Atypical Gaming?

[fbmf]

Seriously though, there's no reason anybody would know that "tome game" referred to a variant D&D ruleset.

Of course not...unless the variant rules were shown to them in a link in the reply.

Game On,
fbmf

[Judging__Eagle]

reminds me of Critias coming into the shadowrun thread and complaining that Frank was mean to her in his review.

Frank,

mean to someone,

I'm shocked.

Frank simply is frank. I can't honestly say that I've ever seen him act in a mean fashion. Insulting, factual, brutal, but it's frank.

[Ted the Flayer]

This is thread necromancy, but I can say that fbmf's experience was typical for me until I moved away from my previous hometown. Now, things are difficult for me, I'm having a lack of luck getting into a local game (and the ones I get into tend to be short players for very good reasons...)

I may check the college I attend for gaming groups.

[Aryxbez]

I started RPGS with 3rd edition, friend introduced me to it via its starter box set. Didn't last long till interests dwindled to other things, Like others in this thread, some point years later, I ended up trying to write up my own Fantasy game, which was basically just a amalgram of Nintendo references, Planetary exploration, with Fantasy mix (so had like Bomberman, Dodongos as races, Dragons, Goombas, Werebear barbarians side by side as monsters). It was pretty much fiat, with mostly fake values in the game, where damage was randomized by myself. When I did try to tie an actual system to it, the experience wasn't as good, that, and my desire to commit to an actual system got it dropped.

Some time between that, at around 14, I actually played in a D&D campaign at a Hobby store. Some point I stopped playing that randomly,and I ran the Munchkin Tabletop RPG, with struggles to barely get a group together with my friends, to say the least. Then, I desired for something more "serious", and the group that played at the hobby store gone, I DM'd 3rd edition campaign, so there would be a local game. I've DM'd for about 6-7 years since, bit more off-on these days, with having now recently running a game.

To expand on my experience as a "player", well I pretty much exclusively play with friends. I've gone to a Con a few times, lost bit interest due to redundancy in the D&D-esque games. The campaign's I were a part of, for most part, wouldn't made it past 3 sessions, if they got off the ground at all. Exceptions of course, being a D&D campaign I played in, which I made my first character that lasted several months, couple 4th edition campaigns, and currently, I run a 3rd edition Tome, and play in a 4th edition campaign (ongoing for about a year or so,10th-16th so far, while my campaign been off-on for couple years).

[Quantumboost]

reminds me of Critias coming into the shadowrun thread and complaining that Frank was mean to her in his review.

I'm pretty sure the bad impression here wasn't about meanness but rather uselessness. Which actually is an unusual bad first impression here.

[hogarth]

In the 1980s, I mostly just loved to read RPG books and roll up characters, and any playing was usually one-off games (D&D modules, Champions, V&V, MSH, among others) and not lengthy campaigns (my friends and my brother's friends weren't organized or ambitious enough in elementary school/high school).

For a couple of years in the early 90s, I played in a weekly 2E AD&D campaign with some guys from the university gaming club (I knew one of them slightly from high school, but otherwise they were all strangers). The DM was the type of neckbearded obsessive who liked to fill up binders with the details of his campaign world. At the time, I thought he was great, although in retrospect he was the kind of guy who thought that every fight should be a "boss fight" and that he wasn't doing his job unless everyone spent some time bleeding to death each session.

I stopped paying attention to tabletop RPGs until 3E came out, and then I started hanging around various message boards. Then I started playing in play-by-email and play-by-post games, which often tend to burn out pretty quickly. What I like about PbEM and PbP games is that they're much easier to schedule around work, social life, etc.

In the past couple of years, I've tried to find a regular face-to-face group with mixed results: one Pathfinder game turned out to be a big turn-off (the GM would just make everything up -- including new rules -- as he went along), one superhero game fizzled out after half a dozen sessions, and a couple of others never even got off the ground. Finally, around six months ago I found a regular (every two weeks) Pathfinder game that's going pretty well.

[shadzar]

D&D since the early 80s... moved a lot thanks to DoD. too hard to nail down a stable group. then when in stable location most players with families, and i care nothing for being in a daycare, nor did others, so groups fell apart due to feeding and nap time and such.

never picked back up with a stable group after the 80s since people too preoccupied with everything else going on.

some areas just have stable playerbase, and others do not.

[Shrapnel]

My experiance begins all the way back before I was born, when my brother was a wee lad. He had lots and lots of 2e books and setting materials. He continued to play for awhile, although by the time I was around six or nine, he had stopped playing, and given all of his remaining books to me. Now, almost all of the books that had survived to my possession were from the Dragonlance setting, plus the core game players guide, DM guide, and Monsterous Manuel. This got me more or less hooked on looking at the pretty pictures in the books, and getting excited over the Nymph entry and picture in the Monster Manuel. (Keep in mind, I was like younger than ten at the time).

It wasn't until much later, say around the start of middle school, that I decided to actually read the books. Needless to say, I didn't understand a word of it, at least from a mechanics perspective.

BUT! I did love the creativity that was involved in D&D, and that has always it's biggest draw to me.

Anyway, flash forward to year or two ago, when I became aware that my good friend DarthRabbitt had actually been playing this game for some time. I kept pestering him to let me join in on one of his games, and he finally relented, and invited me to a game. That group is the only one I've ever gamed with, and we're a pretty wild bunch.

Darth's regretted it ever since.

Also, he's the reason I came here; he kept on mentioning things from this place that I decided to join in on the fun. Before I joined, I used to think that Frank was a moderator, thought that "Tome" was "Tomb", and had no idea what a PsycicRobot, Tzor, or a barrel of cocks was. I still don't. What fun!

[fbmf]

D&D since the early 80s... moved a lot thanks to DoD. too hard to nail down a stable group. then when in stable location most players with families, and i care nothing for being in a daycare, nor did others, so groups fell apart due to feeding and nap time and such.

never picked back up with a stable group after the 80s since people too preoccupied with everything else going on.

some areas just have stable playerbase, and others do not.

Show of hands: who else was reminded of Rorschach's journal?

Game On,
fbmf

[Shrapnel]

(hand shoots up)

[Darth Rabbitt]

The accumulated filth of all their rollplaying and min-maxing will foam up about their waists and all the munchkins and powergamers will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No."

[Koumei]

When I was... under six, my dad bought me Hero Quest. I considered it "an awesome board game", but let's be honest: any definition of RPG that includes D&D4E is going to include Hero Quest. A year or two later he bought me Battle Master (IIRC), which is a wargame (WHFB style) with all the units included for both armies, no extra purchases needed, and with a battlemat.

That was also about the time we got a PC (a proper one - we had an Amstrad CPC since before I was born, but that's a gaming console that happens to use disks and a keyboard) and he introduced me to the joys of Ultima Underworld, Moraffe's World and Castle of the Winds. Three PC games that lead to you playing tabletop games. Oh also Eye of the Beholder, which I didn't like that much.

Sadly, there was a huge gap from there - I had only heard of "Dungeons and Dragons" as part of the title of Eye of the Beholder and on sketches on a kids' TV show called something like "You Can't Say That on Television", where it was "some kind of board game probably like Hero Quest". Also, from around 9-16 I had no real contact with my dad, not long after my parents split up he went back to England and there were just occasional letters. He was my main source of geekdom. I inherited my accent and gall stones from him, so why not my tastes?

Got into MUDs at around 16, starting with the Discworld MUD. Likewise Warhammer 40k. By this time I was firmly a fan of JRPGs (and Western ones as well - Baldur's Gate and so on). At some point when I was 16-17 I got linked to a PbP forum, Playbyweb - which is sort of the precursor to the massively popular RPoL, RPoL being created as an alternative to PbW's outdated system and assholish owner. From there I was introduced to the basic rules of games, met some people, went to my first roleplaying convention at age 18, and then at 19 when I moved to Melbourne I quickly fell in with some gaming groups and started properly learning the rules for games.

In the case of D&D, that was thanks to an awesome smartass teacher (though there was some confusion regarding houserules - for the longest time I thought their "natural 1 to hit provokes an AoO" houserule was core, but it's still better than most "nat 1" houserules or the WoD stuff), in the case of WW it was "I learned the rules insofar as anyone does".

[Maxus]

The accumulated filth of all their rollplaying and min-maxing will foam up about their waists and all the munchkins and powergamers will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No."

+$TEXAS

[Shrapnel]

The accumulated filth of all their rollplaying and min-maxing will foam up about their waists and all the munchkins and powergamers will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No."

Awesome.

[Darth Rabbitt]

That might be the greatest thing I've ever written.