So how did you get starte with tabletop gaming?

General GTG Off Topic
1

So I grew up in Mexico and in a smallish (non state capital) town so I did not see a gaming product on a bookshelf in my city until 2000 when some white wolf stuff showed up. Meanwhile I homebrewed a dozen systems and ran tons of games…

Start: I owned some Steve Jackson fighting fantasy books so me and my friends adapted that system to adventures set around my room… “the book case is a mountain, each one of those action figures or cutouts has an index card under it with it’s stats, travel through the mountain and defeat them”. My parents saw us moving figures around, rolling dice and subtracting health…

Late 80’s to early 90’s: My parents told my Aunt and Uncle about what I was doing and since they where both American college professors they laughed and said “Oh, that is D&D” and they bought me an early boxed set. That sustained us for a long time…

After that: trips to used book stores in Arizona and New Mexico which produced dozens of gaming boxes and books… that often where missing a minor detail such as the actual rule book in the case of Marvel Universe RPG where I looked at the characters stats and built a game around it. I did a lot of homebrews, some ripoffs based on stuff I saw in catalogues or later online that looked cool and eventually my own “universal” system that I have not played with in years but that I’ll publish online if I’m bored one day. As for quick “one off” games… man we played a lot of risk which eventually became “drunk risk” once we turned 18.

How about you?

2

I grew up playing the usual suspects with my family - Monopoly, Clue, stuff like that. I played a few card games and stuff through college, then at university I moved in with a buddy of mine who’d lived in Germany for a while. He had Carcassonne, so we played that a lot, followed by Settlers of Catan and a couple of other German-style games.

Since then I’ve moved elsewhere and started getting into a few other games. I’ve never done any D&D or wargames, so I might not be a seasoned tabletop gamer to some, but I’m having a lot of fun with my most recent buys - Sentinels, Gloom, Zombie Dice. Slowly learning what’s out there and finding like-minded nerds :smiley:

3

Of course Monoply, Clue, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, and the like have always been table games i’ve played since I was a wee lad. It wasn’t until sometime in highschool where I actually had friends who played D&D and other games that can only be bought at the tabletop hobby shops. They all had a variety of other games (Munchkin, Anima the card game, Bang, Arkham Horror, and quite a few more) so that when I really started to get into the stuff. I’m still not a die hard fan or anything, but I do have a slight collection building up.

Also I should note the Sentinels of the Multiverse was the first one that I actually added to my collection.

4

My folks played a weekly D&D game for the whole time I lived at home. When it was hosted at someone elses place I was still young enough that they had to take me with them, and then when I was old enough to stay home on my own they started hosting it at our house, so it was always present. They also played Magic for a while when it first came out, though it’s not really my thing.
Not table top gaming but: my dad is a programmer, so we’ve always had a computer in the house, so I also grew up playing a lot of computer games.

We’re just a nerdy, gaming sort of family :slight_smile:

5

I grew up in a board game playing family. We played all the usual kid and family games and then some really obscure ones - at one point, my mom made a point of finding every random yet vaguely educational board game ever published (including a bunch about greek myths and American colonists). My dad has always been a Shesh-Besh player and we played a lot of rummikub as well.

When I was a little girl my cousins had the most awesome game, Tales of the Crystals, which was basically LARPing for 8 year olds. The box game with a cassette tape that was basically the GM, and there were these little plastic jewels and cards that you used to defeat the evil something? Goblins or a witch or whatever. This was the best game ever but my cousins didn’t really dig it and it was their toy, so we didn’t get to play it very often. Now I kind of want to buy it for my future spawn, except I don’t have a cassette player…

In grade school, everyone played magic and then my little brother was big into the Pokemon card game and being the only person in my family he could con into playing, I played that too. But, eh, that style of card game isn’t really my thing.

In college, I started dating this guy (now my husband) who was starting a D&D game and I joined and loved it. Shortly thereafter, I went to GenCon for the first time and was hooked on basically all of it. :slight_smile:

6

I was always interested in playing odd and different games, but in the summer of '80 (I was 10) I had my first exposure to D&D while staying with the children of my aunt’s friend. I announced I wanted to get the game, but most of my family didn’t know what it was or what I needed to play, so I ended up with the D&D Basic and Expert boxed sets and the AD&D Player’s Handbook. I started creating my own adventures with AD&D classes and D&D monsters and magic items. Eventually I learned the difference and migrated wholy to AD&D. Also dabbled in Traveller (the original), Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, Twilight 2000, and a few other RPGs, along with a host of other games such as chess, Diplomacy, Axis & Allies, and various Avalon Hills military simulation board games.

In college, it was more of the different RPGs and I discovered that I shouldn’t touch computer games - I realized how easily I could become addicted to them, so I swore them off. (Only exception I’ve been willing to make was Portal, cuz it’s awesome on so many levels. 8) ) Also, I gave up chess when I realized it just comes down to how far ahead you can see. I ran into some guys who were looking ahead 20+ moves, which is far beyond my capabilities. :-\

For the past two decades, I’ve been exposed to the eurogames and started playing some of those. Knizia’s Lord of the Rings cooperative game made me realize just how much I love coops. I discovered Nightmare Chess, which brought me back to my love of chess. I picked up on Magic as Antiquities was coming out and I’ve been playing ever since. I stopped buying new cards in 2006, but I still have ~40 playable decks (down from a high of >120) that I pull out on occasion. (Although, admittedly, they haven’t seen as much play since GenCon last year for some reason… 8) )

But my first and primary love has always been the tabletop RPGs. I’m still GMing a world I created 28 years ago, with one campaign that’s been running since 1998.

Rabit

7

Man… you are old…

8

And does it actually still contain at least a majority of the people (even if not the same character) that started it? Honest I would love to be in a campaign for fourteen years, especially if my character had actually survived the entire time.

9

Yep! 8)

Of the 5 original players, 1 is still playing regularly while 3 others return on occasion to join in “special” sessions. (It’s been harder for them to be consistent since they had kids. :wink: ) The original person still playing has a different character, as her original character evolved into someone who didn’t want to continue adventuring.

10

I used to play card games with my mom all the time. There were plenty of board games, too, mostly your run of the mill Parker Bros. and Milton Bradley stuff. Found video games in the early ‘80s.
But, it was actually my childhood obsession with Star Wars that got into paper and pencil RPGs. I was in a book store and saw a copy of West End Games’ Star Wars RPG. I had to have it. My father, being ever supportive of the collector in me, obliged. As I type this, a nearly complete collection of the WEG Star Wars books sit in a shelf behind me. I even went to their offices twice. My dad took me as a birthday gift. It was really cool, and I actually got to meet some of the designers. They even let us buy some stuff out their “warehouse”, which was just a big, shelf-lined room in the building. I convinced my parents, sister, and the neighbors to let me run a couple of games when I was about 12 or 13. Then, I met some friends in high school who introduced me to AD&D.
I recently got back into board games when my wife and I were looking for some non-video game things to do together. I discovered Pandemic and immediately realized that I had to play more coop games.

11

Warning: I’m almost as old as rabit.

First it was fairly standard board and card games as a young child – Hearts, Gin Rummy, Bridge (w/ my parents and older brothers), Casino (w/ my grandmother), Monopoly, Parcheesi, etc.

That segued into war games with my brothers and a few friends – Risk, Stratego, Tactics II, The Russian Campaign, King Maker, Gettysburg, plus, as a rare treat, D&D. This was D&D at the level of using 10 foot poles to break up skeletons and dungeons that just had random monsters in them. As for video games, we didn’t have a game system at home, but I loved playing Joust and Pole Position and we got an Apple II and I spent hours playing Little Brick Out, Star Thief, and some text adventures.

By the end of High School I was regularly playing various card games – Spades, Tricks, Chinese Poker – and in a regular D&D campaign with friends from high school, but didn’t play many board games anymore. There wasn’t much in the way of role playing in our D&D game, but it at least made some sort of sense.

In college … I did other things. :slight_smile:

Afterwards I ended up, to my great surprise and delight, marrying someone who liked D&D. I also was introduced one fateful day to Settlers of Catan (in about 96, maybe?), which opened my eyes to the possibility that there might be a lot of great board games out there. I went through a very heavy boardgaming phase – hosting a biweekly gaming night for years – but eventually lost my passion for it and now play almost entirely for social reasons. That’s part of why my love for Sentinels has taken me so much as a surprise. I don’t feel much of a draw to play board games in general, just Sentinels in particular.

RPGs, on the other hand, have continued to grow in my life. I now am in three regular campaigns and for a while was running one myself. Those, too, though, have very much become primarily about the social aspect of getting together with people. Well, except for the character I’ve had in rabit’s campaign for the last … eight years?

And I haven’t really gotten into computer games. Part of that is that I developed tendinitis in my wrists and elbows. Even Portal, which was way cool, wasn’t worth returning to after I got stuck on one of the levels. Most of the games I play on computers are really just electronic versions of board games. My favorite is a game called Slay.

12

Like Rabbit I had the Boxed set and then had to “update” my game in order to fit in with AD&D… “wait… elf is a race, not a class?!”. That said (as stated on another thread) I’m interested in the boardgames since they look like great “gameshow” style games… “Wow, they cleared a room full of skeletons, let’s see what they won!”

Also I’m glad to see that Magic The Gathering was part of a lot of you guy’s history… in my case I played it a little bit (like a playstation game) but my best friend owns a huge collection so it is a big part of our current saturdays, we are actually looking to get into more tabletop games to transition a little from mostly making magic the background to our “drinking and chatting” weekends.

13

Is that the one with all the hexagons and warriors and the castle-building? I remember playing that! That was an awesome game.

14

Yeah, I think we’re thinking of the same thing:

15

That’s the one! I used to play that all the time on our old PCs. That and Civilization II. Ah, the early gaming memories.

16

Sentinels of the Multiverse. Gen Con 2011. That’s my start. This is my gateway drug. Since then, I’ve only picked up one other game (Arkham Horror), so I wouldn’t say I’m really into tabletop gaming, but I’m getting there. Of course, the only reason I went to Gen Con was because I was under the impression it was a video game convention, so I was tricked. But I still had a great time and have become addicted to a whole new medium.

So thank you, Paul. I’m where I am because of you.

17

Somewhat ironically, the primary reason I’m going to PAX, which IS a video game convention, is to play Sentinels.

18

I do PAX East each year and while I’m more of a pc gamer than tabletop guy, I find the tabletop section to be 10 times better. The electronic portion is a mess, while the tabletop section is more organic, it is easy to “rent” a game (leave your pass and borrow one) and interact one on one with vendors, creators and enthusiasts.

19

Parents that play D&D! Trippy.

Mind you, I’m also old enough that my parents didn’t like Rock 'n Roll, either. Dad liked big band. Mom liked musicals, though also the Beach Boys.