When and what game did you start with.

[Argyle King]

I attempted to start somewhere in the late 80s to early 90s, but the Satanic Panic prevented me from being allowed to buy D&D books.

Sometime around 2002-2003, I was between combat tours and the rec center where I was had some old Rifts books. That was my first time actually playing a ttrpg. (I very vaguely remember the story involving a super-computer which had become a self-aware megalomaniac.)

At some point, I started playing D&D 3rd Edition. Eventually, I picked up D&D 4th Edition. I think somewhere around the first year or two of D&D 4E, I picked up GURPS 4th Edition and started playing that as my primary game.

I've dabbled a little in Heroes Unlimited and the first edition of Pathfinder.

Currently I'm active as a player in a D&D 5th Edition game. GURPS and Edge of the Empire are my favorite games to play.

 

[zarionofarabel]

1988, D&D Red Box. Taught myself to DM with a small group of friends as players. Switched to WEG Star Wars shortly thereafter.

 

[Eltab]

1980.
War Games Club at high school.
D&D, Gamma World, Traveller little black books (solo), Champions, Starfire (solo), Star Fleet Battles, Boot Hill (once or twice), Star Frontiers (once or twice), Squad Leader (once), Guns of August (once), Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (once) - in no particular order.
Due to Satanic Panic, emphasized Champions, SFB and especially GW.

 

[Li Shenron]

Early 90s with BECMI re-release boxed set, one of my best friend had received this as a gift and started DMing the game for us.

 

[aramis erak]

John, over at the My First Game: Top Secret/SI thread is right! That would be an interesting thread. When did you start playing? What game was it? What was the environment in the gaming scene like at that time? Let us talk of the halcyon days, when the sun was bright and the days long. Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of.

I started summer of 1981.
It was AD&D 1E.
The only parts of the gaming scene I knew were ...

• the guys I gamed with: JW, AF, BW, BW, AG...
• The guys I knew gamed but with whom I didn't game: RO (who had showed me his copy of Holmes), and someone else in the same 5th grade class who brought in the D&D digital boardgame.
• The one clerk at Long's Drugs who stocked the games aisle, and pointed me at the least expensive way into D&D... the brand new Moldvay rules... I had to cheap out - bought just the book and a dice pack, as I was a dollar shy of the boxed set.

Oh, and I knew a few wargames players. Including my shrink.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Started in 1984/1985 with Drakar och Demoner. Not sure If it was the edition Staffan linked to, or the first one, which had a different cover.

The first game I bought myself was Chock, which was a Swedish translation of Chill 1e.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Also played and enjoyed Runequest, Gamma World in late 1970s/ early 80s, and made use of lots of Judges Guild stuff in D&D campaigns.

Getting a bit more obscure, I also got to play a short campaign in a rare system called Bifrost. It was a British rule set, quite complex but I remember it fondly, maybe due to a good DM.
Anyone else ever play it?
View attachment 142640

It's a neat little game!

And available again!

 

[Committed Hero]

'80 or '81, the tail end of grade school. If anyone has read The Monsters Know What They're Doing, I had the exact same reaction to the review of D&D in Games magazine. There was no way a game could do all the stuff that the reviewer mentioned! But once I played with some friends - the earliest module I recall using was G2 - and was hooked.

 

[GuyBoy]

It's a neat little game!

And available again!

Thanks for this.
I enjoyed the read, and it brought back memories. The armour being used as a multiplier of hit points was pretty elegant, and I remember all abilities being done on a d10, but if you rolled a natural 10, you rolled a second d10, so scores were 1-20 in theory, but 1-10 was more common as a range. Having an 11 or more made you exceptional in that area.
I can also remember that my character was called Beccara and we battled against a werewolf-cult devoted to Fenris. Pretty visceral stuff.

 

[Lord Shark]

1979, Holmes Basic.