Some recent posts by Black Vulmea, the Toxic Dog, about his roots-gamer theory, and his excellent smack down of a Forge Warrior using the words of Little Bill Daggett describing the killing of 'Two-Gun' Corky in the Blue Bottle Saloon in the movie Unforgiven*, have me thinking that this is worthwhile to explore and discuss.  I hope you feel the same.

I would say that the majority of gamers learned how to play from someone else rather than just picking up the rules and reading them without any influence from another person on how to interpret and view the rules.  (Naturally, now there will be a slew of posts where people state that is exactly how they learned how to play RPGs, LOL!)  I think that in this learning process, a gamer is 'imprinted' with the sensibilities of the gaming culture at the time (more specifically, the decade influencing game culture).

My first exposure to RPGs was my senior year in high school in 1985 by a newly made friend from out of state.  He was my first GM and introduced me to 2e Gamma World (my Gateway RPG), Star Frontiers, and, lastly, 1e Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  My first GM, learned to play RPGs, and inherited all his RPG materials, from his older brothers.  

Now, taking into account Black Vulmea's Roots-Gamer Theory, I think that my first GM's gaming experience, which was imprinted onto him by his older brothers, also has left a lasting impression on my fundamental gaming outlook and experience.  This indicates to me that my gaming philosophy is rooted and tied to the first decade of gaming culture.

Ideally, I would like to summon the Toxic Dog to expanded and clarify his Roots-Gamer Theory because I think that there is merit to it.  

Also, what to do think?  Is it all rubbish?



* Completely off topic, but I would also like to note estar's excellent use of a scene from A Few Good Men to smack down gleichman's silly 'cheating' line of reasoning.

my imprint is moldvay basic, 1981, 6th grade.  i think a teacher pointed it out to me and i was intrigued.  got the set and a friend and i learned it ourselves, no outside influences.  and even with that set's simplicity we were house-ruling right from the get go ("caller" was first to go).  

so yeh, i fell right into your 2nd paragraph prediction

My imprint was the Space 1889 corebook. Ok, I did pick up a couple Dragon Magazine issues out of curiosity before that. There were a few GM advice articles in those. Does playing 40k minis (Rogue Trader) for a while before count as an imprint?

I don't have much imprint. I spent one session with some guy's group and never came back, because I figured I would rather run than play, by a long shot. I set up my own group, which I ran for 20 years, and didn't play with anyone not part of that group, so basically the feedback was all internal.

-clash

Well, I guess for those who just picked up a rulebook and started playing without input from an existing gamer that their 'RPG imprint' would be the gaming culture emulated in that rules set.

I would need to know more about the theory before entering a discussion.

Quote from: Imperator;534444I would need to know more about the theory before entering a discussion.

Yes, some more context is probably in order.

This is the post by Black Vulmea that I cited in the OP.  It was in one of those long and convoluted threads, but I did a search and found it.

That post was in a discussion between Black Vulmea and snake_eyes regarding some the evidence Ron Edwards cites in his works and theories.

Quote from: Drohem;534425Ideally, I would like to summon the Toxic Dog to expanded and clarify his Roots-Gamer Theory because I think that there is merit to it.

Whoa, elevating a comment to a Forgite to the level of a theory?! That's positively Edwardsian!

As far as the idea that when you become aware of something affects how you view its past and future, sure, I think that's pretty readily understood.

It's one of the reasons I'm not a fan of James Maliszewki and Grognardia. He started gaming only a couple of years after I did, but those couple of years, and his lack of a wargaming background in particular, produced two very different views of roleplaying games. He's made his bones 're-discovering' a style of gaming that he actually rejected back in the day, so what he writes about is often glimpsed in hindsight and reinterpreted through his subsequent experiences, and to me it utterly lacks the authenticity and clarity of original experience.

Now contrast James Maliszewski with Mike Mornard. If Old Geezer doesn't write a book about roleplaying games before he dies, it will be a crime against history.

Recently I participated in a thread over at Dragonsfoot about roleplaying the 'mental stats' - Int, Wis, Cha - in D&D. Many of the commenters take the view that if you don't play your 4 Int fighter as an idiot, you're cheating. I noticed that many of those commenters cited 2e AD&D in support of their argument. From where I sit, 2e is the edition that Dragonlance begat, full of the story-nonsense that makes the hairs on my neck rise, but to them, that would be The Norm against which other experience is measured.

In different posts over the years on a number of forums, I've mentioned that there are certain influences that I've carried with me: the Temple of the Frog as my model for an adventure site, Wormy for how I populate those sites, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy and the Divine Right boardgame for creating a setting, the Thieves World box set and the Boot Hill adventures Mad Mesa and Burned Bush Wells for creating a 'social sandbox,' and Top Secret's Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle for creating networks of npcs. That's my "imprinting," and every bit of it is as relevent to the gaming I do right now as it was when I was first exposed to it back in the day.

But in addition to those influences which imprint themselves on us, I think we also need to consider what we rejected as well. To this day I've never played in, run, or even read the original Tomb of Horrors. I never owned or used either the Greyhawk folio or the Forgotten Realms box set.

So, not much in the way of a theory, really - more like disconnected ramblings, I'm afraid. We like what we like, and we tend to like most that which defined our initial exposure and shaped our original experiences.

And for every person for whom that's true, there will be 1.34 people for whom it's totally wrong.

(That's an actual statistic. You can look it up.)

Quote from: Drohem;534442Well, I guess for those who just picked up a rulebook and started playing without input from an existing gamer that their 'RPG imprint' would be the gaming culture emulated in that rules set.

In that case, I prefer anything not like my first experiences. I guess it's sort of a negative imprint, then?

-clash

Quote from: Drohem;534457Yes, some more context is probably in order.

This is the post by Black Vulmea that I cited in the OP.  It was in one of those long and convoluted threads, but I did a search and found it.

That post was in a discussion between Black Vulmea and snake_eyes regarding some the evidence Ron Edwards cites in his works and theories.

OK, then.

I started with Red Box D&D with an elder cousin. After the first session I run my first game with my brother, some friends and a bunch of houserules I gleaned from D&D adventure books, because we had no ruleset or dice. I only played with my cousin's D&D group and my own homebrew games for 4 years, until I got RuneQuest and the Call of Cthulhu.

I was introduced to role playing games in 1988 by a much older cousin of mine (who probably learned the craft from the first gen of French RPG gamers back during his time in engineering school), and he was running AD&D First Ed with T1-4. I was playing solo. It was amazing.

That same cousin offered me L'Oeil Noir (The Dark Eye/Das Schwarze Auge RPG basic set in France) later in the year and I started running games with that. I transitioned some time later to Basic D&D (Mentzer), and then Hawkmoon, Stormbringer, Rolemaster, Star Wars d6, AD&D 2nd edition, In Nomine Satanis Magna Veritas, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu... all the way down to Vampire the Masquerade and WoD games which stuck with me til the end of the 90s.

I had a break from RPGs in 99 or so because I basically burnt out on the whole gaming thing. I thought I had seen everything and I was pretty much done. I was wrong obviously. I remember picking up 3rd ed D&D in France and that's what brought me back to playing RPGs again, then d20 games, got back to role playing games I liked, like Vampire, INS, Cthulhu. Burnt out on d20, started looking more towards old editions of D&D, Castles & Crusades, LA... discovered OD&D, then got back to AD&D First Edition. Full circle.

Started in 1980 with a little bit of playing from the Holmes set.From those earliest adventures I learned that playing without knowing the rules was not only possible but a hell of a lot of fun! Character life was cheap. Sometimes you survived an adventure and sometimes not-the uncertainty of it all was the root of exciting play.

 By the time I had the opportunity to get my own materials the Moldvay set was available and that plus a pad of graph paper kept me occupied for some time.

I got whole bunch of AD&D material for my birthday in 83. Just skimming through those AD&D books brings back so many fond memories.

I suppose playing what I did, when I did instilled a very lighthearted approach to playing. To this day I care way more about having a good time than if my character lives to see another session. I don't get too wrapped up in stats or give a rats ass about the character building game. A story was always something that came later when telling someone about how your last character got eaten by a mimic.  I don't understand these kids today with their protagonist entitlements and narrative control BS. Its just a game, relax and have fun.

I suppose I'm one of those who picked up a rule book and learnt how to play, then had to find other people to teach. I learnt about D&D in the comic book adverts of 81 or thereabouts that TSR ran, and came across the Moldvay book on its own in a stamp collectors shop. When I moved town with my family there was a wargames store that sold a few RPG books (Judges guild stuff which looked like it was knocked out on the cheap) but other than that it was mail order or bust.

I remember saving up my pocket money and wondering if my postal order would vanish, never to be seen again or if I'd actually get what I'd saved up weeks for. I was 10 at the time, and it was a tricky period for me, moving to a new town and having to make friends. D&D helped in that respect because I met a bunch of guys who humoured the young geek with the funny dice and were happy to join in with his strange game. Not sure how relevant it is to the OP's question, but that's how I started *shrug*.

Quote from: flyingmice;534463In that case, I prefer anything not like my first experiences. I guess it's sort of a negative imprint, then?

-clash

Honestly, I think it is what it is and nothing else; an imprint.  It's not necessary to view in terms of positive or negative I think since the focus here is just the foundational core of your gaming experience.  (Well, to me at least.)

Well, I started playing AD&D at Boy Scout campouts in the early 80's, then bought and self taught B/X D&D shortly thereafter, then found Classic Traveller and self taught it. Those were the games, along with some Gamma World, that imprinted me in the beginning. Reading articles from White Dwarf, Dragon, Space Gamer, and Dungeon also shaped that imprint with the opinions found therein.