I played some PnP with my older brothers friends when I was young, but not as much as I wanted to. Hero Quest, AD& D, some Palladium games like Rifts and TMNT, Blood Bowl, Mutant chronicles, Shadowrun; Earthdawn, Battletech, loved them all.
I couldn't get my friends my age to play with me, so CRPGs were a great way to do something I love without needing other nerds like myself.
As a matter of fact, just finished playing the beta Undead team for Blood Bowl 2 earlier tonight. I love the fact I can still play the games of my youth today with a virtual board.
Neverwinter Nights was my introduction to Dungeons and Dragons. My first PHB was for 4e, though I never did anything with it. Come 5e though, I've gotten multiple books and eventually played games proper.
I also got lucky and found a large collection of 3e and 3.5e books at a sale one day. Reading through those is fun, if something I'll never do, I like playing 5e.
Voted PnP, but now that I think about it they were both around the same time. Some peoples answers may depend on how far you stretch CRPG? Are MUD's included? I'm old school.
I still look back fondly on some of my DM/PC days and the reams of graph paper that fought to contain our imaginations. Made a nice sprawling adventure titled 'Lair of the undead Gnoll'.
(he wasn't really undead, mind you, just very smart. He used coal to darken his fur and learned a spell or two to keep other, weaker, Gnolls in line. Of course, he liked the idea of everyone thinking he was undead so he used that to terrorize)
Some peoples answers may depend on how far you stretch CRPG? Are MUD's included?
That's actually a really good question, though there are many MUDs/text adventures (Adventure, Zork, etc.) that I would call 'adventure' but not 'roleplaying'.
I'm ashamed of myself. The first cRPG I played was Baldur's Gate and it's probably the best I've played so far (only if Ps:T didn't have such terrible combat... sigh).
Some peoples answers may depend on how far you stretch CRPG? Are MUD's included?
That's actually a really good question, though there are many MUDs/text adventures (Adventure, Zork, etc.) that I would call 'adventure' but not 'roleplaying'.
I would call the roguelike games (nethack et all) 'roleplaying'.
P&P. My grandmother bought me the Basic D&D set back in 1985, iirc (the red box, with a big dragon fighting a barbarian atop a pile of gold, made by Larry Elmore, now, those were gorgeous paintings).
My first experience RPG was probably the homebrewed d6 systems my older brother came up with when I was still a little child. Then BG as a slightly older little child (though when I first played it it was my brother who had borrowed it from a friend and I never dared leave Candlekeep), and also a Swedish game of the Drakar och Demoner system/IP ("Dragons and Demons", totally no connection to DnD :P ) called Själarnas Brunn ("Well of Souls").
I also played Final Fantasy VII somewhere around that point. Perhaps earlier. Oh! And there was a Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves RPG released for NES at some point that my brother owned. Played that too.
Hm, okay, I mean technically P&P came first for me, but we didn't use those utensils for writing, but for drawing instead. Back in primary school my two best friends and I would always hang out and have weird hybrid sessions of drawing, collective story telling and roleplaying (sometimes we'd Larp our stories in the garden or on the playground). Most of the stuff was based on some anime or manga (we especially liked playing as Digimon's Digidestined) but some stuff where original fantasy settings.
There was this one we put a TON of work into, a wold entirely populated by elves. Each elven tribe/ kingdom was defined by the biome it was in and each of us had their own tribe (I had the ice elves who lived at the high north and my friends had the jungle and the sea elves respectively).
I dunno if that counts though, since there was no DM or rules or anything.
I would call the roguelike games (nethack et all) 'roleplaying'.
I agree 100%. I find nethack-style games VERY RPG'ish (I prefer unnethack).
Fine-tuned character development - check Granular attributes, spells, and abilities - check Difficult puzzles that can be completed/bypassed different ways - check Unforgiving world that punishes the foolish 'charge-n-swing' character - double check!
If anyone wants to try a spectacular (and spectacularly difficult) free RPG on android I highly recommend unnethack! That's free as in no ads, no nags, just RPG goodness
It was pretty close, but primarily because of accessibility: I had no friends who wanted to play word-of-mouth roleplaying games until after I had already gotten hooked on the idea by games like Realmz, Baldur's Gate, and King's Quest.
Then my freshman year of high school, a group of friends and I got together to start a "D&D/Video Games" club. When our video game ideas failed to gather any sort of momentum, it morphed into just D&D--and good thing it did, because back then our video game ideas were terrible.
I've wanted to play Pen and Paper since I first realized what Baldur's Gate was based on in 7th grade. Unfortunately the opportunity never arose since all my friends were lame and wanted to do nerdy shit like sports, music and meeting girls. Finally met some cool kids in 2012 and got to try PnP... but still don't get to play now
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I couldn't get my friends my age to play with me, so CRPGs were a great way to do something I love without needing other nerds like myself.
As a matter of fact, just finished playing the beta Undead team for Blood Bowl 2 earlier tonight. I love the fact I can still play the games of my youth today with a virtual board.
I also got lucky and found a large collection of 3e and 3.5e books at a sale one day. Reading through those is fun, if something I'll never do, I like playing 5e.
Hahaha! @Clumsy_Dwarf has got the right idea.
I still look back fondly on some of my DM/PC days and the reams of graph paper that fought to contain our imaginations. Made a nice sprawling adventure titled 'Lair of the undead Gnoll'.
(he wasn't really undead, mind you, just very smart. He used coal to darken his fur and learned a spell or two to keep other, weaker, Gnolls in line. Of course, he liked the idea of everyone thinking he was undead so he used that to terrorize)
PS - Mary is still not amused.
I also played Final Fantasy VII somewhere around that point. Perhaps earlier. Oh! And there was a Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves RPG released for NES at some point that my brother owned. Played that too.
addendum: The cover of Själarnas Brunn:
There was this one we put a TON of work into, a wold entirely populated by elves. Each elven tribe/ kingdom was defined by the biome it was in and each of us had their own tribe (I had the ice elves who lived at the high north and my friends had the jungle and the sea elves respectively).
I dunno if that counts though, since there was no DM or rules or anything.
Fine-tuned character development - check
Granular attributes, spells, and abilities - check
Difficult puzzles that can be completed/bypassed different ways - check
Unforgiving world that punishes the foolish 'charge-n-swing' character - double check!
If anyone wants to try a spectacular (and spectacularly difficult) free RPG on android I highly recommend unnethack! That's free as in no ads, no nags, just RPG goodness
Then my freshman year of high school, a group of friends and I got together to start a "D&D/Video Games" club. When our video game ideas failed to gather any sort of momentum, it morphed into just D&D--and good thing it did, because back then our video game ideas were terrible.