Game fantasy first or book/movie fantasy first?

[mhacdebhandia]

I voted "Other", because I got into D&D thus:

• Read a novelisation of E. T. the Extraterrestrial when I was nine years old, or thereabouts. Remembered the name of the game the kids are playing in the first few chapters was "Dungeons & Dragons".
• Saw a British one-volume edition of the third edition of the D&D Basic Set a few months later on sale, and convinced my mother to buy it. I still have that on my shelves somewhere.
• Never got the chance to play it, because I was a shy kid who'd just moved interstate and so had lost the friends I had, and my brother wasn't interested.
• My brother did, however, point out the first volume of the Elven Nations trilogy from the Dragonlance series at a bookstore once, and I bought it since I had been intrigued by the idea of elves with their warrior-mage powers in the Basic game.
• Enjoyed those books and the rest of the series so much that I snapped up the Dragonlance Adventures hardback when I saw it on sale, then discovered that you needed the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide to actually play . . .
• . . . sadly, this was 1990 or 1991 and Second Edition was already out, so that old DLA hardback never saw much use.

Thinking back on it now, I never read any fantasy growing up apart from the Chronicles of Narnia; my father instead introduced me to science fiction like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, which he read as an adolescent. I certainly never even read Tolkien, which goes some way to explaining why I didn't find D&D Basic Set elves trite at all: I'd literally never encountered them before.

I doubt I would have enjoyed Tolkien, even The Hobbit, back then; as cruddy as some of those Dragonlance novels are, their worldview wouldn't have offended me like Tolkien's would have offended even my childhood self.

Edit: The exception, as I am reminded by looking at the rest of the thread, is that I devoured Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology around the same age. That's the closest I came to reading fantasy as a child.

 

[lukelightning]

It's my brother's fault.

I got into D&D 'cuz my older brother was playing it with his friends, and I finally pestered them enough to be included.

 

[WayneLigon]

I got into books and movies first but then that was before D&D even existed.

 

[JustaPlayer]

I got into D&D because of one thing. Conan the Barbarian. So for years and years I never read anything except game books. Then Ravenloft comes out and I start reading those novels. Once Ravenloft book were no longer published I had nothing left to read and started picking up other things. I have since read hundreds of fantasy novels from various authors.

In short, movies got me into D&D, D&D after a while got me into books.

 

[Hand of Evil]

mythology, history and some really cool toys, the red and white plastic knights with the gold/bronze castle with working draw bridge!

 

[freebfrost]

I got into fantasy literature in the late 70s, and my eldest sister had noticed my interest in the genre. She had heard about this "new" game - Dungeons & Dragons - and its corresponding fantasy elements, and got me a basic set for my birthday in 1980.

So, indirectly my fantasy books led to my introduction to D&D.

 

[TwinBahamut]

My earliest exposures to fantasy were videogames, ancient Greek/Norse/Egyptian myth, and the Chronciles of Narnia...

Next major wave of exposure involved a lot more videogames, anime, and Lord of the Rings.

Final wave of exposure has been traditional folk stories and D&D.

And no, D&D should not be more like the literary writings since Tolkien, since those guys are young pups compared to the really interesting stories. And they lack the coolness of anime and videogames.

 

[GuardianLurker]

Neither.

Oh, I was reading Fantasy, SciFi, and Mythology long before I was introduced to gaming (New Year's 80/81), but there wasn't/isn't a causal connection between that and RPGs.

A stronger connection would be the fact that I loved "lets pretend", inventing stories, and games, and here was something that would let me do all 3. With defined (and thus impartial) rules.

Even now, I don't generally even think of playing in a "crossover"/published setting (like LotR, B5, etc.). I don't want to play in someone else's story, I want to play in my own (even if mine isn't quite as good).

 

[James Heard]

Mostly it was from reading science fiction and mythology, with a healthy heaping of wargames ala Squad Leader. I didn't get into fantasy books until much later, and really most of my early gaming was more about Traveller than anything else.

 

[Tonguez]

a rubber carrion crawler and 2 bullywugs