I was introduced by a friend at school to the TSR Marvel Advanced Game, and Basic D&D. Without game stores though, I never would have found Champions, WEG's Star Wars, Chill 2nd Edition, old out of print gaming books before the Internet, miniatures, and all kinds of other stuff.
How Did You Start Playing?
- Thread starter JustinA
- Start date
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
No, cranky pants, I was trying to say that, if you thought the poll should have asked a different question, you should make a poll like that, so that question gets asked.Vigilance said:
I voted "Introduced by a friend," though its not technically correct.
I had heard of D&D, seeing some of its product in the same stores I bought comics and sci/fant novels- not true LGS's, but comic book stores.
Then I heard about a kid who was running an intro adventure after school, and signed up.
Bookstores in my next place of residence carried D&D and Traveller, but rarely got any new releases, and only restocked every couple of months. However, my gamer buddies and I would save up money to go to stores in other cities 1-2 hours away to get the new stuff.
That covered my first 5 years of gaming.
It wasn't until I moved to the D/FW area that I actually had a true LGS located closer than that. Since discovering true LGS's in my home and where I went to school (Austin, San Antonio), I met many more gamers (per year), played more different games, and expanded & improved my playstyle more than at any other time. You simply couldn't find the same variety of games or number of gamers (networking, networking, networking!) in a mainstream bookstore as you could in a game store.
While LGSs didn't get me into the hobby, without them, I'd still only be playing D&D and Traveller...assuming I could find someone to game with. The 100 other games I've gotten over the years probably would be absent from my shelves.
From my perspective, they are not neccessary for growing the hobby in terms of participants- Big Box stores can do that as well as LGSs- but they are neccessary for expanding the horizons of the hobby beyond a few big games or systems. IME, Big Box stores (generally) still don't sell the same variety of games as the LGSs, and you still only find 2-4 different systems represented in their stock.
I had heard of D&D, seeing some of its product in the same stores I bought comics and sci/fant novels- not true LGS's, but comic book stores.
Then I heard about a kid who was running an intro adventure after school, and signed up.
Bookstores in my next place of residence carried D&D and Traveller, but rarely got any new releases, and only restocked every couple of months. However, my gamer buddies and I would save up money to go to stores in other cities 1-2 hours away to get the new stuff.
That covered my first 5 years of gaming.
It wasn't until I moved to the D/FW area that I actually had a true LGS located closer than that. Since discovering true LGS's in my home and where I went to school (Austin, San Antonio), I met many more gamers (per year), played more different games, and expanded & improved my playstyle more than at any other time. You simply couldn't find the same variety of games or number of gamers (networking, networking, networking!) in a mainstream bookstore as you could in a game store.
While LGSs didn't get me into the hobby, without them, I'd still only be playing D&D and Traveller...assuming I could find someone to game with. The 100 other games I've gotten over the years probably would be absent from my shelves.
From my perspective, they are not neccessary for growing the hobby in terms of participants- Big Box stores can do that as well as LGSs- but they are neccessary for expanding the horizons of the hobby beyond a few big games or systems. IME, Big Box stores (generally) still don't sell the same variety of games as the LGSs, and you still only find 2-4 different systems represented in their stock.
Lord Zardoz
Explorer
I heard about the game from reading Marvel Comic books (TSR did alot of advertising in them). At some other point, a friend of mine loaned me Dragons of Spring Dawning. Some time after that, I purchased the 2nd edition PHB, then other books.
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(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
I was introduced by a friend in junior high. He gave me a copy of the 1e Monster Manual (or maybe it was the 2e one) but since I knew nothing about it I just looked at the pretty girls (like the lamia). Heh. I started playing RPGs in high school where I was introduced by friends. I did got to an FLGS a few times, but to buy Vampire cards (they were really cheap). I didn't start going to FLGS for actual gaming books until university, buying Alternity stuff.
I think people go to FLGS to reach "the next stage" of gaming, like buying your own Player's Handbook. If I had never heard of RPGs, why would I ever walk into an FLGS in the first place? There's also not many of them; I can't really stumble into one, even by chance. And if I'm interested but never played, there's quite a bit of risk in buying a product I might not enjoy (a big deal for me, since I was a high school student from a poor family without a part-time job when I started becoming interested).
FLGSs could, however, sponsor "tournaments", where people could get friends who show any interest in fantasy (those who read the right kinds of books, etc) to show up and play a game. I know I was involved in two such "tournaments" at university, although in one case everyone who showed up had played before, so it was a bit of a failure.
I think there's two issues with MMOs having greater acceptance. They're not all that new, but they've only fairly recently become known to non-gamers. (My mother, for instance, can understand a book but not computers. She hates DnD but has never heard of World of Warcraft.) Most of what people who don't play know about them are negative though (addiction, sitting in front of a computer for hours instead of doing things, a few people died from overplaying, etc) so I think over time their reputation will suffer.
Second, you can play MMOs with total strangers, or people you meet online, and don't need to worry about meeting an MMO-hater face-to-face. You can organize a LAN party (or whatever they're called), or game with friends you know in real life, but you don't have to. It seems easier to join an MMO party than a DnD party. (Note, I've never played an MMO in real life, so dose this stuff with salt.)
Hmmm... lots of people I game with haven't even bought one! Not one single book, and this is through many years and multiple gaming groups. Often after several years with the same gaming group it becomes obvious that some players are never going to learn the rules; gaming is just a chance to hang out with like-minded people. It's a bit difficult to force players in the group to buy Player's Handbooks (they're not that cheap, and usually there's enough floating around for everyone to make characters, even if it does mean chargen takes much longer than it should). Unless you make characters at home (yay for point buy!) you don't strictly need to buy the books. Despite years of playing 2e (and occasionally running) I never bought a 2e PH, and for that matter only bought the Alternity core books after I stopped running/playing it. Between rules familiarity and not wanting to use rules that are so complicated I have to consult the book to use, I didn't actually need to buy the books. Then again, I have a memory like a steel trap
I never bought a full set of 3.0 books (SRD, did buy the PH though) but did buy the three core 3.5 books.
I think people go to FLGS to reach "the next stage" of gaming, like buying your own Player's Handbook. If I had never heard of RPGs, why would I ever walk into an FLGS in the first place? There's also not many of them; I can't really stumble into one, even by chance. And if I'm interested but never played, there's quite a bit of risk in buying a product I might not enjoy (a big deal for me, since I was a high school student from a poor family without a part-time job when I started becoming interested).
FLGSs could, however, sponsor "tournaments", where people could get friends who show any interest in fantasy (those who read the right kinds of books, etc) to show up and play a game. I know I was involved in two such "tournaments" at university, although in one case everyone who showed up had played before, so it was a bit of a failure.
Hjorimir said:
I think there's two issues with MMOs having greater acceptance. They're not all that new, but they've only fairly recently become known to non-gamers. (My mother, for instance, can understand a book but not computers. She hates DnD but has never heard of World of Warcraft.) Most of what people who don't play know about them are negative though (addiction, sitting in front of a computer for hours instead of doing things, a few people died from overplaying, etc) so I think over time their reputation will suffer.
Second, you can play MMOs with total strangers, or people you meet online, and don't need to worry about meeting an MMO-hater face-to-face. You can organize a LAN party (or whatever they're called), or game with friends you know in real life, but you don't have to. It seems easier to join an MMO party than a DnD party. (Note, I've never played an MMO in real life, so dose this stuff with salt.)
Steel Wind said:
Hmmm... lots of people I game with haven't even bought one! Not one single book, and this is through many years and multiple gaming groups. Often after several years with the same gaming group it becomes obvious that some players are never going to learn the rules; gaming is just a chance to hang out with like-minded people. It's a bit difficult to force players in the group to buy Player's Handbooks (they're not that cheap, and usually there's enough floating around for everyone to make characters, even if it does mean chargen takes much longer than it should). Unless you make characters at home (yay for point buy!) you don't strictly need to buy the books. Despite years of playing 2e (and occasionally running) I never bought a 2e PH, and for that matter only bought the Alternity core books after I stopped running/playing it. Between rules familiarity and not wanting to use rules that are so complicated I have to consult the book to use, I didn't actually need to buy the books. Then again, I have a memory like a steel trap
I never bought a full set of 3.0 books (SRD, did buy the PH though) but did buy the three core 3.5 books.
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Vigilance said:
You're assuming that a poll designed to get a data point is the be-all and end-all of the debate. You're right to argue that brick-and-mortar game stores contribute to the hobby in other ways, but there's really no way to objectively measure that without intensive market research which is far beyond the capability of a forum poll to even adequately address.
At best, you could aim for some anecdotal evidence about what people say they or other people do. But it would be even more useless than a forum poll asking people how they started playing the game in terms of useful information:
(1) Huge bias ends up in that poll. The fact that all of us are now reading ENWorld probably has a minimal impact on how we first got introduced to the hobby. (Although maybe not: It's certainly possible that gamers who were introduced to gaming through demos at a brick-and-mortar game store and/or a random impulse buy are under-represented on ENWorld for some reason. I could even make several hypotheses about why that might be.)
But if I ask a question like, "Where do you get most of your new information about games?" the fact that we're all reading ENWorld has a rather large bias on the answer to that question.
(2) People cannot be relied upon to accurately answer questions about their own behavior. Not because people are liars, but because people generally have a very tough time accurately assessing their own behavior. (And even tougher time accurately explaining their behavior.) A question like, "How did you start playing RPGs?" is a fairly concrete question with a factual answer based on external experience. Questions like, "Why do you still play RPGs?"; "How do you hear about new games?"; or "Would you still be playing RPGs if it wasn't for your LGS?" are all considerably more likely to give you back meaningless answers.
(3) Even if we did get a reliable answer of, "I learn about most of my new games from a brick-and-mortar store." That answer doesn't tell us a lot about what behavior patterns people would have if they didn't have a brick-and-mortar store. Would they seek out new sources of information? Would those new sources of information actually introduce them to even more games, thereby increasing player retention and expenditure in the industry? Would they end up going to a B&N or Borders or other mainstream location with significantly smaller selection, thereby narrowing their knowledge of alternative products and (presumably) reducing player retention and expenditure? Would they just stop playing altogether?
A study that could answer those questions could be conducted. (Simply find a location where a LGS has recently gone under, leaving no replacement behind, and then conduct a study focusing on its former customers.) But a web-poll would give us no insight whatsoever.
(4) Even when they're just exchanging anecdotes, people tend to compare apples-and-oranges. An anecdote about how you wouldn't have discovered CHAMPIONS in 1982 if it hadn't been for your LGS is essentially meaningless in regards to what would happen today (given the complete revolution of how people receive and retrieve information).
By contrast, asking about how people were introduced to the hobby can give us some useful insight: Apparently, based on the questionable sampling of this poll, the LGS was essentially insignificant as far as introducing new people to RPGs is concerned. If was insignificant in the past, is there any reason to think that it will become significant in the future?
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Someone bought me the blue D&D expert boxed set around age 10. I had no access to the basic set and no idea what was going on at all. He told me I didn't need the basic set. I figured the game was poorly written, too hard for me, and made no sense. However, I liked swords and sorcery type settings (specially the video game rpg Ultima 3) and didn't give up. Eventually I figured out that the atrributes and everything else would be explained in the basic set and bought it. Loved the game ever since.
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