Incline How did you first discover RPGs?

[Trashos]

A few years ago I was looking to take a break from Civ IV, but still wanted something turn-based to play. Fallout was suggested, and that's how it all started.

 

[Luckmann]

I don't even remember. For all intents and purposes, I was born playing RPG:s.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Received a free copy of Dragon Warrior in the mail because of my brother's subscription to Nintendo Power.

Same here! Born a console peasant, immigrated to PCs later.

 

[Hamster]

As far as i remember i went through 3 stages during my journey to becoming crpg nerd.

Stage 1 was randomly stumbling upon games like Stonekeep and Jagged Alliance as a little kid. I was too young to understand what i was supposed to do in those games and couldn't read any english, but i still had fun poking around.

Stage 2 was when a couple of years later my father brought home a new PC with Diablo on it. The need to understand what is happening in this game is what motivated me to learn english.

Stage 3 was reading in a gaming magazine that there is this new awesome game coming out, called Fallout 2. So i went to local videomarket (chaotic sprawl of stalls selling bootleg vhs tapes,cds and video games in 90s Moscow. In retrospect, a very fitting place to buy your first RPG) and bought it. My life would never be the same again.

 

[Crispy]

In either 1978 or 79, a friend was allowed to bring home a PET computer from his school and he had the original game ADVENTURE on tape. Imagine the amazement and wonder when we typed in "BUILD BOAT" while standing on the beach with some driftwood lying about. We couldn't believe it.

Eventually that led to a TRS-80 and Temple of Apshai (my first RPG experience) and from there it was my very own Apple II + and a copy of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

 

[Sacibengala]

Final fantasy VII psx. Played on release in 1997. Loved and still like that game. After that, when I got a chance to play on pc, played diablo 1, then other final fantasy on snes emulators. Today I hate what Nomura did with the final fantasy franchise and anything that he touches. Played some neverwinter nights after that. The first really good dungeon crawl that I played was king's field 3 by from software, love that game. The real first western RPG that I liked was baldurs gate, I think. And that was like 10 years ago.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I went from Amstrad CPC and Pegasus (NES) where I don't remember any RPGs to PC around... 94? 95? The first RPG I remember playing is Lands of Lore but because my English wasn't good enough at the time I didn't really get into RPGs until Diablo and Fallout, then came Baldur's Gate, PS:T, IWD.

 

[Doktor Best]

Back in DOS times i had a shareware CD with 1001 games on it. Most of them were pure crap but there was one game on it called "crime fighter", which was sort of a mix between a boardgame and an rpg. You played a criminal who just got released from prison and had to make yourself a name in the underworld with burglary, assault, stealing cars, making counterfeit money etc. It had a stat system, you had to buy gear and hire thugs into your gang and it had turnbased combat.

One day i showed it to a friend of mine, who then told his (very christian) mum that we played this game in which you played a criminal and had to kill grandmas in the park (its an event that occurs if you mess up your roll on stealing their handbags), didnt even tell her that it kind of was self defense since those angry grandmas went after you with fucking shotguns.

I got a computergame ban for several weeks. To soften the blow, my dad bought me Warcraft 2, which i played with great enthusiasm. On this Warcraft 2 cd, there was also a demo of a game called Albion. I tried it out, was immediately reminded of crime fighter and got completely hooked by the story, the setting, the exploration and the concept of character progression. The demo ended with the first ship passage to the next continent and i grinded the demo for hours and hours to prepare for this very ship passage.

Saved all my pocket money until i could finally buy the game and from this day on, the flame of passion was kindled.

 

[Tom Baker's Arse]

That was the greatest period of my gaming life because neither me nor Reapa read any gaming magazines, so those games he brought from Romanian crackers were always a surprise. He'd bring some new RPGs and we wouldn't know what the game is like until we installed and started it. I miss that age of discovery. Nowadays we get so many previews shoved into our faces that we're intimately familiar with a game before buying it, but back then I literally went in blind in 99% of cases. The most I would know about a game before playing it was whatever the blub on the back of the box said.

Jarl you have it dead-on. We are obliterated with gaming media sites these days, they are literally rammed down our throats. It is defo not like it was in the 80s and 90s when picking up that box was a thing of mystery. I'm an old bastard (62), and I remember when computer games were even rented in some stores at release time. Things have certainly changed over the years.

 

[JarlFrank]

That was the greatest period of my gaming life because neither me nor Reapa read any gaming magazines, so those games he brought from Romanian crackers were always a surprise. He'd bring some new RPGs and we wouldn't know what the game is like until we installed and started it. I miss that age of discovery. Nowadays we get so many previews shoved into our faces that we're intimately familiar with a game before buying it, but back then I literally went in blind in 99% of cases. The most I would know about a game before playing it was whatever the blub on the back of the box said.

Jarl you have it dead-on. We are obliterated with gaming media sites these days, they are literally rammed down our throats. It is defo not like it was in the 80s and 90s when picking up that box was a thing of mystery. I'm an old bastard (62), and I remember when computer games were even rented in some stores at release time. Things have certainly changed over the years.

I tend to avoid pre-release infos on purpose these days. Only times I can't escape them is when I do reports for the Codex (like interviewing Larian twice this year), but I don't follow all those pre-release updates. We get SO MUCH INFO on the games, it's ridiculous. By reading so much about the game beforehand we rob ourselves of being surprised.

Back when I first played Morrowind I hadn't even known about the game before installing. Each region I explored made me go "whoa, this looks cool! Whoa, didn't expect such a cool place to be here!".

With Skyrim, we had so many pre-release screenshots I went "Oh yeah, this is the city they've shown in several screens. This one too. Yeah, I've seen this place before, too." Surprise is gone.

It's the worst with the kickstarter games, cause they post updates on the world and story so regularly, you get spoiled before the game is even released. Better to just avoid all that so you can have a fresh first playthrough.

 

[Dorateen]

Interestingly, I did not start reading Tolkien until after I first rolled a dwarven fighter in AD&D and was given a copy of The Hobbit, a book about dwarves.

 

[nikolokolus]

Babbie's first RPG was Tunnels of Doom on the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A in 1985. It was a 3D blobber, with a top-down grid-based battle map. I was about 10 or 11; it put a real crimp in my school-work hobby.

A few months later, my neighborhood friend, had gotten the Mentzer Basic set of D&D, and we wasted all summer killing endless hordes of characters in endlessly stupid ways and it was awesome.

 

[Lady_Error]

The first game I bought was Wizardry 7 around 1994. I remember the German "Power Play" magazine to praise it game of the year.

That's exactly how I got into RPG's as well. It was due to Power Play's RPG guys Michael Hengst and Volker Weitz.

 

[Max Damage]

My father bought me Neverwinter Nights and Dungeon Siege back in 2002. Then I've read an article about Morrowind and asked him to buy me it. I remember we had to buy additional RAM because it crashed upon entering Seyda Neen otherwise. Those three are the first ones I've played, unless Etherlords count as RPG. Still haven't finished NWN and DS, but Morrowind and Bloodmoon addon were fun, and then there was Fallout (which I discovered by association after Tactics), Arena, Daggerfall, ToEE, VtmB, then I kinda lost my count after getting unrestricted access to internet and emulation years later.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Saw this game on a sales rack at some store and convinced my dad to buy it for me.

 

[pippin]

With Skyrim, we had so many pre-release screenshots I went "Oh yeah, this is the city they've shown in several screens. This one too. Yeah, I've seen this place before, too." Surprise is gone.

Which is ironic. I think the really "silent" (content wise) marketing campaign for Fallout 4 didn't do any favors to the game. But in a more general view, yes, this is the culture of "showing up", of watching trailers and that kind of stuff. People say this is some sort of golden age of gaming but games themselves, save for a handful of them, are mostly expendable.

 

[octavius]

That's exactly how I got into RPG's as well. It was due to Power Play's RPG guys Michael Hengst .

Cool name. Could be translated as "Big Stud".

 

[Melcar]

Legend of Zelda and the first few Final Fantasies. Baldur's Gate was the first PC RPG however, and the one that really got me hooked on the genre.

 

[Night Goat]

Sometime in the early 90s, my dad brought home one of these beautiful things:

An Apple Performa 550. With it came a disk of shareware including Exile. Though eight-year-old me had no idea what he was doing and was vexed by the Shareware Demon, he was hooked. And that's how Jeff Vogel ruined my life.

 

[hellbent]

Got D&D Basic set for Christmas, never played it until the next summer. Friends from out of town brought the greatness that was Castle Amber, played through it for hours on end. Played D&D, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Twilight 2000, and VtM over the years after that.

As for CRPGS, played Zork at a friend's house as a gateway drug into computer gaming. Got my C128 within a few months and bought Pool of Radiance immediately thereafter.

 

[Valky]

My dad played Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and I discovered it through him, and stayed in strategy/turnbased/rpg style games ever since.
Unfortunately being married was the death stroke to his ability to continue enjoying video games, and he has nothing to do with them now. Makes me feel bad, he was probably a pretty decent guy before having kids.

 

[Monk]

Wizardry I and Bard's Tale on my cousin's Apple.

 

[fantadomat]

My first one was Might and magic 6 around 18 years ago,a friend of mine give it to me on some pirated cd in Russian.It was very different game than the game on gog.It was fully translated in Russian and some areas were different.After i spend a month playing it,i decided to try the other MM games on the disc.After that i ended up buying Baldur's gate 2 on four cds.I still remember how annoying it was to change discs between areas.After that i ended up playing Gothic 3.And that is why those games are my favourite games.

 

[Fowyr]

My first one was Might and magic 6 around 18 years ago,a friend of mine give it to me on some pirated cd in Russian.It was very different game than the game on gog.It was fully translated in Russian and some areas were different.

Goddamn. It's strange. I remember Russian version of M&M6, it was just so-so translated and had pretty hilarious bugs. You could learn all skills for example, but don't had any new content.

For me, it was interest in fantasy, thing or two that I heard about AD&D and book full of game's walkthroughs. I remember how I was fascinated by description of Legacy and Elvira 2. I almost had no free money, so got my first computer when I was 15, it was 286 and then my classmate, who loved these Krynn books, gave me arj file with Champions of Krynn. Of course, without adventure journal, I could finish only first dungeon. Before that I saw Diablo for twenty minutes, then I upgraded my computer with SVGA monitor and played Dungeon Hack and Eye of the Beholder. Alone in the Dark as well. Not cRPG, but top notch exploration and atmosphere. And then I upgraded it to P166MMX and got Fallout 2, M&M6 and M&M2 And rest is the history.

EDIT: I think I'm confusing a lot. Somewhere in that time I found several pirate CDs with game compilations and downloaded game or two from BBS and sites. I remember playing Wiz6 and Wiz7 too in that time. It wa basically RPG galore.

 

[Jaesun]

Might and Magic 2 on my Amiga 500