When did you discover you loved RPGs?

I discovered I love RPG when I first played Adventure on Atari 2600 back in the 1980s (I don't remember the exact year). I know it isn't a RPG but the question is asking when I first discovered I loved RPGs.

Now, as for my 1st RPG played, and taking into consideration I skipped the C64/Amiga/TRS era (I even barely played Famicom/NES, since I didn't have one), it was probably the first Ultima Underworld. A hell of a game for its time: automapping, you could make annotations and immersive graphics.

Since then many more RPGs came: Diablo, Fallout 1, Fallout 2, System Shock 2, IWD, BG 2, PS:T, Deus Ex, ….

2000. Picked up BG2 on a whim and that was it.

pibbur who said:

Bard's tale 2, 1988. pibbur who was 33 back then.

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You always gave me the impression you were about 75 Pibbur, the way you go on about being so old and withered, 60, pah, that's not considered old in this day and age, a veritable spring chicken.

I discovered fantasy rpgs through games like Heros Quest (Quest for Glory) and Quest for Glory 2. Starflight 2 and Starcon 2 helped establish my interest in the genre to begin with. Later games which got my attention were Diablo (the first game I bought with my own money). Then Fallout 2 and then Baldurs Gate 2 which I played before the first ones and haven't been surpassed to this day.

The first Bard's Tale, don't remember the year but I was in high school. Then Eye of the Beholder 2. Undying love came with the original Fallout.

Pre 1985: Tunnels of Doom on my TI 99/4A. Oh how the anticipation grew as it loaded from the cassette playing it's theme over and over.

I said the original Fallout before, and that is still true. But if it wasn't for Diablo, I probably wouldn't have had as much interest trying it out.

Final Fantasy VII, I guess. Yeah, it was a JRPG, but that was all I played in my Playstation back then. I played it around 2002-03, though. My family was kind of poor and I was still pretty young, so all I played before was platformers and Zelda in my old SNES.

Looking at the results of the pool, I'm guessing I'm kinda young here. Lots of people in their 30's and late 20's, I guess.

There was an add-on to the Atari that let you play games on tape which led me to Dragonstomper
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonstomper

1982

I'd dabbled in earlier years, but around aged 13 I was bitten by Phantasy Star 3, 4 and Shining Force 1 & 2.

PS3 was frustrating as hell, but it had a mystery and atmosphere about it which left me craving more. Along came the other 3 games and said craving was filled, to only grow further.

I really have trouble calling Atari 2600's Adventure an RPG. Swords and dragons does not an RPG make! (Swords and DUCKS, definitely not! )

Let's see - I played Temple of Apshai on my friend's Atari 800 back around 1980 but it was fairly horrible. You would go into a room and it would say "232" - and you would look up description 232 in the manual to find out what was there. I guess there wasn't enough memory to put all that text in the game itself. (Hmm - first example of a game putting graphics over gameplay?)

The first RPG on computers I really loved would either be Ultima 2 or Eamon Adventures. I can't remember now which came first. Eamon was out earlier but it had to spread via BBS back in the days when 300bd modems were expensive. Either way, it was around 1982.

In the early '80s when I started playing D&D in PnP form. Enjoyment of video RPGs came later in the decade.

I played RPG-type games before (Lands of Lore, Dungeon Master, Ultima VIII), but my true awakening was Baldur's Gate. It was a revelation at the time. After that came all the other Infinity games.

I even did a full solo-run with ultra hard combat mods of Baldur's Gate I and II (using a Kensai-Thief iirc).

I played all the early table top games. D&D (I still have my Basic set), Gamma World, Boot Hill and Top Secret. For games Wiz 1 for sure and it just went on from there. The SSI games were just wonderful for their time.

I started gaming on the Commodore Amiga but I became a an true RPG convert after playing Fallout 2.

I played a short bit of a demo of Fallout where I mainly engaged in the combat part. I wasn't particularly impressed by it but I do remember thinking that it was a typical game that I *could* like if I'd give it more time. All in all, it was just a brief and superficial enounter with the game and I actually ended up knowing nothing about it.

Some time later, I saw Fallout 2 in the store, which was on sale at a significant discount. I then remembered playing the demo of the 1st game and decided to buy it blindly hoping it would turn out OK.

Those were truly the best ƒ25,- I spent on a game as it turned out to be brilliant and it instantly became one of my all time favourites. I was absolutely blown away by the Choices & Consequences (C&C), which in my mind was such a fantastic concept in gaming.

I remember clearly that I had to pay this slaver a certain ammount in order to free an NPC that had vital information to continue the main quest. I then asked myself why I should pay him. After all, he is just an unscrupulous low-life slaver who deserves to die anyway. So I decided to kill him and his henchmen, but actually assuming that I would break the game as I didn't expect the game developers to have anticipated this decision of mine. I really thought that I would have to reload the game after killing them as the "trigger" to continue the quest was "lost". It was a difficult battle and one solely based on "principle". It was a true surprise to see the enslaved prisoners rejoice when I killed the slavers and saw them escape to freedom.

Role-Playing doesn't get any better than this .

Ever since, I have been following the PC RPG development closely.

86-90 thanks to Might and Magic 2.

I'm not certain, though I suspect it was Might & Magic VI in 1998. Something along those lines.

Zork baby! If you don't call Zork an RPG, then I don't really know what one is… pretty much a "sandbox" text adventure. And of course, there was "the Sands of Egypt" which had actual graphics. Both were actually turned based RPG's. The first one was classic fantasy, the second one modern survival puzzle RPG.

Ultima III Exodus in 1983
I was recovering from surgery and sat there and played it for hours, even forgetting the pain at times. When you would quit, it would tell you the number of moves, and by the time I beat it, I had over a half million. I remember missing obvious hints in hindsight, for instance the hidden city of Ambrosia I only discovered because I zagged when I should have zigged and ran smack into the whirlpool. Now I know what the guy meant when he said he had been beyond the whirlpool.

After that it was a steady stream of RPGs - Bards Tale, Questron, Phantasie, and many, many more.

I got a copy of the first Dragonlance book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, sometime in the mid-80s. I absolutely loved it, partly because I was quite young (about ten) and the book was so big and felt really adult. In the back of the book, as a postscript, Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman had written a little article about D&D, and how most of the characters had come about during their gaming sessions. I was already well into Gamebooks at this stage but the idea of a totally open game you play with your friends that was limited only by your imagination totally blew me away. So I set up a D&D club in school…. And well that lasted for about ten happy years!
In terms of crpgs, it was Pool of Radiance for me. I couldn't believe how they'd managed to get the ruleset into my C64…..