"Gateway Drug"

[AdmundfortGeographer]

My memory is vague but believe when I was playing the Car Wars computer game from the 1980s on my Apple ][e, as I read through the manual trying to understand the system for upgrading the car, and wishing there were more options, I saw that the game was based on an existing pen and paper game.

I picked it up, became a fanatic, bought all the accessories and expansions, played it to excess and inventing my own alternate timeline so as to evoke a greater Mad Max feel. When I tried tweaking designs to optimally get the most firepower into different sized vehicles I knew I was hooked.

I later took that tweaking when I discovered Battletech. I got my ever more math loving brother in to Battletech, he went on to design a table analyzing the various inflection points in 'Mech tonnage vs. 'Mech engine speed. It was like discovering gold in the back yard through an ancient seeing secret code we decoded. There it was each of the particular tonnages a 'Mech designer should pick for any particular speed and which ones were the ones to be avoided. Seeing it laid out in raw numbers removed my naïve belief that it there wasn't a probably better way than another. I felt joy at this "system mastery", but much later (many years) came to dislike the elimination of the mystery. Paradox, but it really means there is a balance. I'm still driven for system mastery, but I have a good idea how far is too far for me, too much system mastery for me and I lose all fun.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, first of all, I do not consider D&D a gateway drug, which implies there are other, better (more addictive) games out there.

D&D does pull people into the hobby, something no other gaming company can do. D&D is in big-box stores and most other games are only in obscure corners of the internet (granted, so is WOTC to an extent) and to find most of these games, you need to find obscure gaming shops to get them.

I really regret the passing of Dungeon and Dragon. They were a nice pair of magazines hat made it into most bookstores, right up in front of the store, instead in an anonymous corner where the rulebooks were.

I wonder how many people's gateway drug was those two magazines?

*Of course I am talking as if I were a new player.

 

[juboke]

My first non-D&D game was either Boot Hill or Gamma World. My first non-TSR game was Villains & Vigilantes.

 

[SoulsFury]

I'm 26 and started with 2nd Edition AD&D, as did most of my friends. I actually am having trouble converting them away from Thaco, lol.

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

The first non-D&D RPG I ever owned was Gamma World (3rd Edition, I believe). I never got a chance to play it, though.

So, the first non-D&D RPG I actually played is a tie between Heroes Unlimited and Vampire: The Masquerade (got them both at around the same time and introduced my D&D group to them).

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Well, since I am so old that the "Red Box" came along after I had been playing D&D for several years, I suppose I can be excused for not remembering which non-D&D game I played first. Of course most of those game experiences consisted of making up characters, and playing it once or twice before moving on to something else (Traveller, James Bond, CoC, Marvel Super Heroes, Thieves World...). D&D was always the game we went back to.

 

[prosfilaes]

The first non-D&D RPG I read was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I was amazed at the flexibility and choices it offered. (This did not stand up on a rereading, but it was far more flexible then 1e D&D/2e PHB D&D.) I think my first non-D&D game was GURPS or oWoD (both about the same time, with the same group).

 

[PulpCruciFiction]

I started with D&D 2e around 1995. The first non-D&D RPG my group played was the West End Games Star Wars RPG, though shortly after that we started playing Heroes Unlimited as well.

 

[scruffygrognard]

What I am wondering here is what was it that made people stumble upon other RPGs, and made them want to keep playing them. To me, having played many non-D&D RPGs is what marks someone as a "hard core gamer." So, what was your first non-D&D RPG and what made you start playing it?

I played Chill pretty early on because my friend's mother had issues with D&D (it was the early '80s after all) and dabbled with other games (mostly character creation and not much else) like: Villains & Vigilantes, Dr. Who, Star Trek, Rolemaster, MERP, Star Frontiers and Pendragon.

The only non-D&D games I played with any regularity in the '80s were Gamma World and, in the late '80s, Fantasy Hero and DC Heroes.

 

[Shemeska]

D&D was the gateway drug for me, but I was already aware of it and a lot of its content because of the 80's cartoon, the AD&D Endless Quest kids books, and later on Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment. I didn't play D&D or any other RPG till relatively late, just after 3e had hit stores.

After the "gateway drug" got me into a gaming group, I started dabbling in lines of Shadowrun, experimenting with White Wolf, even doing some joints of Alternity. Ultimately it led to me being here, strung out on Pathfinder and mainlining some hits of Eclipse Phase and Cthulhutech.