I played an "RPG" that a kid I went to school with had constructed. It wasn't really an RPG, sort of a Choose Your own Adventure with dice resolution.

I picked up a D&D boxed set at a local grocery store and learned to run and play D&D on my own. Not connecting the game the kid ran and D&D until much later. It didn't much resemble D&D or any RPG at the time (I think the closest would have Risus, really.)

I assumed he overheard a relative playing and made his own the truth is I don't know, he could be a die hard gamer out there now. He wasn't a friend, and I switched schools the next year. (For unrelated reasons, primarily I wanted to go to a magnet school since they had cooler classes. It was the first year they had them locally)

I spent most of the time after learning D&D spreading D&D, teaching others, running games. My sister is a die hard player. I run into gamers all the time who I don't remember because I played a game with them once or twice, showing them how it worked and they went on to game elsewhere. Many of them remember me vividly as I made the game interesting or fun for them. One of my current groups consists of a friend I invited to game to my house since he'd been a customer of the store where I worked and was interesting in gaming.

I tended to be more social then--and more likely to spread my enthusiasm of games and books quite widely

Quote from: Drohem;534587It's a term (probably lame) that I made up to try and convey the concept that a person's initial/foundational experiences with gaming and game systems has some influence on that person's game style, choices, and/or preferences.

Okay.

I think it does to a certain extent, at least initially. Over time, however, I think that the foundational experience fades into the background for most people. We become much more a sum of our total experiences in gaming. We also can change over time as to what it is that we want the most out of gaming other than fun of course. This influences our choice of systems to a certain extent.

I know that I need a lot more depth to a campaign than I used to. I need character choice to matter. To be able to make an impact on the setting. I need there to be more to the game than just hack and slash encounters and loot. That remark isn't to disparage that form of play mind you. It is just that I got tired of that being the primary emphasis on play a very long time ago.

I've been doing this crazy hobby for over thirty years now. I've noticed a distinct change in my tastes and system preferences during all of this time. Yet somehow I tend to play d20 systems more often than not. I seem to have to translate other mechanical systems into d20 verbiage inside of my brain for me to comprehend them. So maybe you are actually on to something here.

Quote from: beeber;534549sir, i would like to play in your next session.  pure dynamite

Ehh, I play AD&D now BTB so it wouldn't be quite the same

Quote from: PaladinCA;534594I think it does to a certain extent, at least initially. Over time, however, I think that the foundational experience fades into the background for most people. We become much more a sum of our total experiences in gaming. We also can change over time as to what it is that we want the most out of gaming other than fun of course. This influences our choice of systems to a certain extent.

Sure, and I absolutely agree.  I am just saying that it is a factor, even if a small or minor one, when considering how one's gaming preferences developed, or originated.

I started playing D&D in the late 70's after getting the books for Christmas one year. My older cousin got them too. He ran a dungeon shortly after that and I was hooked when I encountered a magically animated brass dragon. This thread makes me want to go back and figure out which adventure it was... I think it was one of the B ones.

I started with the OD&D books back in 80-81' sometime, later moved on to the BECMI, then AD&D 1E and never stopped.  I learn and teach all my games to anyone willing to play.

Exposed to D&D briefly (didn't take); a couple of years later first went through console RPG games (Phantasy Star). First real RPG I played was Tunnels and Trolls in about '91; after a few sessions we switching to 2nd Edition D&D (more character options and so on). After everyone got sick of 2nd Ed I went back to T&T and redesigned an 'advanced' version of T&T with more character options - basically half 'skills and powers' - that got me addicted to tinkering.
 
Eventually the old group broke up/moved away and with the new group I found myself running 3E D&D, although I hadn't originally liked it - bought and sold one PHB, then had to buy another one. The first couple of 3E campaigns I ran I did use the T&T game universe with Khazan/Rhaelph, though a D&Dized version of it with the timeline advanced a couple of thousand years - until the players finally broke the planet.
 
As far as imprinting goes, I think I can also blame T&T for giving me an addiction to ridiculous power levels and stats (I've run a number of epic-level or otherwise over-the-top 3.5 games). I remember finding out that D&D scores in 2E only went up to to 25 and being perplexed (... that should only take a couple of sessions right?).

Had the Holmes basic D&D back in the late 1970's, but couldn't really figure out how to play it.  Only figured out how play it in a basic hack and slash style.

Later got the Moldvay basic D&D box set.  Played with an older crowd, who were more proficient with the D&D ruleset.  Most of what I learned about playing and running D&D, was from these guys.

Quote from: Darran;534573I started in 1981 with RuneQuest and went on to play other Chaosium games like Call of Cthulhu, Ring World, Stormbringer, ElfQuest, Pendragon, etc.  

So I guess that I worship at the Church of Chaosium and Greg Stafford!

The only true religion.

From this page:

Vince Garcia asked, "What got you into D&D?"

I can't really pin it down too precisely. The general concept of these games in which a Gamemaster described the world while other players played characters in that world just kind of percolated into my consciousness.

I know E.T. (and the novelization of E.T.) is in there somewhere. I know that the ads TSR used to take out in Marvel Comics in the 1980s played a part. There were probably other influences. (Oddly, at this point, I don't remember really connecting this rough conceptual understanding I had of pen-and-paper games with the CRPGs like Ultima that I was already playing.)

The first RPG I ever actually saw was the Batman Roleplaying Game. This was a spin-off of Mayfair's DC Heroes, and I spotted it used in a long comic box at a small comic book convention in Minneapolis, MN. (This was a great little convention: They had Stan Lee, Jim Lee, Chris Claremont, and a half dozen other major names of the time. But the convention was so small, despite somehow attracting this talent, that you were able to get meaningful face-time and interaction with them.) The game was like $5 or $10 and I snapped it up.

(Why it was being sold used still leaves me a little baffled. This was the summer of 1989, so the game would have only just been released to tie-in with the Batman film release.)

Unfortunately, the game was completely impenetrable to me. If the game was designed to meaningfully tie into the Batman film (released that same summer) and attract new fans, then it failed miserably for my 10 year old self. I couldn't figure out what you supposed to do with it.

So, in lieu of that, I ended up making my own BATMAN game. My brother played Batman and every single action was resolved using an opposed roll of 1d6: I, as GM, rolled an unmodified 1d6. My brother, as Batman, rolled an unmodified 1d6. If his roll was higher, he succeeded. If my roll was higher, he failed.

And we rolled for literally every declared action, leading to the one moment of hilarity I can remember from that game: Batman crashing the batmobile on his way back to the batcave.

Shortly after this, my father dug out an old copy of Middle Earth Roleplaying that he had acquired somehow (he never played himself). I read through that and found it nearly as impenetrable as the Batman Roleplaying Game (although with MERP I at least managed to create a character I never used for anything, IIRC).

Later that same year I finally convinced my mother to take me down to the local game store (Pinnacle Games in Rochester, MN). Pinnacle Games had the brand new 2nd Edition AD&D Player's Handbook on display. But the word "Advanced", combined with my experiences with both Batman and MERP, steered me away from that and towards the 1984 red-box Basic Set they also had displayed on top of the shelves. (I was under the impression that the Basic game must naturally be a precursor to the Advanced game.)

The red-box was just about perfect: The clear, transparent explanation of what a typical RPG session would look like. A solo playing experience so that you could get a taste of what the game had to offer without trying to convince other people to learn it with you. A subscription card for DRAGON magazine (which I saved my pennies and my dimes for and eventually sent in, receiving #162 as my first issue).

DRAGON helped me realize my mistake vis-a-vis the relationship between Basic Set D&D and Advanced D&D, so I ended up picking up the PHB and DMG later that fall. I ended up picking up a used copy of the 1st Edition Monster Manual instead of the 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendium and, in point of fact, continued using the 1st Edition MM until the 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual came out many years later.

Mayfair, TSR, Pinnacle, MERP, AD&D, and Basic Set D&D are all gone now. Even DRAGON Magazine is about to disappear. But I'm still here. And that's how it all began.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;534459Recently 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.

Well, yeah. I mean, OD&D explicitly tells the DM to disallow certain actions if the character isn't intelligent enough to think of them.

Quote from: Drohem;534425Some 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.

Link to said posts/theory/smack-down?

Edit: Found one...
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=527857&highlight=unforgiven#post527857

Quote from: Drohem;534501OK, for all the self-taught people, do you think that the friends/people that you first gamed with had any lasting influence or contribution to your 'RPG Imprint?'

Get ready for a pretty weird story.

My first game is pretty foggy, because it was when I was five years old. Back then I was just a nosy, and weirdly precocious kid, not some huge geek.

I'm pretty sure I was being humored by my big brother and his friends. Even with that I remember the thrill of sneaking into the bedroom of a sleeping wizard, getting to roll those dice, and stealing a Ring of Regeneration right off his hand. After that I somehow managed to co-opt his copies of Moldvay B/X.

After that I became a young and enthusiastic non-gamer (as opposed to the bitter variety). I read repeatedly and collected through birthday and Christmas presents. It wasn't until I was 13-14 before I mustered the courage to bring up my collection to my friends and offered to run a game for them. That game was TMNT and Other Strangeness, which I ran until I bought RIFTS a year or two later and moved to that.

I guess I can see where the aesthetics and rules of those particular games shaped my current tastes. Becoming an fan of Otus art at the age of 5 is bound to warp anybody.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;534674I mean, OD&D explicitly tells the DM to disallow certain actions if the character isn't intelligent enough to think of them.

A stupid rule which was sensibly dropped from 1e AD&D and even more sensibly never appeared in many other games at all.

I know I'm late to this thread, but the OP's presentation of the idea kind of reminds me of Kung Fu schools. "I can trace my teaching lineage back to Chen Fake." / "Oh yeah? Well I can trace my teaching lineage back to Chen Sen Feng!" and so on and so forth.

I think a person's formative experiences with roleplaying certainly influences their perspective...but that does not stop people from radically renovating their perspectives as they age. (Not to say that the interests of age are superiour or more mature, but tastes do change.)

//Panjumanju

Quote from: Panjumanju;534707I know I'm late to this thread, but the OP's presentation of the idea kind of reminds me of Kung Fu schools. "I can trace my teaching lineage back to Chen Fake." / "Oh yeah? Well I can trace my teaching lineage back to Chen Sen Feng!" and so on and so forth.

Awsome!  I can see many hilarious geek skits about your 'Gaming School' of thought.

Quote from: Panjumanju;534707I think a person's formative experiences with roleplaying certainly influences their perspective...but that does not stop people from radically renovating their perspectives as they age. (Not to say that the interests of age are superiour or more mature, but tastes do change.)

//Panjumanju

Sure, and I absolutely agree.

I hope that I have given the impression that these influences are the major, or the sum of one's gaming experience.  I think that it is worthwhile, and that there is merit, is discovering and identifying one's RPG Imprint to help self-identify your current state of gaming preferences; and how that preference was shaped and developed into its current state.

As an example of how perspective change:

Shortly after high school, my first GM died in a plane crash (he was a pilot in a small aircraft).  I started playing 1e AD&D with another group of friends from high school.  The DM was a by-the-book kind of guy who only ran TSR modules.  He was the kind of guy who forced us to listen to the boxed text in those modules.  I started to become dissatisfied with my gaming situation the time, and I didn't understand that no gaming was better than bad gaming.  

I met a new friend through my job at Book City in Burbank, CA (near the where the Last Grenadier was located).  He introduced me to his group of friend who where playing 3e RuneQuest as their system.  They weren't playing in Glorantha, but instead making up their own fantasy setting for the system.  My eyes were opened to the concept that there were other game systems that used non-TSR resolution mechanics.  I found the RQ system to be intuitive, elegant, and the math simple but emulative.  Discovering this new group of friends/players and amazing game system reinvigorated my gaming desire, and the fire has never been in danger of going out since.

I call my first role-playing game (2e Gamma World) my 'Gateway RPG,' and I call 3e RQ my 'Eye-Opener RPG' because it torn back the curtain for me and revealed the old man pushing buttons and blowing whistles.  Now, I am that old man behind the curtain.