How did you get into gaming?

[jus]

I think I'll be the first to post here, that I actually got into the hobby via demo game at a GW store (albeit with some friends). This happened rather late in life, when i was about 20 and my curious companions had a mind to check it all out, since as kids we had no money to start the hobby..and now did.

Turns out the guy who pitched to us was so nice and friendly we walked out of the store with a little something each. Alan walked out with space marine tacticals and a black templar sprue (yes the one you can only get via direct now, even though its still actually plastic), david walked out with a tyranids starter set, and I with striking scopians and dark reapers (all of which now belong to prim). Note: He also told me to go to the store down the road to get eldrad there instead of at GW because they had him cheaper, followed by "I'm not supposed to tell you that" wink wink, nudge nudge.

Some GW employees are genuinely nice people who want to share the hobby. ...Some just ought to be shot.

[Admiral-Badruck]

Well for me if there had not been B&MStores there would have been no way to buy the models... back in my day the internet was just a way to get dirty pictures with out your mom finding out. So all of the handy dandy GW models had to be bought at B&MStores... I still find Buying form B&MStores more enjoyable and I also find that I buy far less than I do when I am trying to get free shipping.

[Seb]

I must be the first (and only one??) to say that I don't remember how I got into the hobby. As I try to recall my friend's elder brother got interested somehow and introduced it to his younger brother and me. We didn't have a local GWS, not even a LGS, but somehow I ended up with an Ork starter force and the 3 of us played regularly on weekends. It was fun but me and my friend always got beaten, we were too young to even read and properly understand English so we were not sure about the rules. All I can remember is the elder brother's BA death squad killing my boyz all the time. It is not until now that I can understand why those guys get to roll AGAIN after failed armour save, at the time it was very frustrating.

After some time the guy who got us into the hobby stopped playing, and since he was the driving force with the only rule book shortly after that me and my friend quit as well. I got back last year after playing some Dawn of War so I guess you could say that it is because of the 40k PC games that I spent more money on the hobby. I hae actually never set my foot in a GW store until last month when I went to the GWS in Copenhagen, which was a very short visit.

[job]

It was the inevitable draw of a strategy war game that drew me in. I've always loved Risk and had always loved books on Alexander or the US Civil War. My younger brother who first introduced 40k to me initially, but I didn't get sucked in quiet immediately. When I found out my good friend was also playing 40k, I soon got myself some Chaos marines, a sorcerer, a codex and then a Predator tank. The next thing I knew I was collecting through out my middle school and high school days, and ever so slowly my collection grew.
But in my senior year I grew fed up with the prices and maybe I wanted a break from being a nerd, so I gave my collection to my friend and I began a long break from war gaming. Yet, the pull came back after many years as I watched my friend play 40k down at the local gaming store. I dug up my old collection and began the real dive into wargaming. After a year's break while I was in Japan, I was drawn into FOW and Mordheim upon return to the States.
I thought I made my second break from wargaming when I came back to Nagoya, but instead I found you guys, and I am once more drawn into the world of 40k, FOW, and, now, Fantasy.

[Primarch]

I thought I made my second break from wargaming when I came back to Nagoya, but instead I found you guys, and I am once more drawn into the world of 40k, FOW, and, now, Fantasy.

Hehe, we're a bad influence.

[Konrad]

I got into it from books, Tolkien, the Chronicles of Prydain, Earthsea Trilogy. One of my buddies had heard that there was, "This game where you can be like dwarves and things". Which sounded sort of cool. As we were just becoming too old to run around the woods hitting each other with sticks and garbage can lid shields and pretending we were dwarves and things. So we started doing it via dice and D&D. We had a local (and pure awesome and still in business) game store (Eagles Games, Models and Miniatures, Bellingham Washington USA) start up once we were in high-school. Another buddy picked up Rouge Trader there, because the pictures were cool. And we all picked up a handful of this and that and the rest was history. It was (and is) like, playing with LEGOs (my first addiction) and D&D (my second).

[ashmie]

As we were just becoming too old to run around the woods hitting each other with sticks and garbage can lid shields and pretending we were dwarves and things.

Hahah that's brilliant. I think that pretty much sums the hobby up for a lot of people. When we were kids (7-10) we used to run around the woods with bamboo sticks playing a game called Manhunt (way before the banned PS2 game). 4 lads hunted one poor defenseless unarmed guy with sticks until he was caught. It was awesome but thanks to GW their games stopped us from actually maiming someone. That's the benefit of growing up in the country folks, no distractions from corruptible video game arcades.

One of my favourite memories is playing as the GM in Advanced Heroquest. I killed off my best mates overpowered Empire soldier hero by allowing him to fall down a bottomless pit that never ended. There was no way out. Perhaps a metaphor for this hobby.

The conversation ran thus:

Scene: Primary school library on a blistering hot summers day. Healthy children are playing outside while a load of disaffected brats are hunched around a table with cardboard map tiles and badly painted hero models. One of the brats seems to be antagonizing the others by telling them what they can and can't do. When teachers pass they tiredly tell the kids to play nice while the arrogant ring leader informs them it's that kind of game where he is in charge.

Hero James aka Wolfgang Heinrich Gruber: I jump down the dark pit in the middle of the room.

GM Ash aka evil sadistic youth: Are you sure?

James: Yes definitely my characters strong enough for anything.

GM: Really? OK. You jump in and you fall and fall and you fall and you don't reach the bottom you are still falling forever it seems.

James: What! Oh ok I'll use the rope to get out.

GM: You can't there is nothing to grapple on to and you are too far down now just falling in blackness.

James: Shit! Spend a fate point to say I never jumped down there.

GM: No sorry fate points don't work here.

James: What! Why not I have 5?

GM: Sorry there is some kind of magic forcefield around this bottomless pit that stops it from being connected to time and space.

James: So how can I get out?

GM: You can't.

James: What! Not at all?

GM: No.

James: You just want to kill of my character 'cos he's too strong.

GM: ......

James: So there is no way out of this? OK what can I do?

GM: I'm sorry but it looks like you will have to roll up a new character.

James: WHAAAAAT! No this is rubbish. Sod this I'm off to play football.

James triumphantly leaves the school library saving himself a lifetime of torment at the whims of sadistic GMs everywhere. Luckily he was still in Primary school and had yet to experience the true wrath of adolescent GMs. The rest of the group refocus on the dungeon feeling lucky their characters survived but not so lucky that they are still playing this sort of game. The GM feels bad but ultimately looks for his next victim. Wolfgang Heinrich Gruber was way to strong to make the adventure interesting anyway.


I have GM'd since but have never made it as mean as I did that time when I was 9. Having said that, if you have a look at some of the old scenario books for warhammer fantasy roleplay most of the encounters are written to make the player characters lives as difficult and as unfair as possible. Having recently played Enemy Within campaign: Death on the Reik my players were equally upset and disturbed when I followed the books idea for their party to be tortured by a group of Skaven warpstone hunters. I found I had to edit out some of the totally unfair and sadistic parts of that campaign just to save the players interest.

The old FF books were similar in that you often had no chance at all when suddenly you decide to turn to page 77 and wait for it "An iron portcullis crashes down on your head, you die."

[The Underdweller]

Umm, organic I guess? I started playing D&D when I got the basic box set for my 12th birthday. After that I bought a couple of board war games like Lankhmar, and even made a very basic miniature war game using my brothers’ “dragon rider” figures- we didn’t use a tape measure, movement was 1 to 3 hand spans, which probably gave some advantage to me as the oldest player!

In university I made a couple of attempts to get into wargaming- I tried unsuccessfully to order Warhammer from the UK(Games Workshop was not in Canada at the time);, and I bought a couple of other games but no-one in my gaming group was interested.

After university, I counted myself lucky when I had the time/ people to play RPGs now and then, so pretty much forgot about wargaming until I ended up in Japan with some time on my hands and a local gaming group available. I don’t think I’ll ever get into it in a big way (since I’m not really into painting or modeling that much), but anyway WH40K and Warmachine are a lot of fun to play so I’m glad I have the chance!