Your first Roleplaying experience.

Ebon_Arbiter

Ebon_Arbiter

Grand Abolisher
You know what they say. The first love is the deepest. Is the same true as far as RPGs are concerned?


What was your first roleplaying experience like and did you enjoy it?


Did you do all the hard work, looking up for a game, then studying to make a story for your friends or perhaps a friend or acquaintance of yours invited you in one?


How were you introduced to Roleplaying and through which specific game and more importantly, did it leave its mark on you?

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As far as I'm concerned, I heard about Roleplaying games in my late teens and began exploring them after I became an adult. My first attempt was on D&D 3,5 edition, since I wanted something close to the Neverwinter Nights series that I had enjoyed on my PC. Finding a DM proved easy, yet the group fell apart after the first session, since we were not enough (me and a couple of friends) and the additional player brought in by the GM, did not exactly fit well with the rest of us.


Thus, I gave up on it for some years and then I was introduced to a - now - friend of mine who was an avid roleplayer and storyteller/GM/DM. My first - proper - RP experience was with Dark Heresy, an RPG set in the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40K universe. It made a huge impact on me, still holds a very special place in my heart and was the reason I got hooked up on Roleplaying ever since.

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This is a thread about initial experiences in the hobby/activity of Roleplaying. Remember, share your experiences, see where each of us comes from, in terms of RP initiation, and view the past experiences as a guide to your future ones. Enjoy!
 
My first actual game experience was a d10 setting for a game called VIRUS.


A spatial rift from a nuclear meltdown at an experimental fusion reactor pulled a creation virus onto the planet.


99.7% of the world was infected with it and whatever you thought of for 30 seconds became reality.


The population of earth barely survived the first week.


Many Barney-zillas were set upon the US.


Xenomorphs (ALIENs) appeared in Death Valley.


The Aztecs reappeared, but with supertech.


A giant DOOM-style cyber-demon-Hitler creature began rampaging Europe, converting and/or destroying all in it's path, while a super-psychic army tried to take him down.


ID-4 ships crashed all over earth.


Ancient legendary monsters and gods began to appear all over.


Atlantis rose from the ocean.


Toon Town appeared where, IIRC, Santa Monica was.


Etcetera.


I played a comic book character I had created that was basically a fallen angel & technology savant.
 
My first roleplay experience was D&D Basic (the red cover w/ dragon edition). I had two friends and we played through the included scenario. We had fun, but it lacked a lot of things. Then I got into Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn, which was fun, but we were more about shooting aliens than role-playing. My first serious campaign was in AD&D first edition, and we ran for about a year and a half real time. That was my first time dealing with making personality traits and trying to stay true to what the character would do, not what I would do. Fun times.
 
If casual roleplaying counts, I started with Harry Potter (around when the first book came out) on a Geocities message board. Then it was a longstanding (quite a few years and anime "seasons") freestyle Digimon one, also on a message board. While it was mostly conversation format, I think that one was pretty serious, since we were elementary (and then into middle school) kids making a website for all our characters and story chapters.


Hrm. I think my no-dice origins make it tricky for me to grasp some game mechanics, but I think I'm better at world-building and plot thanks to my friends.
 
I must say that it is refreshing and encouraging indeed, to observe all those different origins of people on the subject of Roleplaying. It makes for a community with true variety and diversity among its members, who nevertheless get together and explore new experiences. :)
 
My first RP of any sort was a custom tabletop set in the Type-Moon universe. Man, I am so embarrassed by how terrible and generic the character was. He was fun to play, though -- his weapon of choice was molotov cocktails.
 
Honestly? Gamefaqs. Pokemon. I don't remember much of it but I do remember getting into it enough to try to actually roleplay it out, and someone linked me to an actual Pokemon RP, and then I branched out from there. Still got a soft spot for Pokermanz in general but the disconnect between trainer and Pokemon - the whole experience is yelling PIKACHU USE ELECTRIC ASS - has dulled the enjoyment enough that I moved on a while ago.
 
Hang on, I have to think hard and dig up those memories. Sorry, it's going to be a long one...


I was maybe 8 when my friend Seth and I started to play a game we called "Dungeon and Dragons". It wasn't the complex game I started to play a few years later. Instead, it was a game played on a single sheet of notebook paper. We would take turns drawing maps and letting the other go through the dungeon to try to get the treasure and get out. There were no rules, no dice, just two kids having a good time playing together. We would throw everything at each other pit traps, dragons, spiders, and mountains of gold. The scenario would play out based on the reaction of the person going through the dungeon and you always tried to think of a new way to escape.


"You enter a room and start falling into a pit," said the DM.


"I grab for a rope," said the player.


"You manage to grab the rope in the center of the room and swing across the the opposite door, but the rope breaks just after you let go. You'll have to find another way out," said the DM.


Though occasionally, there wouldn't be a rope and you would fall down into the darkness. Then we would start over with the roles reversed. We kept things fair because we knew that it would be "my" turn next. It was my first experience in both playing and being the DM, it sparked the creativity as a DM and the reactive gamer in me at a young age.


When I was 11 I watched a D&D game being played during a camping trip with the Boy Scouts. The older kids were playing and I was just interested in hearing the story. After that camping trip, my best friend at the time got a hold of the D&D Basic set and we started making characters and playing out scenarios. We got my younger brother and his younger sister to play too. We didn't plan much, we were just having fun with our characters. We would have an encounter or two and then play our characters. Each session was a short story, but nothing really carried over from game to game as far as a major quest.


I guess these first experiences were what made me want more out of a game and why I stayed with the hobby. From there, I played many other Table Top games with different groups of people. I also found the story element that had been missing during this time, but that's not really a first experience. It was more of a change to how I played knowing that things my character did might come back to affect him later.


My first LAPR experience is what allowed me to see a whole world being played out. I was 18 when I went to my first Vampire LARP. I only knew one person at the game and his advice to me made a world of difference. He said, "Try to stay away from me during the game. Your character won't know mine." It sounds harsh, but I was a Gangrel and he was a Tremere at the time, so it made sense. I stepped into the world and didn't actually talk to him in character for at least three game sessions (it was a two night per session). I talked to almost everyone else, even the characters the other PCs were avoiding. I was the odd Gangrel who was social outside of the Clan. As a result, I became Primogen of the Clan by my second game session. While other events also played into this, I had the RP ability to hang on to it for about a year and a half (then I became the Sheriff). From this, I figured out how to be a good player, to be the character people don't expect, and how to pursue my own goals outside of a story without disrupting the story itself.
 
medelsvensson said:
First rp experience? Warcraft 3, sad but true.
Click to expand...
Same.


One of my best friends at the time got me into something called TRP, Text Roleplay in Wc3 channels and I did that for years, also did some rp on maps.
 
Played DND when i was about 7 with my mom, like once, and Id don some role playing a little bit as time went on with some friends. But the first actual game I played in was a basic 3.5 game, I played a half orc barbarian that I loved. Then My first actual campaign I played in, witch blew major ass because the dm just sucked that badly, I played a half orc fighter, who got turned into a calishar psionic warrior.


Now I play loads of different types of role playing, tabletop, larp, and forum.


On a side note Dark you play Warcraft 3?
 
I found Rifts books to be awesome reading before I ever got to play in a roleplaying game - there was a Rifts Conversion Book in the local library! My first actual roleplaying game was many years later where I was introduced to it by an acquaintance. It was Shadowrun 2nd Edition just a few months before third edition was released. The character I created that fateful day, an Elven Decker, earned roughly 400 karma (xp) before being retired by my GM as being too powerful to challenge.


I have always enjoyed the 80's cyberpunk of Shadowrun 3E and it remains dear to my heart. I've played lots of WhiteWolf ST based rp systems - my preferred being Exalted, and I love the huge universe of the Rifts system.
 
Okay, going from first to most recent.


My first RP experience was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay First Edition. Loved it, even though you start out as a feeble mortal and go to endgame as a slightly less feeble mortal (who is probably either insane, massively mutated by the forces of Chaos or both).


Next came a short stint of Horror Roleplaying, namely Blood!. A fascinating game, run by a great GM. Shame my character had a mental breakdown and ended up chewing on the end of a shotgun barrel...


Next came VtM and Vampire Dark Ages, much fun, much fun indeed. Dabbled briefly in Hunter and Mage too. Enjoyed Mage, but felt Hunter was a little one-sided (i.e. everything was fatal to you and your 'Edges' were quite blunt).


Finally had a stint of D&D, not sure the edition, but had fun as a Dragonkin Fighter. Laid out the rest of the party in a bar brawl after they started intimidating the landlord and I felt it was a little unfair.


Exalted from First Edition, even got the Limited Edition MRB with the slipcover. Played that a lot, including into 2e (though my group use adapted combat rules).


Now playing in a plethora of games on this august site.


Captain Hesperus
 
I will always <3 GURPS. First game, Warhammer 40K RPG, an inquisitorial-type group consisting of a Vindicare assassin, two space marines, and me, the tech-priest. Oh, the destruction we wrought...
 
Hm. First RP experience. Tough question to answer for me, really. It all depends on what you define as "Role playing".


If you count just derping around in a chatroom and playing pretend, then my earliest possible Role play experience lasted for exactly one hour with four people, two of whom I had only just met. I had been invited to play with them by a friend of mine (we'll call her Ka). The game was a fairly simple family-type game. The two people whom I had just met were playing the mother (We'll call her Ma) and the father (Pa). I was playing the roll of the older brother to my 'litter sister' Ka.


The game was... tame, to put it nicely. Tea parties and trips to the shopping mall. I quickly grew bored, decided that I was going through a 'rebellious teenager' stage and stole a bunch of items from the store, blaming it on the dad. Pa seemed to find the idea hilarious, as it quickly escalated in to a high speed chase against the police all over the city with massive amounts of property damage (somehow we managed to justify a car taking out a building via crashing in to load-bearing walls and magically escaping unscathed). Ma and Ka didn't really seem to like it all that much, and it got to the point were Ma had to contact me over a privet chat to chew me out. I didn't play with them again, but I still had fun while it lasted.


My first more 'formal' experience (characters with their own personalities and backstories and all that fancy nonsense) at role-playing was on a site that was oddly similar to the World Of Darkness games by White Wolf, even though no one there had even heard of them. It Vampires, Mages, Werewolves, Demons, Angels and Dragons all as PC characters. Once more there were no real rules and no stats to roll, pure freeform. It was fun, but there were a lot of hiccups that eventually soured the experience for me. For example one player was absurdly fond of hybrids, and would play things like an Angel/Dragon halfbreed or a Mage/Werewolf character. She pretty much single-handedly killed any fondness I had for Hybrid races and replaced it with an intense loathing. Two other players had stupidly over-powered characters which tainted the idea of stat-less games for me. One was a Wizard who invented Necromancy and was more or less a God of Death in his own right and the other had nigh-limitless control over all forms of matter and energy, functionally giving both a free pass to powerplay to their hearts content.


Eventually these issues caused the site to develop drama regarding powers, and it spiraled out of control until the site died. Still good friends with the admin of that site though, even if she has a huge bias for Vampires and always makes them the best player race.


This continued on for a while with freeform RP sites, most notable was a lengthy series of Legend of Zelda RP sites that crashed and burned like clockwork, and a Dragon Age RP site that I co-staffed, but was banned from because I asked for an apology from the main admin.


This was all back in 08/10. My first TRUE AND OFFICIAL table top game was The Dresden Files RPG that started back in '11, and is coming up on it's one year anniversary next month. I'm playing a ex-soldier Holyman who busts out the Prayer-Fu whenever evil rears it's ugly head, along with a trusty M1911A1's .45 rounds to the back of the head. We've gained and lost a few players form that game, but I like to think that it's still going strong.


TL;DR: Derped around in a chat RP. Derped around in freeform RP sites for 3 years. Started playing Dresden Files RPG as my first true tabletop about a year ago.
 
I was introduced to Vampire: The Masquerade when I was around 16, I think, by a friend of the family. I didn't get to play right then, but I heard all about it.


I devoured RPG books I could find, but living in the middle of nowhere made it impossible to find anyone to play with.


When I finally had internet access I played PBP and chat games all the time, and it didn't take long before I was running one because I seem to be one of those GM-for-life types.


Once I got to college I got to play in real games. I most fondly remember an all-Nosferatu convention scenario, where we were on a 'treasure hunt'.


Protip: Never arm a Nosferatu with a gaggle of loyal street orphans.
 
My first role playing experience was Oblivion, I still haven't gotten to Morrowind though, :/ But my parents got me this game as my first game for my PS3 which was 2006 if I remember correctly, I'm younger than probably most everyone on this site so I don't have near the experience with roleplaying


But more on topic Oblivion was my first, I finished the game several times so I decided to limit the things I do, give personality to my characters, etc. So that later became roleplaying as I come to know it now.
 
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