How many people came from PnP RPGs?

I wrote some cool math programs in Fortran 77, too
Based on LINPACK.

My first rpg was Ultima I on my fathers apple IIC,
Played some games on my C64 but not really rpgs.

The first real serious ones were during my first year on the university, i played might and magic III, wonderfull! Never finished it that time.

After that wizardry 7, also wonderfull, also didnt finish it, too difficult without a guidebook.

I finished both games a couple of years later.they still are responsible for my fondest memories.

Sadly i did not have a group to play PnP RPGs.

On a positive note, i live i a street where lots of neighbours like to play boardgames, so i play with them a leastonce a week. I can reccoment Agricola and Dominion.

HiddenX said:

I wrote some cool math programs in Fortran 77, too
Based on LINPACK.

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OT: My Numerical Analysis class in 1983. Guess what language we had to program in? Fortran 77. lol. Back on topic.

I started playing goldbox games on DOS as a kid before I ever tried any PnP D&D. My dad has tons of the original and 2E/AD&D stuff and I eventually bought the 3E stuff when I was in high school. My brother was never a big fan of playing PnP so we probably spent more time hand painting miniatures honestly.

my case is interesting. I've always been a gamer, since my parents bought us the Odyssey 2 I played a lot. Then I got a CP/M PC with crappy games, and when I got in college I got myself a 'PC clone'. My first 'RPG' was Temple of Apshai, first time I had 'attributes' and progression in a game. Liked it, but then my world changed when I got Wizardry 1, it was the first game where seeing the sun coming up through the window caught me by surprise.

And then, not much later (a few months), I noticed a pamphlet at one of my university's restaurants that said "This Thursday at 1pm come to an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons tournament"… I only knew about that name from an Intellivision game with the same name (but nothing really to do with the actual AD&D), so I thought it would be a tournament of people playing Intellivision… I didn't go.

But my friend did go and he later explained to me about that awesome game, he even had a Player's Handbook that someone had lent him, and while my eyes browsed through the pages, my mind was lost in imagination. Then I joined his new AD&D group, and my life changed (and my grades too unfortunately).

So when I think of CRPGs now, my base is PnP Dungeons & Dragons, even though technically my first contact with CRPGs was before that.

Oh! Umm… errr… that was a long time back. Technically, I'm pretty sure I was playing Blue Box D&D and maybe even using some AD&D rules before I managed to save up enough for Ultima 2 on the Apple ][+ but, playing in late Jr. High/High School really didn't have a lot of role playing. It was all about the combat. We made our characters then just went from room to room, fighting whatever was in them, took the loot back home, leveled up, bought stuff with the loot, then went back in for more. Pretty much what most people actually do in CRPGs.

The actual ROLE playing started to creep in a little bit in high school but mostly showed up in college - both in the PnP and in the computer stuff (though more in the PnP where it's a lot easier to do).

We mostly did AD&D. Everyone knows how to play it so it was always the go-to game. Also a little Champions, Arduin, Twilight 2000, and even some Paranoia. We got to play a bit of Rolemaster. (I bought TONS of rules for that and for Star Fleet Battles - and barely ever got to play them.)

I used to play a bit of TDE back in the day. Also bought stuff for MERP and Ravenloft 3E even though there weren't really any players around for that.

Looking back the old games, even in PnP, were full of odd and arbitrary restrictions that we're about to overcome even in digital games.

Like in old TDE, where Warriors weren't allowed to use missile weapons or poison, and only high level Warriors were allowed to lay ambushes. OTOH, no one but a Warrior and later on a Mercenary were allowed to even put on plate mail.

Zloth said:

We made our characters then just went from room to room, fighting whatever was in them, took the loot back home, leveled up, bought stuff with the loot, then went back in for more. Pretty much what most people actually do in CRPGs.

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I think that was a pretty standard way to start playing back in those days. Then you level up a few times, build a base, get some followers, do some political stuff…

Looking back the old games, even in PnP, were full of odd and arbitrary restrictions that we're about to overcome even in digital games.

Like in old TDE, where Warriors weren't allowed to use missile weapons or poison, and only high level Warriors were allowed to lay ambushes. OTOH, no one but a Warrior and later on a Mercenary were allowed to even put on plate mail.

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Wow, really? That's ridiculously restricting for a PnP game. We tended to not even follow the race restrictions in D&D, so I doubt that would have flown with us. That sort of thing annoys me enough in a CRPG.

This thread makes me want to get back into a good D&D group. I searched a bit and theres actually a comic/gaming store about 2.5 miles from my house right next to a biking trail that I ride. I never saw the store before and I'm probably gonna check it out today.

Nice thread, guys, some fun stories and good reading.

I progressed from reading game-books in primary school (Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, CYoA, Grailquest, Golden Dragon, many more…) to cRPGs when I was introduced to Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure bonds by a mate on C64 in 1988/89. From there I went to Bards Tale (will make a nostalgia driven thread on this soon…) and essentially began a long romantic attachment to collecting games in the genre which continues to this day.

I didn't actually get into a role-playing PnP group until high school in around 1991. We played Hero Quest, Talisman (I still love this game!) Blood Bowl (go dwarves!), Battle Tech, some basic and second ed AD&D, ShadowRun and even some Cthullu.

My third edition AD&D group continued during and after my uni years. We played a couple of long campaigns sporadically which lasted from around 1997-2012, when middle-age, families and marriage finally took precedence for most of my mates.

For me they came at roughly the same time, though it depends a bit on how you would define "CRPG". My first western RPG was Shadowrun for the SNES, which also was the game that sold me on the genre. Roughly at the same time (as in it was at most a few months apart) I played Mutant and Drakar & Demoner (two Swedish pen & paper RPGs), though at the time I viewed CRPGs & pen & paper RPGs as two completely separate entities. 2-3 years later, I started playing CRPGs on PC, and started with games like Daggerfall, Fallout, Lands of Lore 2 & the early Ultimas (got Ultima collection), but even though I at this time knew about the connection between CRPGs & pen & paper RPGs, I still viewed them as completely separate things.

I've never been big on PnP RPGs for some reason. It's probably because it was never that big around here. I got into RPGs because of the Might & Magic series if I recall correctly. Fantastic games.

It wasn't really "big" when I gravitated towards it. Liked minded folk just seemed to start PnP groups back then. Maybe it had to do with having previous wargaming experience.

Thrasher said:

It wasn't really "big" when I gravitated towards it. Liked minded folk just seemed to start PnP groups back then. Maybe it had to do with having previous wargaming experience.

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Here it's often the other way around, roleplayers pick up wargames. Most wargamers I know come from a pen & paper RPG background.

And pen & paper RPGs were never that big here either. For me it started with a friend having a rulebook and asking if anyone would like to play with him. It started small, with only 3 persons playing. It's quite hard to just stumble upon pen & paper groups, as most pen & paper RPGers don't seem to talk that much about their hobbies outside their group. It was not until I got into wargaming that I really started to meet new roleplayers.

At the outset, it wasn't really so stigmatized or widely known, like it became after some killings were tied to DnD roleplaying back in the 80's, was it?

It was pretty common when I started playing, but tapered off a bit as I got older. Here in England it seems like it was always secondary to Warhammer, so I'm glad I only moved here later!

And Thrasher, the stigma came when some kid who had some serious mental issues killed himself, and his mom, rather than dealing with that, blamed D&D and, essentially, created the whole fiasco. Then it became the go-to "popular stuff is bad" demon to blame all the ills of the world on. You know, like video games, rock music, literacy…

It's always easier to blame a scapegoat rather than solve problems. Lazy and Sad commentary on humanity.

Oops, back on topic please.

Frist RPG was Eye of the Beholder.

Few years later I've started playing a German PnP called "Midgard" which we played for some years.

I first started AD&D back around 1980. About a year later played Wizardry on my friends Apple II. My dad bought us an Apple IIe and the rest is history.

Last year we started playing AD&D again and it has been a blast. We were talking about playing for a few years but never got around to it. A close friend who had wanted to start playing AD&D again died of a sudden heart attack last year right before we started playing again.

Wish we would have started playing before this happened and it saddens me that we put it off for so long. Now we play about twice a month and I am having just as much fun now as I did in the 1980's. All these years of playing CRPG's have made me a better Dungeon Master and given me plenty of great ideas.

My wife wants me to show her how to play AD&D but I don't know if I want to be married to a nerd

Started playing RPGs in the mid 80's with the dark eye, played every CRPG I could get my hands on (not that much in 80's bavaria), but always had problems with the language; there where only two german CRPGs back in the days that I was aware of, Verlies and Die dunkle Dimension. Stopped playing TDE after finishing School, started playing AD&D a bit later (but not for long), then played a while D&D 3.5.

The first english RPGs I remember playing were Bard's Tale and Ultima III.