What influenced you to start gaming?

[Hal G]

Inspired by the Who should be in appendix thread.

This is not a who bought/taught thread but a what movies/books etc inspired you to try a game that used dice and imagination?


For me it is Three Musketeers, Robert Adams Horseclans series, and Sword of Shannara books that sparked my imagination and Star Wars on the big screen that made me try RPG's....you?

 

[halfjack]

Maybe strangely, but for me it was the games themeselves. I was instantly sucked in by the idea that there was a book that could codify, organize, constrain, and amplify the free-form let's pretend that I was doing anyway (wasn't every 10-year-old?). I didn't start reading or watching game-relevant fiction until much later. In fact my first character was a halfling but I had no idea what one was.

 

[David Howery]

well, I was into fantasy lit long before I ever heard of D&D. But the big thing that got me into RPGs was a beautiful display of D&D miniatures I saw in a toy store in a mall. It was a long downhill slide from there...

 

[Nifft]

I played 1e waaaaaay back long ago, then stopped in high school when I discovered the creatures known as "girls".

What got me back into gaming was a friend who gave me his used copy of Baldur's Gate 2. Then 3e came out, and it was all down hill from there.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Tolkien, Alan Dean Foster, Piers Anthony (hey, I was 10), Oz, Narnia, Star War, Bruce Lee movies (yes I played a Monk in 1st AD&D).

I started in 77/78.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

My first two sessions were because my future brother-in-law wanted me to play so I'd like him. Didn't work.

But what got me to come back was reading one of the Dragonlance novels when I was in college (92/93-ish) and I thought it was a great story. Sadly, I can't remember which one it was for sure, but I think it was Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

After reading the novel, I happened to be in a mall in Des Moines, Iowa, and stopped into a bookstore and there was this Dragonlance module (DLE2: Dragon Magic) sitting on the shelves. I picked up the 2e PHB, DMG, MM and this module, grabbed a couple of friends and we sat down and played. We each played one of the pregenned characters from the back of the adventure and one of our own characters. Been playing off and on since then.

 

[SiderisAnon]

I was in junior high and read about D&D from an ad in the back of a comic book. It wasn't even strictly an ad for D&D; it was an ad to sell holiday cards and one of the prizes you could earn from selling a bunch was the D&D red box.

I got the info, sold the cards, got the red box, colored in my dice, and have never looked back.

 

[Gilladian]

Back in 75/76, when I was 10, my older brother brought DnD home from boy scouts, where they had gotten in trouble staying up all night playing.

I was already hooked on fantasy, as our Mom had read the Hobbit/LOTR out loud to us when I was 3-5 yrs old. I don't remember directly associating dnd with LOTR, but I bonded with it instantly, and have been playing ever since.

 

[AeroDm]

Edit--misread topic.

Earliest movie was Princess Bride. Monte Python and Holy Grail also played an undeniable part. Then we also kicked off right at the point of decent CGI, so movies like DragonHeart were decently solid. For books we were adamant fans of Sword of Truth and Dragonlance trilogy. For me personally, the Dragonlance trilogy was the most significant fantasy resource I ever encountered.

 

[Stormonu]

It was actually the Grenadier D&D minis that got me to try the game (I saw an NBC nightly news special where they showed some of the minis set up at Gencon[?]). At that time, my favorite toy in the world was the Fisher Price castle playset. That and the Rankin Bass version of the Hobbit - and Hawk the Slayer.