Where did you find your first groups?

[Glyfair]

In another thread:

I remember reading about people gaming with what seemed like hordes of players (not characters; actual players), which led to me and the guys I gamed with being baffled. Where were all these gamers at?!? We sure didn't know of very many besides us, and we got our books from bookstores, where you really couldn't tap into the gamer community (there were no game shops nearby that we knew about).

This, combined with people insisting that roleplaying games will do fine once we lose the local gaming store (and we are losing them), made me think. Where did I find my groups?

Where did you find your first group or first groups? Did you drop our of gaming and then pick up? Where did you find that group?

I started playing around 1978. I saw an article in the paper about a local gaming group who played D&D, and used it to play through the Lord of the Rings story. I realized that was the game I was looking for.

I found a copy at a local hobby store/craft shop and picked it up. Initially, my brother was the only player. Periodically I would stop by and look for new things (indeed, I kept checking to see when the Player's Handbook and later, Dungeon Master's Guide were out). One day someone else was looking and we started talking. He was looking for someone to game with also. I had found my first DM.

Within the next few months we played a bit with a friend of his he got to play. Eventually, I was reading the PHB at school in a side room from the classroom while the class took a test that I didn't have to take for some reason). Someone else from another class was there and started asking questions about D&D. I found another player. Together we found another player that we both already knew.

That was my first group. With one or two other players those player brought in.

Eventually, I went to the local University. I knew D&D was common there because the group in the aforementioned article played there, plus the one D&D convention Delaware ever had was held there.

The commuter's lounge was roleplaying heaven. You could usually find a roleplaying game going on. I was exposed to half a dozen roleplaying games (Arduin, Dragonquest, Melanda) through that. I probably met 100 different gamers there in my first semester at school.

Towards the end of that semester, I found out that the people in the article were opening a games store. They decided to call it "The Days of Knights." I ended up becoming friends with them.

From that gaming store (which is still in business, although it's down the street now) I've met too many gamers to count. I've played more games that I can possibly remember, and was exposed to even more. For years, Saturdays were spent from noon-midnight (and later) playing Champions and later Melanda (the local published roleplaying system).

Essentially, most of the people I gamed with came from school (particularly the University of Delaware) and the local gaming store.

What about you?

 

[Gentlegamer]

I taught myself the rules and taught my friends how to role-play. I've found that "gamers" per se aren't really the best folks to actually game with. For almost any game, you're better off teaching your friends to play.

 

[IronWolf]

My first group was made up of friends in high school. Only two members of our group had actually played before.

My most recent group was made up of a few friends and people found on Internet message boards (En World and Wizards). It has been a really good group and I consider each of them my friends now.

 

[Crothian]

My first extended group was about a dozen kids from school and around the neibhorhood.

 

[Aeson]

I played one game at camp when I was 14. 6 years late I met a coworker at Papa Johns who had a game group. I joined them. 10 years later I still game with him but the group scattered to the 4 winds.

Most groups I join these days were formed online but we often meet at a game store for the first time to make sure we are not weirdoes.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

My first "group" was me and a friend of mine ... his older brother (we were officially "kids" at the time) played RPGs and we decided to make one up. So we did. I totally forget the rules but they were very simple and consisted mostly of: "We know dice are involved ... all I have are yatzee dice ... if I roll 1,2,3 I miss, 4,5,6 I hit! And when I get better, I'll hit on 3 too!" But that wasn't all that great because 1d6 doesn't give you alot of options. So I begged my mother to take me an hour away to a town of some size where I picked up the 2nd ed boxed game. Which was alot of fun. After that I got the 2nd Ed. PHB and DMG and MM ... I got my local friends to play (we moved) and I played with them irregularly. For us it was "Something to do when we're broke and bored" so random weekends and days during the summer we'd get four 12-packs of the locally-canned super cheap soda and I'd run an off-the-cuff D&D game. We'd throw in money every once in a while and buy an expansion ... usually boxed sets ... Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, etc.

After high school I went to college. I sort of felt out the gamers there, but most of my friends happened to be computer science and engineering geeks who played video games and drank alot of whiskey. The gamers I did encounter all played Vampire and thought they were angsty. Most of them were people I had no interest in seeing outside of an RPG so I opted to do more drinking and less gaming. I played ONE session of RPGs the entire time I was an undergraduate.

For Grad School I found the campus had a gaming club ... my new wife and I are both gamers, to some extent, and we eventually showed up. (For the first few weeks ... well, they'd moved the rooms and forgot to update the webpage, and when I inquired about where everybody was on the list-serv the guy that runs things sent me a very snippy email. So I figured I had another case of "The Gamers Here Are Tools" and wasn't going to go, but I met somebody from the club that convinced me to give it a second go round.) It was a slow week when we got there and I had thought ahead and brought my books. A few people came that had never played D&D and I ran a quick adventure and they liked it and after a few games like that I invited the folks I thought were cool to come over to our place for a regular weekly game. Those same core people, more or less, have been my regular group for the last five years. Very good players, and I'd count them as friends, even if they're generally younger than I am. We kept going to the gaming club meetings, played alot of board games and the like, and generally got to know the 15-20 regular gamers on campus. They're all good people, and I've played with alot of them in various games over the last two years.

Now I'm moving again ... have to see how this segment of my gaming life will turn out. I've had several generous offers from semi-local ENWorlders. Would be nice to walk into an established group and just PLAY. I usually end up the GM.

--fje

 

[Hairy Minotaur]

Foreign Language building on Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul Il.

I had heard that's where the local gaming scene was and showed up one Saturday afternoon looking for a game. My eventual DM was there to pick up a new player who never showed. He found me standing around, and although not the guy he was looking for, he invited me to join his group.

 

[drothgery]

My first game was a very short-lived one run by my sister's then-boyfriend the summer before I went to college. But I probably wouldn't have stuck with it if the people I'd started hanging out with in college hadn't decided to start a D&D game, which turned into two D&D games run by different friends on alternate weekends.

I graduated, and was pretty much in PBeM-land (as PBP games hadn't really taken off yet) for a couple of years; I didn't seriously look for a group in upstate NY, because I was intending to move as soon as I found a job somewhere else.

After moving to San Diegon and a few false starts, the Gamers Seeking Gamers forum ended up leading me to the group I play with now, and have for the last four years.

 

[TwinBahamut]

At first I just played with my twin brother.

Eventually, I found my college's gaming club, and have been playing with them since.

So, like the original poster, most of my groups have come from family, friends, and a university group (even if half the people who attend the club don't actually attend the college itself).

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Back in '91 I borrowed my frends 1st Edition PHB and photocopied the whole thing. I read it from cover to cover. My friend was my first DM. I had fun my blowing up his dungeons with moltov cocktails. For about two years I played a party of six characters in his campaigns known colletively as The World of Many Adventures, as he called it. I shortened it up to Twoma. Anyway I eventually found some second edition books and started buying them up left and right. My baseball card collection days were over. I still have them though.

I GMed some adventures for him and evetually found a Hobby Bench at the local strip mall. I did my shopping there for a while but then found a Game Daze a closer mall. I noticed that there were adverts in the back of the store for people looking for groups and for groups looking for more players. My face perked up. Over the years this was how I got into gaming groups until '97-'98 when I finbally got a computer and finally made myself electronically known.

Ah, happy days.