Incline How did you first discover RPGs?

[Iznaliu]

Unlike what some people may believe, people are not born playing RPGs. In fact, they have to discover that they exist and that they have a preference for the genre. For the effective dissemination of incline, it first must be discovered how people are lead into it, making the specifics of this an utmost priority for anyone interested in incline. Additionally, here is your chance to rant about how times were better in the olden days before you discovered everything was shit.

 

[Eyestabber]

I was googling for "RPG" (rape porn gangbang) and stumbled across some nerd shit with weird dices and boring books. Since my mom caught me googling that I had to prove to her I was really into that nerd crap so...yeah. One bad google search cost me 10+ years of having to pretend I like elves, dwarves and magical trannies. FML.

 

[RPK]

stumbled upon a boxed copy of ultimate 6 in walmart when i was 17. didn't even have a computer yet.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Older brother bought Might and Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum in 1988 and I played it on an amber Hercules monitor-powered 286 without knowing what the fuck I was doing for months. It was amazing. Reading the manual was amazing. Everything was amazing when I was 8.

 

[Background Character]

Can't remember

 

[BlackGoat]

Watching my brother play Wizardry V on the Apple II in the living room. Then years later borrowing Ultima 7 from a friend and trying to get it running on the family pc and playing Trinsic over and over cause I didn't have the map or manual and couldn't answer the questions to get out of town.

 

[Black Angel]

Sadly, I was young and dumb and weeaboo. First I thought JRPGs are the RPGs. And then I discovered Skyrim.

It was thanks to Fallout: New Vegas (and to a significantly lesser extent, Fallout 3) that I went out of my comfort zone and tried Underrail, my first cRPG ever. It all leads me to here, shitposting in the Codex.

 

[undecaf]

Played Wasteland on C64 somewhere around '90 or '91. Was too young to understand all that English so my older cousin had to translate. Didn't do any missions, just ran around finding stuff. I guess I had similiar sort of fun with it then as people claim to have with Beth games now. I obviously didn't care at that age that it was an RPG, those kinds of games along with stuff like Maniac Mansion were just hell of a fun to play with all the interactivity. It was only at Fallout 2 when I started to give attention to genre lables, but that was also the time when booze and pussy were more relevant than videogames.

We did play some PnP games in late 90's to early 00's too. Cyberpunk, Rune Quest, a bit of Paranoia (tried DnD, but nobody liked it). And made some boardgames and rulesets of our own that resembled in some ways the stuff we couldn't afford or didn't know where to get. Fun times. There's still some urge left in our crowd to make some RPG'ish board games.

 

[Rev]

When I was seven in 1998 my cousins were playing Baldur's Gate and I started playing it too when I visited them (with poor results, tbh). Years later I played KotOR since I was a big Star Wars fan and it rekindled my love for RPGs. I also played a lot of Gothic 1 and 2 in those years, to name something more inclined.
Then I replayed BG1 and 2, this time finishing them and started looking on other games in the genre, both new and old.

 

[pippin]

The first rpg I played was Exile 1, but back then I wasn't "aware" of what an rpg was, if that makes sense... RPGs were stuff like Diablo back in the day.

 

[Lady_Error]

I read a review that gave Wizardry 7 one of the highest ratings ever - I trusted them and bought it. After Monkey Island 2 it was the second PC game I bought and then played it for months. Still one of my favorites.

 

[Barnabas]

I liked the fantasy setting of Zelda so from there I went to fantasy rpgs

 

[Bester]

A classmate gave me Fallout 2 saying "you can fuck prostitutes in it".

 

[Brayko]

I didn't know what RPG's were so someone suggested Oblivion and I was like "Wow, so this is an RPG? I don't know why they added all these useless numbers but boy what visuals!"

 

[otsego]

Stumbled on Bard's Tale and Stonekeep as a kid. Still play Stonekeep to this day. Baldur's Gate and IWD followed shortly after.

Daggerfall was my biggest catalyst. Amazing game that opened up so many possibilities and character creations (to someone who didn't know better at the time of course). I'm almost embarrassed to say, because of the current RPG climate, that Elder Scrolls is why I'm an RPG fan.

There were tons of Ultima clones before this that I cannot name now as they came on generic CD-ROMs and Diskettes.

I didn't play Fallout until I was well into my 'RPG glory years' and much later in my 20's. It changed everthing, despite Fallout being many many years old and 'outdated' by this point. Quality trumps time.

 

[Ruchy]

I think it was Morrowind which first got me hooked on the concept of RPG's, still my favourite game even if only because of my rose tinted glasses.

 

[Tavernking]

Used to read about them in videogame magazines and was fascinated, didn't actually play my first RPG until years later when Skyrim came out.

 

[Lurker47]

My older cousin showed me a high fantasy MUD and bought me some D&D books. God, I wish I could remember the name of the game.

 

[axedice]

I read about AD&D in a gaming magazine and wanted to try it out in mid school. The magazine also mentioned Baldur's Gate, a game made with AD&D ruleset. So I went to the store, but to my disappointment no copies of BG were left.

Then the guy told me they had another similar game that I could try instead, it was called Planescape Torment..

 

[Snorkack]

I was a console kid back then when I saw an announcement of Might & Magic 2 for SNES in a game magazine. The weird projection and the sheer amount of numbers and informations on the screenshot exerted an intense fascination on me, ~7 years old. It was the only CRPG I knew and played for a long time (I even wrote fanfiction about the game), until I got introduced to Star Trail at a friend's computer.

 

[Sloul]

12 years old
Visiting France
Bought a GEN 4 for 4 bucks
There was a Fallout inside
Never found something as shiny again

Tim Cain will always be some sort of hero for me

 

[555]

A friend gave me Baldur's Gate CDs and told me it was a good game and I should try it out

 

[Chateaubryan]

It wasn't love at first sight, now that's for sure.

Back then, I was an Amiga player (it means buggy as hell-guru-meditation galore). The two games that had some RPGs elements were Cadaver and Moonstone. I spent a lot of time on these two, though it wasn't that much for their RPGs elements.

Cadaver was very puzzle-oriented.

And Moonstone, well...

Then Eyes Of The Beholder happened, and D&D's abstruse system drove me off RPGs for a while - as well as its horrendously long loading times. Also, I could not into English at the time.

Then Ishar II. Looking back at it now, refusing to play EOB while gladly playing Ishar II for its graphics - and French localisation - is pretty much decline, but hey, still good memories.

Last, I got my first PC and Castle of the Winds along with it, starting a long strike of adoration for RPGs (and sharewares.)

That's when I was finally stuck with this weird fetish for numbers.

 

[Gargall amb Mocs]

The first time I saw a RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) was in the movie Rambo.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

My first gamebook:

My first PnP RPG:

My first (proper) CRPG: