prolly the better action. Both have closer release dates. Then there's Risen2, Drox, and Krater also competing for the RPGer's time/$. Hope the launch goes well but the window looks positively brutal.
@CoM_Solaufein Just a joke. The hills have it all over me in terms of age. But still... 40 is the highest the Original Poster could conceive for a Roleplayer's age? Makes me feel like I did when I moved from Adult on my Library Card Age Class to "Older Adult". "Is that the Sword of Damocles I feel hanging over my head?"
Please accept my utmost apologies for not carrying on the poll to beyond 40. It was never my intent to offend, I was simply trying to get an idea of how many of us there were and where we were from, that was the origonal non poll post. I assumed the most people would be in the mid twenties to mid thirties, I assure you I can conceive of 40+ however I didn't realize this poll would be so exhaustive.... PLEASE DONT HATE ME! I'm just a poor boy from a poor family, spare me my life for my monstrosity!
"Some of us old-timers got our start in Pen and Paper D&D" AHHAHAHA. Back when I was young, like before President Moses, pens and paper and tabletops hadn't been invented yet. But sometimes we would lather up in tyrannosaurus blood and put bloody hand prints on the cave walls. Then our moms would get all stressed and yell "IF YOU DONT STOPMESSIN MY KITCHEN IMAGONNA FEED YOU TO THE SABERTOOTH." Good times, eh? I'm so old i could tell ya the same story, twice a day, every day for a month, and still not get to the point.
So we would go outside and throw poo at each other, get bored, and play a game very much like modern DND. You could play any class you wished, as long as it was barbarian. Well sometimes we let the chief play a shaman, cuz he was really ancient, like maybe THIRTY, and he had this really kewl staff made out of a pterodactyl wing bone. Back then men were men, and women were too. We would flint knap up some d20s the size of werebear skulls like this:
Anyhow, numbers hadn't been invented yet, so we couldn't read our d20 rocks. So we got frustrated and started throwing em at each other. You were out of the dodgeball DND game when you bled out and lost enough HPs. Then we would get the munchies and go kill a mammoth, cuz this is before Doritos.
So where was I? Back when I was young, like before President Moses, pens and paper and tabletops hadn't been invented....
Ohh so I am not the oldest gamer here Nice to know (50) Didn't start D&D (pen and paper version) till I was in the Navy in 1980 and then got my first computer in 1981 and played the original Ultima and Wizardry and Odyssey to death. I programmed the IBM360 in High school in the 70's we had Zork and my own Star Trek like program (all coded on punch cards)
How in the heck did your High School manage that? An IBM360 cost 5M 1970s dollars, and took up 10k square feet of clean room. 0.0something MIPS (not GIPS) btw, and typically 512 kB main memory (not MB and not GB). If i wasn't so lazy, i'd wiki it. Did the Navy give you time on their toys maybe? A 1970s HS programming class; Man you were blessed.
Yea Motorola introduced the 6800 (not 68000) single chip 8bit microprocessor in the late 70s. Got to design and make a wirewrapped computer out of it in my college engineering lab. Jolly sport but nerdy. Some guy named Steve Jobs did something similar and started a company named Apple. Go figure it. People paying perfectly good money for a computer. Wait what? Just go down to Radio Shack, buy some parts, build your own. Imagine unwashed commoners wanting their own "personal" computers. Never gonna sell that Apple crap. That's crazy talk right there. Spreadsheets and filing recipe cards? GTFO
I'm 27 now, so I was 13 when the game came out in November '98. That following winter break from school I played the game with some friends on six player LAN through to completion over the course of about a week and a half. We had such a great time with it, also with BG2 when it came out and TOB. Ever since then I play the whole BG trilogy at least once a year, such a great classic game.
31 here, Still have the old BASF cd-r`s i pirated it on in `99, Also the big cardboard box i bougth later. And the complete boxes bought some years after that.
How in the heck did your High School manage that? An IBM360 cost 5M 1970s dollars, and took up 10k square feet of clean room. 0.0something MIPS (not GIPS) btw, and typically 512 kB main memory (not MB and not GB). If i wasn't so lazy, i'd wiki it. Did the Navy give you time on their toys maybe? A 1970s HS programming class; Man you were blessed.
Yea Motorola introduced the 6800 (not 68000) single chip 8bit microprocessor in the late 70s. Got to design and make a wirewrapped computer out of it in my college engineering lab. Jolly sport but nerdy. Some guy named Steve Jobs did something similar and started a company named Apple. Go figure it. People paying perfectly good money for a computer. Wait what? Just go down to Radio Shack, buy some parts, build your own. Imagine unwashed commoners wanting their own "personal" computers. Never gonna sell that Apple crap. That's crazy talk right there. Spreadsheets and filing recipe cards? GTFO
I think you may be mistaken, I went to a Vocational Technical School instead of a traditional High School and while large by todays standards the IBM360 we had with a whopping 64k of core memory, 4 Disk pack units and one Drum storage unit, 2 paper tape readers, 1 punch card reader, 1 punch card sorter, and 4 Punch card ..uhh punchers (cant remember what they were called) Line printer and Terminal all fit nicely in a 20x20 raised floor room. It was upgraded at some point to a IBM360/370 around 1974 and I started school there in about 1976. (wow core memory brings back the memories no pun intended)
My first computer was an Apple II+ with 64k memory 2 floppy drives and a color TV for a monitor.....I got to know an Electronics Store owner who in exchange for a friend and me setting up his inventory program he helped me finance (cosigned) the loan for the $2000 in 1981 that the system cost...Pensacola Florida was a good place for me.
Im a big fan of RPG's. including Final Fantasy, the Original Fallouts, Planescape and so on. But Baldurs Gate is the only game that kept on drawing me back, in fact, the only game I've completed multiple times. And Im sure your all well aware of the incredible awesomeness of that which is Baldur's Gate, so I need'nt explain. But yeah, use to watch my older brother play for hours until I was old enough to be allowed to become a Bhaalspawn myself )
Well kay, technically you are the oldest, since i died many years ago. Today i "live" on as a fairly simple virus/trojan/hijacker inside a Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. You know how it is, a millisecond here, usec there, GLaDOS doesn't seem to notice. See after university, i became infatuated with the exciting field of shower curtain technology, and joined a small company. You know how it goes, some science here, some science there, and before long I became the backbone of the company.
Nowadays i have several exciting projects going. My current favorite is combining Portable Quantum Tunneling Device technology with DOOMBA. Finally, long suffering homeowners will have an affordable solution to their domestic cat infestation problems.
Perhaps we are both correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360 Marketing plan was affordable entry level system, incremental upgrade sales. For example you could 50x the speed if you paid enough. But what you describe reminds me more of some early products from Digital Equipment. I killed a lot of time on PDP11s in the late 70s. Yes i was remembering the /370 version. Didja know that the 360 was designed by gene amdahl?
Core memory, hahaha. effin magnets. But hey, that stuff was warp speed compared to vacuum tubes.
$2000 for an Apple 2! No wonder I never owned one. And that's back when dollars were worth something too. Was that with floppy drives?
Stay at the Pensacola base every other year or so, when I'm shuttling boy scouts thata ways. Fine people and far better than scout cooking.
Kewl stories, bro. Remember to conceal your swag from the children.
Comments
Second time round I payed more attention to the classes and proficiency, felt very satisfied beating that wizard and was like Well what the hell do I do now?" and 13 years later I'm still playing
As for p&p AD&D I have no idea where you live but often there are clubs or stores where fans gather parties to play weekly or 2 times a month. Could be great to finally play p&p and meet new people :-)
I would definitely like to check out some game stores. I tend towards insularity, but it really is something I've always wanted to try. Some people want to climb Mount Everest. Some people want to finally write a great novel. Me? I just want to play a little DnD, Lol.
It really has been a decade since I"ve played BG, BG2, IWD, and PST - just too much bother to run them on modern machines. So heck yeah I'm excited about BGEE! Wanna play it with my kids. Personally, DarkSouls has better challenge factor and Torchlight2 is prolly the better action. Both have closer release dates. Then there's Risen2, Drox, and Krater also competing for the RPGer's time/$. Hope the launch goes well but the window looks positively brutal.
geezer sign off
Please accept my utmost apologies for not carrying on the poll to beyond 40. It was never my intent to offend, I was simply trying to get an idea of how many of us there were and where we were from, that was the origonal non poll post. I assumed the most people would be in the mid twenties to mid thirties, I assure you I can conceive of 40+ however I didn't realize this poll would be so exhaustive.... PLEASE DONT HATE ME!
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for you...
So we would go outside and throw poo at each other, get bored, and play a game very much like modern DND. You could play any class you wished, as long as it was barbarian. Well sometimes we let the chief play a shaman, cuz he was really ancient, like maybe THIRTY, and he had this really kewl staff made out of a pterodactyl wing bone. Back then men were men, and women were too. We would flint knap up some d20s the size of werebear skulls like this:
Anyhow, numbers hadn't been invented yet, so we couldn't read our d20 rocks. So we got frustrated and started throwing em at each other. You were out of the dodgeball DND game when you bled out and lost enough HPs. Then we would get the munchies and go kill a mammoth, cuz this is before Doritos.
So where was I? Back when I was young, like before President Moses, pens and paper and tabletops hadn't been invented....
Didn't start D&D (pen and paper version) till I was in the Navy in 1980 and then got my first computer in 1981 and played the original Ultima and Wizardry and Odyssey to death. I programmed the IBM360 in High school in the 70's we had Zork and my own Star Trek like program (all coded on punch cards)
How in the heck did your High School manage that? An IBM360 cost 5M 1970s dollars, and took up 10k square feet of clean room. 0.0something MIPS (not GIPS) btw, and typically 512 kB main memory (not MB and not GB). If i wasn't so lazy, i'd wiki it. Did the Navy give you time on their toys maybe? A 1970s HS programming class; Man you were blessed.
Yea Motorola introduced the 6800 (not 68000) single chip 8bit microprocessor in the late 70s. Got to design and make a wirewrapped computer out of it in my college engineering lab. Jolly sport but nerdy. Some guy named Steve Jobs did something similar and started a company named Apple. Go figure it. People paying perfectly good money for a computer. Wait what? Just go down to Radio Shack, buy some parts, build your own. Imagine unwashed commoners wanting their own "personal" computers. Never gonna sell that Apple crap. That's crazy talk right there. Spreadsheets and filing recipe cards? GTFO
@Leronis might win the most amusing comment of the thread at this point though.
I think you may be mistaken, I went to a Vocational Technical School instead of a traditional High School and while large by todays standards the IBM360 we had with a whopping 64k of core memory, 4 Disk pack units and one Drum storage unit, 2 paper tape readers, 1 punch card reader, 1 punch card sorter, and 4 Punch card ..uhh punchers (cant remember what they were called) Line printer and Terminal all fit nicely in a 20x20 raised floor room. It was upgraded at some point to a IBM360/370 around 1974 and I started school there in about 1976. (wow core memory brings back the memories no pun intended)
My first computer was an Apple II+ with 64k memory 2 floppy drives and a color TV for a monitor.....I got to know an Electronics Store owner who in exchange for a friend and me setting up his inventory program he helped me finance (cosigned) the loan for the $2000 in 1981 that the system cost...Pensacola Florida was a good place for me.
Well kay, technically you are the oldest, since i died many years ago. Today i "live" on as a fairly simple virus/trojan/hijacker inside a Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. You know how it is, a millisecond here, usec there, GLaDOS doesn't seem to notice. See after university, i became infatuated with the exciting field of shower curtain technology, and joined a small company. You know how it goes, some science here, some science there, and before long I became the backbone of the company.
http://i1.theportalwiki.net/img/7/74/Cave_Johnson_fifties_intro07.wav
And I'm pretty sure you know the rest of the story. But just in case:
Nowadays i have several exciting projects going. My current favorite is combining Portable Quantum Tunneling Device technology with DOOMBA. Finally, long suffering homeowners will have an affordable solution to their domestic cat infestation problems.
http://i.imgur.com/bPQSC.jpg
Perhaps we are both correct:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360
Marketing plan was affordable entry level system, incremental upgrade sales. For example you could 50x the speed if you paid enough. But what you describe reminds me more of some early products from Digital Equipment. I killed a lot of time on PDP11s in the late 70s. Yes i was remembering the /370 version. Didja know that the 360 was designed by gene amdahl?
Core memory, hahaha. effin magnets. But hey, that stuff was warp speed compared to vacuum tubes.
$2000 for an Apple 2! No wonder I never owned one. And that's back when dollars were worth something too. Was that with floppy drives?
Stay at the Pensacola base every other year or so, when I'm shuttling boy scouts thata ways. Fine people and far better than scout cooking.
Kewl stories, bro. Remember to conceal your swag from the children.