Day Three of #RPGaDay2022 and the question is 'When were you first introduced to RPGs'?
Hopefully this prompt will inspire everyone to share how they got into tabletop gaming. For me, it was early 1980s. Must have been about 1983, because I remember I was going over to a friend's house on a Saturday afternoon where we'd work on the ZX Spectrum, trying to program a lightcycles game based on Tron. I say we, but in actual fact, I wasn't great at programming. I used Sinclair BASIC okay, but 'Crud' as he was known (though he didn't like being called Crud, sorry) was a far better programmer than me, and could use all that machine code stuff that just baffled me. So Saturday afternoons were him tapping away on the squishy Spectrum keyboard, and I sat there reading old issues of Computer and Video Games magazine.
Anyway, one Saturday I went over, expecting an afternoon of lightcycles - instead, Crud took me off to another house - JR's - where I'd never been before, to be introduced to the wonders of Traveller.
I had no idea what was really going on, but JR and Crud (and I think Pete was there, maybe) guided me through the wonders of character creation (and hoping I didn't get my character killed in the process) and we started playing.
I was hooked, and they foolishly mentioned off-hand that there was an AD&D or Runequest game the following day... and that was that. Four or five games a week for the next three or four years at least...
And that was that!
How about you? How did you start?
2 comments:
I never realised you started in Traveller?!
I've already posted my earliest memories on Facebook but even though Wakey (Pete) got me into it I didn't play with him again for several years. I started my own group at the other end of town cos it was a long walk to Wakeys and Moog was runnign a game I was in and had fallen out with Wakey for... reasons...
It was a few years before we came together as one large group, mainly through your Star Frontiers I think. There most have been a lot of us playing across the town at one point: You, Me, Wakey, Ribes, Bragi, Jinx, Crud, Campbell, Digby, Gavin E, Mark Supercroz, Gladys, John, Norm, Mole, Coops and Clarky, plus Peanut and Gollum from Aldborough for a while... A role-call like a scriot from the Bash Street Kids...
Milo
For me it was in mid-1992. My sister took home a newspaper from her college (they gave out old copies to whomever wanted to take them), and in a supplement for teens there was mention of this oddly interesting game called R.P.G.... Some days later I went to a school friend's house, talked with him about it and he said "Oh, I have played that." He explained how that game was and all the things that you could do and I was fascinated.
Then I found the D&D black box for sale at a used comic book store, bought it and was taking it to his house... And when I was right about to get to his street, another kid (whom I had never seen before) called me, told me he also played that, and that he worked nearby... We talked briefly and I went to his workplace instead. There he showed me xerox copies of the Mentzer books, which I was going to find out after he borrowed us, were MUCH better than that black box...
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