What brought you into the fold?

[Major_Blackhart]

What I mean is, what game/games made you an RPG hound, be it console or PC RPG. My first game that got me into RPG's was FF6 (which I got for Chrismas, after reading a review about it in Nintendo Power). I asked for it months before, and she remembered, even when I didn't. When I opened it up Christmas, I had no idea what it was. I played it almost religiously for a number of years, even after the release of FF 7 and Tactics, both of which I also played. From there, the rest is history, though I can remember reading my first ever review in PC gamer in 96 or 97 of Fallout. It got me so excited, but I never got the game until in 2000, when I saw Fallout just by chance in an EB games. An original game too, with the original box, and books. Fucking amazing.

 

[Hazelnut]

My first RPG-ish game (that I can remember) was Dungeon Master on the Amiga. Holy crap that was good. The choosing the party, the mapping out of levels on squared paper, the puzzles, the completing it with just 2 chars (I never did just 1 char because inventory mgmt became an absolute nightmare) - oh, I played that poor disk to death! (I even remember came home from college one day to find my brother had been bunking off school for ages to play the game on my Amiga, he was even more into it than me and loved Chaos strikes Back which I never did.

After that it was Ultima Underworld 2, daggerfall and then Fallout that got me into RPG's proper I think. I do love first person exploration & adventure as much as roll playing so I'm drawn to the FPP games in a big way.

 

[Jung]

Ultima III on the C64 was my first cRPG. I was about 14, and I loved it. I spent hours mapping my progress and taking notes on what I had to do next.

 

[sheek]

When I started playing games in the early 90's it was mostly strategy games (Civ), adventure, flight sims (Aces series), shooters (DukeNukem) etc. I remember playing demos of Ultima, the TSR games etc at a friends house but RPGs never really grabbed me. I remember people raving about Diablo/BG but thought they sucked. Then Warcraft got me into fantasy and fantasy got me into PnP RPGs. I've stopped PnP and played CRPGs (Arkania, Krondor, Arx etc) casually since then. I only discovered Arcanum and Fallout a couple of months ago.

About three years ago I bought Morrowind remembering reviews of Daggerfall, a game I'd wanted to get at the time. I thought Morrowind was the best thing ever for about two weeks until I started noticing what crap it was. After trying mods and discovering the engine was the problem I got into Bethesda-hating and found this website that way, lol.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I think my younger brother loved FF6 as much as I did, and played FF7 for a little while, but not as religiously as I did. He doesn't play other games really, and doesn't play games at all anymore.

 

[bryce777]

I guess I played text adventures first. I was not really ino them a ton. I did play zork a bit and that thing that was text where you wander around and you did have swords and stuff. It was pretty good, but there was no saving and death came very easily. Bard's tale was the first rpglike game to really grab me, and pirates! turned into an obsession even before that.

 

[serch]

Nobody comes from an pen and paper background? Well, I do. I've been playing for decades now and no, NO LARPING. First RPG I played? I think Bloodwitch. How good it was! I think I learn to understand english for it. I still remember that large corridor that make you spin 180 º at a certain point taking you to the beginning, a classic puzzle in old CRPGs.

Fucks,

 

[Hazelnut]

Yeah - I played text adventures on my dads Sinclair Spectrum when I was about 10. I remember the Hobbit from Melbourne house... that's what kicked my love of Tolkien & fantasy, which in turn led to Dungeon Master etc... holy cow I never thought of that before.

As for P&P, I never knew anyone else who was into it. I did explore it at Uni, but decided I really couln't handle the others who turned up! I know it's stereotypical, but they really did smell!! Bad! And they were mind numbingly boring, so I decided to stick with computer games for my RPG fix.

I'd still like to try it with some more like minded people one day.

 

[Goliath]

Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (SSI Gold Box game) (C64/PC)

 

[ad hominem]

I originally started as an adventure gamer (R.I.P.); first Zork, then the King's Quest series, much of Tim Schaffer's work (Day of the Tentacle FTW!)...I enjoyed the original FF for the NES but I think it was the super nintendo that really got me into RPGs...Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, FF III, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound and the like. Man, that was a good system. At any rate, I bounced back to the PC and started playing a lot of Black Isle's stuff, IWD and BG. Tried some of the early Ultimas but they didn't grab me, so I've never looked at VII. I wound up here because I decided that Oblivion sucked and wanted to see if there was anyone who agreed with me. :D

 

[VasikkA]

Ultima VI(and its spinoffs) and Ultima Underworld.

 

[RAG]

My first RPG was Fairy Tales. I really loved my Amiga 500
Later on I was hooked with Legend of Faerghail, Pool of Radiance, Dungeon Master, Bard's Tale, Eye of the Beholder and moved on to both Ultima Underworlds. Strangely enough I never tried to play the Ultimas till the infamous number 8.

 

[Twinfalls]

'The Valley' on the Commodore PET (typed that whole motherfucker in off the magazine when I was 7 with my big brother who was 14).

Goddamn, that's a loss. Computer mags with code in them, code of games and other stuff, written not just for cash!.

computer magazines in the early 80s were magnificent, when hobbyist - the decline is really stark.

Oh well.

 

[DamnElfGirl]

I started off with the early Sierra adventure games.

But for RPG's...

Bard's Tale I on the Apple IIGS, baby.

 

[bryce777]

'The Valley' on the Commodore PET (typed that whole motherfucker in off the magazine when I was 7 with my big brother who was 14).

Goddamn, that's a loss. Computer mags with code in them, code of games and other stuff, written not just for cash!.

computer magazines in the early 80s were magnificent, when hobbyist - the decline is really stark.

Oh well.

Yeah, even the programming journals are all utter shit now.

They used to be pretty neat, but now they are designed for fat mouthbreathing VB programmers to be able to make some fuckstick GUI component that acts almost exactly like some standard GUI component anyhow and is totally retarded.

 

[Higher Game]

Old school console RPGs brought me in. I played Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior for the nes. Looking back, Dragon Warrior was really a grind, but Final Fantasy (the original) is seriously underrated by the tr00 kvlt crowd. The first computer RPG I played was Moria, although today I enjoy ADOM much more. Roguelikes in general are seriously underrated as well. As for modern cRPGs, I picked up Fallout in the store just by seeing the box, and knowing it was going to kick ass. :twisted: I then went on to that same isometric style games, like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment, and so on.

Why don't they make these kinds of games anymore? Looking back, they really seemed cheaply made, compared to FPSs like Quake, Half-Life, Unreal, etc, and they were pretty popular. I remember seeing Baldur's gate ads all over magazines, and people buying tons of copies in stores. It's just inexplicable why it fell out of favor.

Seriously, the FPS is so popular now, and RPGs are trying so hard to be FPSs, that console j"RPG" games are now more complex than cRPGs...

 

[bryce777]

Because they don't want games that sell 250k copies and cost 1-2 million dollars to make. they want games that sell at least a million copies.

 

[Zomg]

My brother's old first edition AD&D books with the crude cover art. I played a few proto-RPGs like the early Ultimas on my Commodore and on Nintendo, but they were just another type of game to me. Fallout was the game that made me think CRPGs were special, with the Gold Box games as a midpoint.

I can see some stuff in hindsight that I should have thought of as a fringe part of RPG continuity that I didn't recognize at the time, like Oregon Trail or X-Com.

 

[Prime Junta]

Geez, that's a tough one. Does rogue count? I think I got hooked on that in the early 1980's. About the same time I started playing PnP D&D: I spent a year in California with my folks, and we brought home a copy of the basic set plus a couple of modules. Back then you couldn't even get them in my country; until 1986 or so until the first RPG store opened we made do by passing photocopies of the modules to each other and making shopping lists for anyone's dad going Stateside.

I think Ultima III: Exodus was the first commercial CRPG I played, though.

 

[wesleyclark]

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on my school's Apple IIe. Couldn't afford my own.

 

[Krafter]

Amazingly enough, it was Daggerfall that brought me in. Before that, it was all Street Fighter and Civ I.

 

[bryce777]

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on my school's Apple IIe. Couldn't afford my own.

That was one of them I played I think. I barely remember, though. I know later I played the wizardries but 4 was out by then.

 

[sheek]

'The Valley' on the Commodore PET (typed that whole motherfucker in off the magazine when I was 7 with my big brother who was 14).

Goddamn, that's a loss. Computer mags with code in them, code of games and other stuff, written not just for cash!.

computer magazines in the early 80s were magnificent, when hobbyist - the decline is really stark.

Oh well.

I just barely remember that stuff. Right when I began using computers was with my dad's ZX Spectrum. There were barely any games on it so I found this really cool looking Space invaders type game - only later realized that this was a book and you had to type the program yourself. Remember also coding some kind of bacteria or virus simulation, you had to balance the right of division with growth to fill up the screen as quickly as possible.

 

[Greatatlantic]

For the longest time I didn't own a gaming PC, or even a console. I did read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi though. Even enjoyed the occasional sci-fi series on the network of the same name. I got my first modern computer around the time Myst came around. Between that and getting a demo of Age of Empires with a Microsoft CD, I became a PC gamer. I suppose I was "pre-disposed" to being Geeky in my gaming choices, and soon found cRPGs to be my favorite genres (with classics like Fallout and the free version of Betrayal at Krondor leading the way).

 

[Higher Game]

Because they don't want games that sell 250k copies and cost 1-2 million dollars to make. they want games that sell at least a million copies.

How did Baldur's Gate cost over a million to make?! :shock: It wasn't loaded with special effects or state of the art AI. It was mostly 2d art, scripted events, and amateur voice actors. That kind of stuff is probably cheaper to make today, anyway.