That is to say, the experience from your early involvement with RPGs that has subconsciously forged the rest of your career as a roleplayer?

For Jrients, according to his admission in another thread, it was running Keep On the Borderlands for the first time (maybe he'll elaborate on that later).

For Ron Edwards, it was being shunned by a group of "artsy" college sophomores who wouldn't let him play in their Runequest game. The rest is history.

For me it was roleplaying in my friend Derek's basement with my buddies from Junior High, running the 20th level of the "Undermountain" (not the real one, but a homebrewed version that had NO dungeon coherence whatsoever), running a bunch of ridiculous and overpowered characters that made no sense as individuals or as a group. I remember that I had an annoying Bard; someone else had a midget (not a dwarf) that rode around on a flying carpet that had to be pulled by one of the other party members, someone else was a lawful evil wizard that never did anything lawful evil, and my best friend Alex was a really huge ranger named Bubba with "No Direction Sense" (he'd actually roll to see if he'd get the direction wrong).

RPGPundit

It's hard to point to just one, but I can think of at least 3 early play experiences that affected me early on (and a few later that altered my course a bit):
1) My first major D&D came for which the GM riffed off of Thor and New Gods comics for plots. IT. KICKED. ASS.
2) The Musketeerish game in which I played a swashbuckler (home-rolled class) and featured strange Xanthish plot twists and Dumas-like romance. We actually, y'know, role-played in those games. To the point I had to laugh at later WW fans when they came forth with claims that you didn't really role-play in D&D.
3) Our first Traveller games, in which we were always in over our heads and running from someone.

When I was 12, I picked up Trollpak before I'd started with RuneQuest.  Intended to use it with my AD&D game, initially.  After trying to figure it out ("None of the NPCs have classes and levels? WTF?") I bought a copy of RQ2, and just fell in love with it.  I've been a BRP fan ever since.

I was playing some of the Regular DSA stuff in elemantary school, the dungeons were neither gonzo nor finely crafted, challenges were nonexistant and the coolest part on the map to explore (Orkland!) turned out to be uninspired and without Orks, but instead with RedRearRabbits as most common encounter (I kid you not! That´s how the rabbits are called). Then, when I was thirteen, I found the Traveller Book (german version) in an RPG shop.

I leafed through it.
I found a paragraph that dealt with hired people, a thing which would be totally disallowed in DSA.
I started thinking.

It made click.
My gaming got better and better till this very day.

As a player, the defining experience was our weekly (12am-4am) Mechwarrior campaign.

Strategic sandbox style.
Ultra free.
Fabolous prep work by the GM (he made a model for our JumpShip for example).
Players who were definitely into it.
Great Battles.
No rules disputes.
Referee-style GM.
Background music.
Gigantic mindblowing wheels within wheels storyline.
Ultra awesome blend of Manga-tropes, technical ideas and western military history on the GM´s side.


I could go on an on and on, and we travel to this GM once in a while to play MW.
He´s awesome. He set me on the quest to strive to perfect my GMing skills to his level. He also spoiled me, in that I cannot see much good in most GMs. Thankfully, Berlin was large enough to find some GMs of different but equal quality.

EDIT: Here´s stuff he made. He made stuff like this and much more for every fucking session, sometimes for naught, because we didn´t go were he expected us to. it didn´t matter to him.

Killing attack-squares from a giant square continent using a near-freeform mod of the D&D 2e rules at age 10.

Then, running Heavy Gear / D&D 2e / Alternity "gonzo" campaigns for my chums at 15/16, which was my first bout of playing RPGs according to the rules.

Then, years later, in university, meeting up with some guys who played D&D 3.x and learning about how the "roleplaying" aspect worked itself out.

These were definitive experiences for me because they were shitloads of fun, and I think back to them for insight on how to run games nowadays.

Playing in my friend Q's long-running AD&D 1e/2e hybrid campaign. It ran for about two and a half years, spanning two cities (El Dorado and Wichita, KS respectively) and three play locations (i.e., homes, apartments). The thing is, I played in this campaign more than a dozen years after I was first introduced to D&D -- but the campaign marked the first time that I'd ever had any desire to pursue roleplaying as a full-time hobby endeavor.

OK, so my first game was a short D&D campaign my uncle ran for me and a couple of my school friends when I was 12. We were hired by a wizard to collect a bunch of powerful artefacts.

Bunch of memorable moments in that campaign - being accompanied by a good Rakshasa into dungeon, fleeing a city after our halfling thief (who'd crept into the king's bedroom to steal one of the items) had to cosh His Majesty - that kind of thing - but the part which really stays with me was the climax, when we handed the artefacts over to the wizard and his allies on the back of a red dragon - and found out that they were the PCs from my uncle's main group, and we'd just helped them resolve an important part of a several-years-long campaign. The sheer scope of what could be done in the RPG format was, right then, dizzying and intoxicating.

Sadly, my friends and I didn't manage to play much regularly, and I didn't really get to do much gaming after that until I went to university aside from irregular one-shots and brief Call of Cthulhu campaigns.

I have two.

First experience was an AD&D campaign I ran during lunchtime and free periods in elementary school. It centered around an enchanting lake called Geneva and the surrounding environs such as McDougal's (a lone bar in the middle of nowhere), The Bandit's Lair, Orc Mountain, the Statue of St. Mogrin, and the Cathedral (a small but dangerous four level dungeon). My best friend played a fighter named "Cong-fu Marv" who quickly became notorious for killing his dwarven companions, abusing his elven slave girl, and solving all problems with a strike of his sword. Surprisingly, despite all of his foolishness, he mustered all the way up to 5th level by the end of the campaign. Another friend played the other memorable character, "Method Man", a ranger who let others do the fighting for him (he especially profitted whenever he teamd up with Congfu Marv). He made it up to 5th level as well. Besides those two blokes, I remember there being a shadow ninja, a rogue knight, a fighter called The Hitman, a female paladin called Scorpio, and a few dozen more fighters but they didn't do anything really special.

Second experience was a string of anime-centric IRC-based RPGs that took place on Dalnet network. At first, they were fun, with a lot of camp and rotating GMs, but always some people would take over, adopt elitism, and mandate "roleplaying, not rollplaying" while simultaneously promoting thier characters to obscence levels of power. Character death also never occured. Nevertheless I think these campaigns are the closest I will ever get to pre-80s gaming experience and for that reason alone, I treasure them.

Two defining moments.

1 - Running The Enemy Within for my old gaming group.

2 - Messing up my Mage campaign.

Regards,
David R

I was introduced to gaming when my mom picked up the old blue D&D box for me in the late seventies. We lived out in the sticks in the south, but I was able to browbeat enough of my redneck friends to play, and we had a great time.

My experience was redefined when I started high school in Denver, and gaming was supported with an actual club. Wow--a regular, dedicated group of gamers to experiment on.

It was redefined again in college, when I realized I was bringing everything I was learning there into my Space: 1889 game. Wow--intellectual!

Then it was redefined again when I finally got on the net in the late nineties and discovered the Unknown Armies mailing list. The game is great and all--but that list was sensational. It was a who's who of great GMs and players and writers, all generous with ideas and eager to stretch the boundaries of what was in the game. A bunch of them were respected designers at the time, and many regulars there have since become respcted designers. I don't know exactly why, but that list was just a whole lot of fun. It's past its prime, now, but I doubt I'll have that much fun on a list-serve again.

It's another decade, so I guess I'm due for another redefining moment, but I don't feel one coming on . . .  We'll see.

Sett, does your old GM speak english? If not I'm going to have to learn German.

That said, there are just a few moments that stick out.

1. Flipping through the MMII (3.0) on a road trip to the beach with a good pal of mine, and later my first GM. Seeing that scorpionfolk (and a bunch of other stuff) I was like... "woah! tell me more about this "roleplaying" thing."

2. Some really silly and infeasible character builds. Totally worth it.

3. Some really silly and infeasible suicidal attacks (whaddayamean the ogre gets an AoO?! ...oddly my favorite part of the rules now). I complained a bit, naturally. The second one was totally worth it, though.

4. That one game at that one party. I lost my voice before the thing even started, but I was playing a warlock... so suddenly my rasp was entertaining. Bunch of other stuff happened too. Game lasted until 4:00am and consumed massive quantities of red bull.

5. Running a dungeon for the first time with my latest (so far only) buncha players. This was before I tried introducing any kind of plot (and failing... I'll get it right next time or go back to dungeons) and before my players started wanting to "play as a toaster." T_T Anyway, the dungeon thing worked amazingly. Best fight scene ever in a random soup-kitchen. 'Cause monsters gotta eat too.

Hey, hold on a sec Pundit.

Just as Uncle Ron had his "defining" experience, so did you. If memory serves when you were posting as Nisarg on tBP, you said that one of the reasons you hated WW was that gamers around your area (you were still in Canada I believe) stopped playing D&D and started playing Vampire etc...and this mad you a wery,wery sad gamer. The rest is history, as you say.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RHey, hold on a sec Pundit.

Just as Uncle Ron had his "defining" experience, so did you. If memory serves when you were posting as Nisarg on tBP, you said that one of the reasons you hated WW was that gamers around your area (you were still in Canada I believe) stopped playing D&D and started playing Vampire etc...and this mad you a wery,wery sad gamer. The rest is history, as you say.

Regards,
David R

Given that I was in college by the time this came to pass, and already had some  8 years or so as a gamer, it really wouldn't qualify as a "defining early experience".

RPGPundit

I've got two:

Being on campouts in the Boy Scouts and playing AD&D and 0D&D in our tents or in a circle around a campfire with woods around us and critter sounds for background.

Buying my first Traveller game with money from my allowance and after reading through the rules, suddenly realising that I could use them to create all of the science fiction that I loved to read. Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle, Clarke, and Asimov stories weren't just for me to peruse, but for me to play in.

DM'ing the Isle of Dread in grade 6.  My first halfway adequate job as a DM.