How were you first introduced to the roleplaying game genre?

[RigaMortus2]

Just as the subject says...

I'll go first I suppose...

I was introduced to RPGs with D&D the Basic set. My older cousin had a bunch of books, as he got holder he started to get out of D&D so he gave me and my other cousins (around my age) the books. We were hooked right away. This is also about the time the D&D cartoon was on on Saturdays. Anyway, we were about 10 and had no idea how to really play the game (despite having all the rules books), so when we played, instead of saying "Do you want to play D&D" or "Do you want to go on an adventure?" we would say "Do you want to go on a maze?" because that is essentially how we played. Every game was in the form of some labrynth. Also, since we did not know the rules, there was no dice roleing. The DM made up all the decissions on the fly. The player would say "I want to swing my sword at the medusa's arm." and the DM would decide if it works or not. Entirely up to the DM (like I said, we were 10).

If a game got boring, we would kill the characters by saying "Medusa shows up, you look at her and turn to stone, the end." (Can you tell medusa's were a big monster for us). Or "The world blows up, the end." Did I mention we were 10?

And don't get me started on ADVANCED D&D... Tiamat (our favorite arch enemy, thanks to the cartoon) could shoot ICBMs and lasers from her eyes... Hey, it was ADVANCED D&D!!!

 

[The_Gneech]

By seeing Chainmail at Crown Books, IIRC. But I didn't actually have any direct contact with it until my uncle gave me the first Boxed Set, c. 1978-1979. Then I read about it for three or four years before I ever actually managed to find someone willing to play.

-The Gneech

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

It's not a genre, it's a medium.

I bought the Moldvay D&D Basic Set in 1984 and played with my brother and friends.

 

[Raylis]

My oldest sister came home from college when I was 12 and said "Here's this really fun game I've been playing, I think you'll really like it"

I've been playing ever since.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Direct to P&P RPGs, but only because they were the main thing my parents were doing at that time.

If I'd been three or four years younger, PC RPGs would have come first; my parents pretty much went tabletop>PC>console as each medium moved away from what they were most interested in. I don't think either of them have played a tabletop RPG in a few years, and only my father was ever really into wargames or CCGs.

 

[jdrakeh]

[rant] Arg! "Roleplaying" is a medium, not a genre! [/rant]

That said, I was introduced to FANTASY (that's a genre!) roleplay via pen and paper, though it was the PC game Betrayal at Krondor that hooked me.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Pool of Radiance on my dad's Commodore 64.

 

[s.j. bagley]

my first rpg experience was being at the house of a frined of my older brother when i was about six, and stumbling upon the first edition 'monster manual.'
i've been hooked ever since.

 

[KenSeg]

My best friend in High School, Ernie Smith, invited me to a game that they had just started. We used the Holmes boxed set and I played a halfling thief with a shortbow. I was hooked. Thanks Ernie for 30 years of gaming fun, wherever you are.

-KenSeg
gaming since 1978

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I chose other, because I first became aware of RPGs, and the sort of concept of an adventure-game where you rolled dice to achieve things via the old "Fighting Fantasy" books. In particular, The Riddling Reaver, which my mother confiscated from me when I was eight, in the grounds that it was excessively violent and gory (my aunt, a LotR/Dune fan, amongst other things, had given it to me). It was a quasi-RPG, you needed to understand how Fighting Fantasy books worked, which I did, and it provided four adventures you could "run".

I didn't get any further with RPGs for a couple of years, until one of my friends described AD&D 1st Edition to me. It sounded absolutely magnificent, and I was particularly taken with the idea of playing a Cavalier. The whole concept seemed instantly understandable.

A week or so later, my brother, who I had explained the ideas to, and who was equally excited, and I, went out to buy AD&D (from a Games Workshop store! Oh how the world changes!), but we didn't know much about it, apart from you needed more than one book to play it, and one of them was called the Player's Handbook. We located than, and worked out that we needed the Dungeon Master's Guide, too, and I insisted we buy Forgotten Realms Adventures, because it's cover BLEW MY TEN YEAR OLD MIND. Like completely.

Little did I know, I'd purchased AD&D 2nd Edition! My friend at school was somewhat outraged with me for this, and somehow I ended up not speaking to him for a week or two. However, in a remarkable coincidence, a second cousin of mine came over from Canada (I'm a Londoner), she was in her early twenties, I believe, and an avid AD&D player - she was excited to know that we'd just gotten AD&D, though strongly suggested we buy the Monstrous Compendium (which I had avoided because it looked like a dumb folder, not a game-book) when we could. She then proceeded to write and map a truly beautiful adventure set in the Forgotten Realms for us (her group used the setting as well), and ran it for our first AD&D characters, my brother playing a Speciality Priest of Torm, and I a Speciality Priest of Mask (talk about an unlikely pair!). As you can tell, we were very taken with FR's Speciality Priests! They seemed much more exciting than most of 2E's classes! She had to leave before she finished running the adventure for us, but her maps, notes, and explanations provided the foundation I needed to learn how to GM, and a couple of months later I was running my own games (with the bitter 1E-playing friends forced to play 2E in them ).

Anyway, that's my story!