REVERB GAMERS 2012, #1: What was your first roleplaying experience? Who introduced you to it? How did that introduction shape the gamer you've become?
the LintKing says:
I was started on gaming by a boy about three years older than I was, who was hanging out with me because he had a totally unrequited crush on my sister. I think he had Star Frontiers - if it wasn't, it was a sci-fi homebrew a whole lot like it. But since he wasn't actually all *that* interested in hanging out with a littler kid (three years having been a pretty significant percentage at the time), we didn't play together for long. I suppose if anything, then, its main impact was in its brevity - I got the taste for it, but was then left with nobody to really play with for a long time. So, you know - Tunnels & Trolls, mostly, for a long time, being the only company that particularly catered to the solo gamer. I'm not at all sure how this shaped `the gamer I've become,' except in that I must have done a lot of early development in a bit of a vacuum, and that must mean something.
the Fierce says:
Is it a total cop-out to say I don't really remember? I mean, I brag a bit about being a 3rd generation gamer, but part of that is having grown up with a very strange relationship to gaming (and, well, reality) in the first place. I remember specifically my father giving me the RedBox set one weekend somewhere between the ages of 5 and 7 when I was staying with my grandmother. I, um, don't remember much about how long I was staying with my grandma or what we did other than my reading and saying basically, "Oh. Codified rules. I get it." (Oh and, "Playing elves means ghouls and carrion crawlers won't be so much trouble.") Which meant that I had terminology and ways to express the things I was already doing that I could explain to other people, if I ever found any who had, you know...read the same stuff.