The inevitable "what's your first" thread.

[spectre]

ITT we discuss your PnP history. What's your first, what's your history, etc.

For me, it all began in the high school years with Warhammer RPG. At that time, it was basically the only pnp rpg people knew and played in my area. There was also the Crystals of Time, which was basically a potato D&D rip-off with ridiculously complex rules, but I didn't play too much of that.

Anyways, for a long time, WFRP was the way to go, and even though the system was a bloody mess (like all the good stuff in the olden days) I have fond memories of it. I also remember no player group I ever met played according to the same ruleset. Some didn't even got the basic critical rules straight. Oh well, we were all teenagers back then.

After I got to the university, it took me a while to gather a willing group of individuals to play with. It was also my first time game mastering. Wasn't horribly good at it.
I was finally able to ditch WFRP (although we still played it on and off) in favor of a larger variety of games, mostly Cyberpunk 2020. We also played the fan-made pnp adaptation of Fallout a lot, tried some D&D 3E when it came out. It was easy to get people into it because the D&D games started being published, but I have to say, I wasn't overly impressed with it. We also played a lot of Neuroshime (some of you may know it from the Neuroshima Hex boardgame), which is a post apoc system with a nice base mechanic (I like it because even though the core mechanics doesn't translate easily into % success chances, it is nonetheless intuitive and feels fresh. Shame that lots of rules are pretty sketchy).
Never had the chance to play the narrative based new shit, Vampire, Mage and the like. I got me a wraith sourcebook, but nobody was interested. At that time broadband internets became more widely accessible, so I was able to look up lots of new shit that were otherwise unavailable to buy. I remember liking Earthdawn a lot, both for the mechanics and the setting, and Kult, if only for the setting. I mostly regret never playing Cthulhu. Lots of people dug Lovecraft, but I was unable to find anybody who actually played the goddamn thing.

At this time I slowly began to lose interest in PnP. It was hard work to get people together, and I noticed that I was actually having more fun with new players (it was a pretty sight when they they've gotten into character for the first time and ran with it - something you don't get often from the vets), yeah, speaking of old-timers, they would quickly devolve every session to rules lawyering and "I woulda did it better". Especially if we happened to play the everybody's favorite system. Game mastering for a bunch of ex-game masters is a bitch.

I also had a ccg episode, devoted some time to MtG, Dark Eden and Kult. Never really gotten into tabletops, though a mate tried to get me into Chronopia. I always thought it to be prohibitively expensive, getting the miniatures then painting them then making some props to build a landscape with. Not to mention the shelf space, which I didn't have.

At the moment I mostly play "socially acceptable" boardgame with friends and family. Still keep my set of dice for a rainy day or to hand over to my spawn when the time is right.

 

[kris]

What I really played first is such a distant memory that I am no longer sure about it. It was some older kids that had what I think is AD&D and I cold play a bit with them for a day...

But what more feels like my first real PnP was when I got Middle earth roleplaying game (swedish translation) on my 13th (or possibly 14th) birthday and started playing it with a friend. Since we were so young our first games was pretty silly and was all around ganking creatures with those lovely critical tables MERP had. Our first characters was also more or less rip-offs from LOTR before we started to become creative and I started making my own worlds. Well, that was about the time I got Rolemaster, the father of MERP.

while we mostly played Rolemaster in the second world I created we tried on all kinds of system, star wars D6, Marvel super heroes, several original Swedish ones etc.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Birthright with an almost completely overhauled ruleset (no longer DnD). Started playing an year back, actually half an year back.

 

[Ulminati]

Shadowrun, 2nd edition. I didn't really branch out until I found a large group of like-minded people in a students club at uni, although I dabbled in d&d on teh computars.
Maybe spending my formative years planning ways to effectively sabotage and circumvent security systems is why I'm such a lovable sociopath today

 

[Father Walker]

WFRP and CoC, but it got ended quickly because the group was pretty unstable. Our GM and me switched to VTM, recruited another friend of mine and played for a quite some time. At some point we switched over to VTR and recruited some other friends with whom we played our biggest campaign ever. We played some other games in the meantime, like Mage, Kult, WFRP, D&D and some homebrews. At the moment we are playing heavily house-ruled SW: Saga. The system is shit, but it'll have to do.

I also played lots of MtG. Oh, and miniatures games like LOTR and WFB. The GW rules are shit in general, but I still like to paint some of their minis once in a while. Have Great Unclean One and Carnival of Chaos somewhere in my drawer waiting for their turn.

Oh, and boardgames. We play them since a bro of ours who owns lots of games moved into our city.

 

[Destroid]

1st Edition ADnD.

Played monstly Shadowrun, SLA Industries and various White Wolf games since. SLA is my favourite.

 

[malko_sundervere]

Dungeons and Dragons.
I got the sourcebooks and then didn't use them for a long while, until many years later I brought it up with a friend, who was like, "wait, why the hell didn't you mention that you had those?" We soon started up a game with the DMing of a very fat, very heavily-breathing kid who railroaded us for a little while, before we quit his campaign and I started DMing.
I wasn't very good at it, initially, but after a few short months I did one very lengthy, Planescape-based one that turned out really well. Went on to Mage: The Ascension from there, then V:TM as a logical step; did some Call of Cthulhu games after that. These days, we mostly play Pathfinder.

 

[SinVraal]

BECMI D&D. Friend and I played as well as 8 year olds could. Spent most of our time rolling characters and trying to add on small dungeons to the one that came in the Player's Handbook.

Then when I was in HS I moved to D&D 2e and spend most of my PnP time in that edition. I also GMed Star Wars RPG (Westend Games) for several years and played some Shadowrun 2e.

I tried D&D 3e... never again.

 

[Xor]

A friend got me into AD&D back in the mid 90s, but we mostly just played silly dungeon crawls with zero roleplaying. I did start to grow out of that, eventually, and I have fond memories of a few short and highly lethal campaigns from that time. I didn't own any books, though, until around 2001. While on a trip with my family, I stopped at game shop in Colorado and bought the core 3E books on a whim. From there, I spent most of high school playing D&D with friends.

 

[Kosmonaut]

I've never played a PnP game. Any recommendations? The only requirement is that it should allow single-player campaigns/adventures.

 

[SinVraal]

I've never played a PnP game. Any recommendations? The only requirement is that it should allow single-player campaigns/adventures.

I would have to recommend D&D 1e to start
I really enjoy 2e as well but 1e is the classic one and Sometime very soon Wizards of the Coast will be re-releasing 1e for sale in stores.

As for solo ... Tunnels & Trolls is a very basic PnP game that is fun and has quite a few solo adventures. Another sort of solo PnP I would highly recommend is the Lone Wolf game books. You know like Choose Your Own Adventure books except you have stats and equipment. Best of all the author allowed the books to be made available for free and they are highly supported with multiple versions and tools. They are fun.

http://www.projectaon.org/

 

[spectre]

I've never played a PnP game. Any recommendations? The only requirement is that it should allow single-player campaigns/adventures.

You mean yust you and yourself?
Don't think it's possible without a bunch of serious mental conditions.
As a bare minimum, you need a game master and one player. Fun can be had this way, but it's still not optimal.
Other than that, your best bet is to participate ina a play-by forum or an irc game.

 

[Grunker]

AD&D. Played Kieran the Cleric. Got the name from the original Lands of Lore. I was 10 when I played my first session. It was in a local youth club, and I really didn't want to join. "What is this shit I thought?" But one of the people who worked there kind of forced me to join, and I've been playing ever since.

 

[Grunker]

I've never played a PnP game. Any recommendations? The only requirement is that it should allow single-player campaigns/adventures.

You'll need at least a DM and one player. At least.

 

[SinVraal]

Oh, by the way my recommendations were for solo play meaning you by yourself. If you have 2 people (1 to DM and 1 to PC) then D&D 2e is great because there's like 10 'Challenge' adventures that are all very long and detailed and 2e's rules for hiring help are a bit more in depth than vanilla 1e.

 

[Grunker]

My suggestion is to start with a system that makes sense - Pathfinder. But any edition of D&D is OK

 

[Father Walker]

I've never played a PnP game. Any recommendations? The only requirement is that it should allow single-player campaigns/adventures.

Fighting Fantasy books perhaps?

Other than that, I find nWOD to be a pretty solid and easy to learn system. Basic Roleplaying is also a good choice. You could also try Swords & Wizardry, if you want some old school D&D action.

 

[Texas Red]

I've never played a PnP game. Any recommendations? The only requirement is that it should allow single-player campaigns/adventures.

Saddest statement uttered by man.

 

[Telengard]

There were actually some solo D&D modules, particularly in Dragon magazine. They worked a lot like the solos listed above.

Ist Ed DMG also has a random generator for solo play.

 

[Telengard]

Started with D&D when half the city block got together to play. But I was very little at the time, so didn't play much.

Later played a lot of Basic and AD&D, then GM'd it quite a bit.

After a number of years, while still doing D&D, also branched off into Runequest, Ringworld, Battletech, and Car Wars. Played in a long-standing Recon game for a little while.

Then played and GM'd a lot of Vampire and Werewolf, not because I wanted to, but because it was the new thing. Played a little FASA Star Trek at the same time. Tried to get a Skyrealms of Jorune group up, but failed. Briefly GM'd Pendragon.

Tried 3rd Ed D&D at this time. It did not go over well. Also briefly had a Millenium's End group up, which was the shit. Eventually, much later, adapted Jagged Alliance to Millenium's End, and played through a lot of the campaign before the group broke up.

Finally, tried a little 7th Sea.

 

[felipepepe]

To me, it all started with this:

I must have been 8-9, was on a school trip to the Book Biennal in São Paulo and there was very small area of PnP books. I got very interested watching the demonstrations, so bought the cheapest one available, The Citadel of Chaos! I liked the book a lot, but I also cheated a lot .

Later I learned that there were games like this that you could play with your bros, and that at a local bookstore there was some guys that played it at saturdays. I went there, but the guys were way older and didn't want a n00b playing, but gave me some pointers and I ended up buying the GURPS basic module. I tried playing with some friends, but I was/am a shitty GM and didn't worked well until one of them decided to become the GM himself. We then played loads of GURPS, AD&D, D&D 3th and some very failed attempt at VTM, but I eventually moved to São Paulo to go to college, and haven't played a PnP game ever since...almost 8 years now...

 

[Excidium]

First games that ever sparked my interest were VtM and GURPS, hearing a school friend of mine talking about his adventures. I was already into CRPGs so the depth and freedom tabletop RPGs seemed to offer just amazed me. But I was dumb and skipped the opportunity back then. Few years later I downloaded some scans of a bunch of WoD books, both old and new, just to read for fluffs. It was then that I found Mage the Ascension, which is easily my favourite RPG, really underrated and poorly utilized setting. It was also then that I tried to find a local group to play RPGs, with no success. People here just play Magic and the occasional D&D.

Then I started playing over the internet, which has the advantage of being relatively easy to find a group, but with the disadvantage that having the entire group present at the agreed time is a miracle. Around an year ago I started playing 40,000 RPGs with some Codex bros, and that's still true, but since the 'Dex binds us together it's a lot smoother.

 

[Tripicus]

To me, it all started with this:

Shit, I was about to say AD&D as my first but the Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone books really were the start of it all as a kid. Being nailed by a wave of nostalgia now.

After the books I got into AD&D and picked up Ruins of Undermountain and ran numerous dungeon crawl based games. As things moved on I acquired Planescape, a buddy Dark Sun, so gaming really picked up at that point.

Didn't really touch PnP in undergrad but I did run a couple PBeM games during the course of a few years. Grad School got me into a new group with Shadowrun (3e I believe), which would lead into another group where a few more systems would be tried (Star Wars, WoD, Heroes Unlimited) and then playing D&D3E a fair amount (Birthright and a Homebrew setting as a player).

Haven't really played much in the past few years, with the exception of tiny bit of Scion. Thinking about starting my own game. Either Mechwarrior or a home brew game, which is very much a concept and has no decided ruleset at the moment.

 

[Norfleet]

I got my start in wargames, the start of it all. I am not even sure it had a name. It worked a lot like fantasy football, except it was based on actual battles being fought for real.

 

[SinVraal]

To me, it all started with this:

Shit, I was about to say AD&D as my first but the Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone books really were the start of it all as a kid. Being nailed by a wave of nostalgia now.

After the books I got into AD&D and picked up Ruins of Undermountain and ran numerous dungeon crawl based games. As things moved on I acquired Planescape, a buddy Dark Sun, so gaming really picked up at that point.

Didn't really touch PnP in undergrad but I did run a couple PBeM games during the course of a few years. Grad School got me into a new group with Shadowrun (3e I believe), which would lead into another group where a few more systems would be tried (Star Wars, WoD, Heroes Unlimited) and then playing D&D3E a fair amount (Birthright and a Homebrew setting as a player).

Haven't really played much in the past few years, with the exception of tiny bit of Scion. Thinking about starting my own game. Either Mechwarrior or a home brew game, which is very much a concept and has no decided ruleset at the moment.

How does Shadowrun 3e run? It seemed interesting but I never played that.