Did anyone here come into gaming *through* computers?

[der_kluge]

I'm curious - we hear lots of talk about people who leave the hobby to play MMORPGs like WoW or Everquest.

I'm curious if there's anyone here who got introduced to "role-playing" via a computer game, and then discovered tabletop RPGs as a result?

 

[DungeonMaester]

Um..When I was Six I was playing Super Mario Bros. with my friend when he said "Hey, want to play a game where you can cut people in half with a axe?"

I have been a D&D player ever since.

Does that count?

---Rusty

 

[Grymar]

I came back because of computers, does that count?

I played back in the jr. high/high school days but hadn't played in over 10 years. Then I found Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights and those got me interested in the games again to the point where I asked a guy I knew if I could join his current game. That was 4 years ago and I'm still going strong.

 

[Gold Roger]

I got interested in D&D through playing Baldurs Gate 2. Most players I've had so far have played that game or Neverwinter Nights (and in one case WoW) before and where interested in D&D mostly thanks to those games.

We are a pretty young group, with me at 22 the eldest (I started when I was 15 or 16).

 

[JustKim]

While I was playing D&D Online, I met a lot of folks who were MMORPG bandwagoneers, basically just trying out the new MMORPG, having never played D&D. Whenever it came up that my friends and I were players of the tabletop game, there would always be folks who expressed interest in trying it out. I don't know how many actually ended up playing, but it sure seemed like DDO was the new D&D Basic.

 

[Moleculo]

When I was about 9 or 10, my brothers and I saved for maybe six months on our meager allowances to buy a Sega Genesis. We had finally come to the Toys'R'us to buy the system, and realized that we didn't have enough money to buy any games beyond the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that came with the system. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, said that she would buy us two games for the system provided she was able to choose one of the games. We chose some random game that I don't even remember. My mother chose "Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun," because, "it looks educational."

After a while, we played the stuffing out of the game, and after a couple of months we came upon an original D&D box set that TSR had re-released. My brothers and I were pretty interested in seeing what it was about. She cracked it open, we rolled our characters, and she DMed for us. She had always been into Fantasy and Science Fiction, but I don't believe she really knew anything about D&D before that.

 

[Deekin]

I came through Neverwinter Nights.

 

[jdrakeh]

Well, I played D&D back in grade school, though that was as part of a class project. I didn't play it again until 1995, which marked my entry into the hobby full-time. That said, in the intervening years, I played a great many Sierra/Dynamix adventure games (e.g., King's Quest, Hero's Quest, Gabriel Knight, and Betrayal at Krondor). . . and I'm 98% certain that if I hadn't been playing those adventure games then, I wouldn't be playing RPGs now.

 

[MarkB]

I came back because of computers, does that count?

I played back in the jr. high/high school days but hadn't played in over 10 years. Then I found Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights and those got me interested in the games again to the point where I asked a guy I knew if I could join his current game. That was 4 years ago and I'm still going strong.

That was almost exactly my own experience. I hadn't played since school, but I really liked the Baldur's Gate series of games. When Neverwinter Nights was in development I participated in the Bioware development forums, and actually bought the 3.0 core books simply in order to keep up with the discussions.

When Neverwinter Nights finally came out, I played through the main campaign a couple of times but was generally underwhelmed and drifted away from it - but I still had those rulebooks lying around. So I thought "Hey, why not use these the way they were meant to be used?", made some enquiries, and joined a local RPG club shortly thereafter.

That was over four years ago. I'm still with the same club, have made a number of good friends in the process, and now play and DM a variety of games.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

I first started with Baldur's Gate knowing next to nothing about D&D. When 3.0 came out, my friend new I loved the game and asked if I would be interested in playing the new edition of D&D. I said sure why not and have been hooked since. Neverwinter Nights was good, but I have yet to meet a game that has since replaced tabletop RPG.

However, I will admit that as a DM I often get extremely frustrated at the amount of work that goes into prepping and running each game session, let alone a campaign, and I've often been tempted to drop it all for DDO despite its limitations. Sometimes I just want to get a quick fix without all the excessive work. Besides, $15 a month is cheaper than what I spend for my tabletop game.