Were you predisposed to enjoy RPG's?

[weem]

We all know when, and where we were when we first played an RPG (in this case I am talking about table-top RPG's). We all have our stories of those first D&D games, what hooked us, etc.

But I have been thinking about this recently, particularly about the time BEFORE I played D&D (which was my first RPG experience). I had always just thought, "yea, when I was 12 my friend and his brother introduced me to it and BAM, I was hooked". But I'm not sure whether or not I would have been so enthralled with it if I had not already been into the whole fantasy thing before then.

In my case...

I first played D&D when I was 12 (in 1989).

So I started looking into the things I was doing -before- I was introduced to D&D that may have predisposed me to getting hooked on something like that and picked out the following...

* My Dad read Lord of the Rings to my brother and I when we were young (ages 5 to 9 or 10) before we went to bed.

* I was really into "Choose Your Own Adventure" and "Fighting Fantasy" books

* I was playing (and REALLY enjoying) games like Ultima and Might and Magic on the c64.


So when I look at those things, I think -yea- all that was needed was for it (D&D) to get in front of me, and it's pretty obvious I would have (and did) love it.

But what if I had not been into those kinds of things? What would I have done then when introduced to it?

I'm really not sure - part of me thinks that as a 12 year old kid, and knowing them as I did I would have gladly played any game they were playing - and sure, I might have really gotten into it despite a complete lack of knowledge of the genre, etc... but I don't know.

What about you?

Were you -not- into any of that kind of stuff, but got right into something like D&D when introduced to it?

Maybe you were into the fantasy genre, etc already and so D&D or some other table top game were an easy thing to jump into? What were you into before D&D if that was the case?

[Olaf the Stout]

I first started playing D&D when I was about 13. My Year 8 home group teacher saw me reading one of those Lone Wolf books (are they the same as Fighting Fantasy?), which was like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but with combat. She offered to run a game for me and my friends at lunch time and I was hooked from there.

Prior to "discovering" D&D I loved reading Choose Your Own Adventure books, and the aforementioned Lone Wolf books. I had also read the Hobbit and a bit of the Lord of the Rings.

So when I started playing D&D it just felt like I had finally found the game that I had been looking for but didn't even know existed (if that makes any sense).

I think that if my teacher hadn't introduced me to D&D (and RPG's in general) I would have found my way there eventually. She just helped speed things up by a couple of years.

Olaf the Stout

[The Ghost]

I don't know.

Prior to playing D&D my activities included: playing with Legos (castle); playing with G.I. Joes; playing Hockey; playing Baseball; collecting Baseball Cards. I read a lot of books on history - particularily English history. My favorite movies were Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Caddyshak, and Star Wars. I played some video games: Gemfire, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Maddon XXX, Sim City.

Is there a predisposition there?

[Garthanos]

My dad told us bed time stories which featured characters with our names and asked us what we thought the character ought to do, and used the context for morality plays and to get us really entrenched and involved in the story... umm I played rpgs with a zorro lone ranger whip using like character called the Red Fox (with my name for the secret id).. this was circa 1967... was I predisposed..

ummm prior to being introduced as a 2 or so year old I have no clue ;-)

[Philotomy Jurament]

I discovered RPGs about the same time that I "discovered" a love of fantasy and such, in general. I saw The Hobbit on television in the fall of 1977, and I loved it. I picked up a paperback copy from a garage sale for 15 cents and read it multiple times. I found that my father had a large collection of sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks in a box down in the basement (Burroughs, Howard, Frank Herbert, Moorcock, yellow-spine DAWs of all sorts -- I remember being especially interested in the cover art of his copy of The Tower Towers), and dove into those. Around the same time, I discovered the computer game, Adventurland, and would go over to my neighbors house to play it on his computer (a TRS-80 -- I had to wait several years before I finally got my own computer: an Apple II). I loved Star Wars and saw it several times at the cinema and drive-ins. I was also playing games like Chess, Stratego, and Risk, and bugging my father to teach me how to play Tactics II, which looked fascinating. I was introduced to D&D (via the Holmes Basic rules) about the same time: probably 1979.

[Jack7]

When I first started playing games there was no role-playing. But there were Wargames which I enjoyed and played a lot. I also played a lot of board games, Risk, Strategy, Battleship, Chess. But especially Chess and Risk. In the summer my buddies and I would have long three day tournaments.

My buddies and I used to have camp outs in which we would dress up in home made armor and fight with wooden swords and shields and spears. I guess it was like Larping would become later, only we didn't pull any punches and often blooded each other up pretty good. Occasionally broke stuff too, like arms and hands. We didn't have any real rules except to win and no gouging out or stabbing out eyes or groins. Otherwise it was pretty much fair game, except you couldn't split skulls open either. Our parents didn't like us doing this, but we liked it a lot. We also had bottle-rocket fights and gun fights with bb and pellet rifles. So I guess you could call that live action wargaming. On camping trips we also used to make up ghost stories and stories involving knights and monsters and that kinda thing to tell our buddies.

I also liked science (mainly physics and chemistry at that time) a lot and considered role play gaming a sort of science. A psychological one, though at that time I wouldn't have really known what to call it. Like Psy-ops. I also liked history a lot which was a natural tie-in.

Mainly though I considered my Vadding activities to be the most direct tie-in. I've always considered role play gaming and exploration gaming to be a sort of "Vadding of the Mind." Similarly I always liked to wander the woods by myself, to track animals (never hunted much but I've always tracked), to fish, to watch and study animals, and to "adventure" out of doors. So it was a sort of natural tie-in between my "physical and real world interests" and my "imaginative" ones.

I didn't really start reading any fantasy or LOTR types stuff until after I started playing D&D which I was introduced directly to through wargaming. After I started playing D&D though I liked reading fantasy real well for awhile there. But reading wasn't how I came at role playing. Fantasy reading was an after-thought or to be more precise, an after-effect.

Though some of the very earliest books I can remember reading as a child were The Song of Roland, the Story of Siegfried (both juvenile versions of the poem and saga), Beowulf, the Iliad, the White Stag (a kid's book about Attila the Hun coming West by Lake Van), and a kid's book about a wild horse out West which unfortunately I can't remember but that I'd dearly like to read again. All of which made me want to have real-life adventures, but had a strong corresponding effect on my imagination.

So I reckon I was pre-disposed. But not by fantasy. More by real world adventures, myth, camping, fighting, science, and wargaming.

[Umbran]

Originally Posted by weem

Were you -not- into any of that kind of stuff, but got right into something like D&D when introduced to it?

Well, yes and no. My oldest brother brought Tunnels and Trolls into the house to play with us when I was in the single-digits of age, before I started really reading in volume, or into any other games or shows as such. So, in that sense, I wasn't into anything much.

Mind you, I lived in a house where reading was encouraged, fantasy and sci-fi were quite permissible, and had an older role model who was into such things. I think those might be root indicators for some predisposition.

[Thunderfoot]

I can't say I was, my love of fantasy and such came AFTER my exposure to D&D. I was 8 when I first played, it was the late winter of 1978, say late February or early March.

Before that I was into militaria; toy soldiers, books and movies about war, battle and history. While a good medieval story was fine, it was much less interesting than say, a biography of General Eisenhower or a good tactical survey of the Battle of the Bulge or Bull Run. (Yeah I wasn't a typical 8 year old).

So, unlike some folks, my love of all things medieval and fantasy came as a result of D&D, instead of the other way around. Of course, D&D was in its infancy so role playing wasn't unilaterally accepted or hated yet either.

[Aus_Snow]

I was into all kinds of weird stuff prior to my first RPG session. So yeah, go figure.

Plus, my dad also read The Hobbit and LotR to me, when I was very young indeed. Pretty much doomed from the outset.

Mainly, I was reading fantasy stories - writing them too - and playing Choose Your Own Adventure, Fighting Fantasy and stuff, around the time I experienced RPGs first of all (at age 10.)

[pawsplay]

My brother and I actually devised a very elaborate backstory for playing with action figures. Between the time I was 8 and 12, I both became a roleplayer, and co-authored an imaginary planet built by an impossibly ancient immortal, ruled by titans, inhabited by gods, humans, clones, humans, men of crystal, mad scientists, ninjas, wizards, and renegade soldiers. Think Rifts meets He-Man.

[thewok]

My RPG start as a result of computer games. I had played Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior before, but I still was more interested in fighting games and the like. When I was in college, I visited a Virtual World center, and I was introduced to Battletech. From there, I picked up Mechwarrior 2, and eventually the MW2: Mercenaries, which I played in an online league.

There, I took control of the Lyran Alliance, and rather than see everything as a spreadsheet game, I actually took on the role of the leader of the nation, making all posts in character as the new Archon of the Alliance. The people I met playing the game had other interests, which I tried out. One of these was Baldur's Gate, which I probably would have passed up had I never logged into Kali.

I had never really been into fantasy before. My father and grandfather were avid sci-fi fans, and they never watched fantasy. Even so, I enjoyed the game, and I tried out other things as well.

I bought a 2nd edition starter box at one point, but I never played it. I also had a starter kit from Diablo 2 that I never played. I still have these. But when 3rd edition came out, I bought the PHB and I made it my mission to play it. But it took my employment at Best Buy for that to happen.

It was there that I met my current game group, and I played my first D&D game in 2001/2002 at the age of 25 or 26.

So, there may perhaps be a way to determine disposition to RPGs, but I'm not sure if exposure as a child is the main influence.

[thalmin]

I played a lot of "make-believe" with my brother and friends in grade school and junior high. We played swords, cops, cowboys, war, "guns with guns" (we had the right toy guns), "guns without guns" (we didn't have the right toy guns).
I also read a lot of science fiction, Conan, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser.
Much later, one of my scouts (I was a scoutmaster) introduced me to D&D. Then I finally read Lord of the Rings.

[Kzach]

I was already reading all sorts of fantasy and sci-fi by the time I was introduced to RPG's. My first RPG experience was simply a couple of other kids who I hung out with had a Palladium Robotech book. We all read much the same books and enjoyed the same comics, etc. and that rules book introduced me to the concept of roleplaying and using rules to simulate combat.

After that, I pretty much investigated it on my own. The next time I was in a large town (the town I lived in was a small country tourist town of only 25,000 people), I went to a gaming store and bought this brand new RPG book called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook 2nd edition, 'cause it had literally come out that month, so it was the new shiny.

I ran games, got the DMG, ran more games, got loads of people into the hobby so I could run more games, joined clubs, started clubs, etc. The rest is history