Plus, several episodes of MLP:FiM are basically animated RPG sessions, down to boss encounters with high CR material (dragons, manticores, evil fey).
It's nice that they're using the resources they have with Hasbro owning WOTC. That it's bringing in D&D references is just icing.
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26
Started with 2e and GURPS in the middle nineties (yeah i was 10), moved on to Cybeprunk in the late nineties and fell in love with 3.0. Moved to Pathfinder from 3.5 when we realized how awesome it is. Tried 4E several times and...well...let's just say my post would be deleted.
Read every SF and EF novel or story i could put my grubby hands on. Favorites are old school dudes like Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Simak, Harrison.
Damn...
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25.
First experience with RPGs was in the early days of 3.0. Some of my middle school friends I played Magic with told me that they had a "party" and needed a "DM". I said yes without really knowing what I was agreeing to, got a little dismayed when several hundred pages of core rules got dropped on my desk the next day, ran the first Sunless Citadel game a week later, and a few weeks after that started figuring out things like "the attack bonus gets added to the d20. Ohhhhh, no wonder the monsters kept missing all the time."
Eventually I got the hang of things.
As far as books I grew up reading Tolkien and le Guin and a very large boatload of authors I remember less well; those two are still among my favorites. Authors I've enjoyed less include Mieville or Moorcock (and I have no problem turning up my nose at books I don't think much of :P ). Later on I really got into the older literature that lies underneath many modern works. Gilgamesh, Beowulf and the Eddas, the Aeneid and Apuleius, 1001 Nights, Shahnameh, etc. The last two of those are forming much of my current leisure reading.
I'm pretty open the types of Pathfinder roleplaying I enjoy. I can enjoy deep immersive roleplaying and also madcap comedic murder hoboism, and most of what lies in between.
I've never been attracted to My Little Pony (It's pretty rare for me to watch any TV at all, though), but a disconcerting number of the people I game (Pathfinder or otherwise) with have been.
I'm 33.
I only read Edgar Rice Burroughs last year.
I only read Robert E. Howard's Conan the year before last.
You couldn't find that stuff for love nor money where I was living when I was growing up - Michael Moorcock and the old TSR FR novels were easy to come by, though, so I was weaned on them - RPG wise, I started off on the Blue Box/Red Box, moved onto 2nd Ed. , then left off playing D&D when the rest of my group moved onto 40K and stuck with that for years, which feels like wasted time, to be honest. Nothing wrong with it, but not for me
I didn't like 4e until I played it. Still prefer PF, but 4e has its good points. Please don't kill me.
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I feel right at home with Ciretose, Mikaze and Aranna
36 here. I remember colour TV and remote controls being luxurious items, spinning a round-dial telephone and the beeping/scratching of dial-up internet, although none of the above really define my childhood; I'm more defined by technological changes that happened and are still happening.
Started with 2ed. I'm well over my "DM = absolute master" era but don't like inconsequential computer-like gaming. I like game with identifiable, themes, strong narrative lines and when players are able to actively participate in the narrative plot.
Mostly, I learned what I enjoy most in a game, how I can enjoy it with others, find players that compatible with my tastes and not to needlessly rush this hobby anymore.
... and I'm slowly warming up to this MLP:fim pony thing thanks to my little girl...
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25.
First experience with RPGs was with AD&D. I can't say much about the system, since it was like three sessions before the group dissolves and all I did at the time was rolling a d20 half the time I wanted my PC to do something, but as a social experience it was awesome. I had fun.
Eventually I changed to D&D 3.5 (not 3.0 games). The first group which I played with was full of "veterans" of roleplaying, people who was smart but without being smart-asses or stepping into Jerkland for that matter. It didn't last long though :(
When I entered into college, I met again with 3.5 and after a year or two, I dared to GM. I was fascinated with the GM power to create a story unlike any other: a story that changed with every chapter, with every step... it was like a book that no matter how many times you read it, it will always bring a different ending!
With my new role as GM, I've made new friends and delve into new games (D&D wasn't the only one!?) like oWoD and Matrix RPG. Also I GMed my first (and only, so far) long-term campaign... good times.
Beyond that, I've played with my college group oWoD(Vampire), D&D 3.5 (Dragonlance and Homebrews), nWoD(Basic, Vampire, and Mage), Pathfinder and DCA (Mutants & Masterminds 3e).
Sadly enough, RL has kept me away from GMing and mostly from playing (the reason I've came to this boards in the first place) due lack of time.
As far as books I grew up a great variety of literature, from Homer's "Illiad" to John Grisham's "The Pelican Brief" and Isaac Asimov's "Foundation", who is still among my favorites. I've read Tolkien, Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series, historical drama, western, comics and a little of manga. I read pretty much anything that falls in my hands :P
I like to play games that revolves around adventure and wonder, with a deep context. I can enjoy immersive roleplaying and also almost comical hack-and-slashing, and most of what lies in between. Most of all, I like the feeling of accomplishment that comes with character progression (one of the reasons why I hate Warhammer) and lots of options for character customization.
I don't like games like Warhammer or Call of Cthulhu. D&D 4e is... a good game on its own but definetly it's NOT D&D, and for D&D Next I don't have much hope. I'd rather say "Next!".
I've never been attracted to My Little Pony in any of its incarnations. It's my first time interacting with the gaming community at large, but is... confusing, to say the least, that so many people who play Pathfinder seems to like it.
The community's response to "Ponyfinder" was scary...
So any speculation of what would happen if Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2 had a love child...what the child would be like?
Exhibit 1:
40yr old. Started with Gygax stuff. Tolkien/Martin/Cook. Not really high opinion of John Carter or anything remotely breaking the fantasy paradigm. 1E/2E those were the days, 3E has gone all the wrong places but at least that's not the atrocity that 4E was. GM is the law, the overgod and it's his game. Players better get ready for pillars of salt and pain. The biggest problem with 3E is that it made players think they actually are entitled to something, like magic item crafting (ugh!). Is usually an introvert with some communication problems resulting from that. Thinks Pathfinder should be less crunch, more fluff, sticks with it because at least it's true to the spirit. Greyhawk, please bow your hat to Greyhawk, youngster. Fighters and Rogues are fine, you just don't know how to play them, I did since 1978 and always had a blast. All those PDFs, WinZiPs and other newfangled toys are confusing. Tomb of Horrors was the real gaming, everything afterwards is watered down cereal. Punishments for death are the thing. Guns and eastern elements are unacceptable. Dark themes and shades of grey are OK, can handle that unless it's about sex-related stuff in which case squick, this is America son, not some European red light district.
Exhibit 2:
20-30. Started with 3.5E. Anime fan, quite likely into Touhou/bullet hell games. 1E/2E were arbitrary egofests of pathetic fat grognards, 3E was the best thing ever, 4E had all the good intentions but went overboard in making everything the same. Players are the stars of the show, and the GM should better try his best to accommodate their tastes and desires. Sorry - "GM" is a wrong term, it implies some form of mastery. Mister Cavern, now that's better. Is usually an extrovert with some communication problems resulting from that. Thinks Pathfinder is at best a poor set of 3.5 houserules, sticks with it because what else? Caster/Martial disparity is a FACT, stop throwing your worthless opinions about it! The fact that SKR failed to fix it (note: SKR is the...
That was really entertaining. Good job Gorb.
We are all sharing? Okay.
28, raised old school by exhibit 1. Some of exhibit 2 resonates, but lean more to 1 (nurture over nature?). The grognard lives on. Beards! Beards! Beards!
Pathfinder is a mediocre set of houserules with some glimmerings of potential and good design. Alas this dies slow under the weight of crafting, slot filling, gigantic f**king numbers and the accounting chronicles of crunch.
So any speculation of what would happen if Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2 had a love child...what the child would be like?I've seen it. It ain't pretty.
I'm not a monster! I'm a human being!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyrhor5K2to
This is great fun.
I'm 33, I've carved out a special safe zone ;)
LOL - So you railroaded the rest of us into archetypes that reflect reality in only the most controversial of ways, but you left yourself a convenient out? That's fair and balanced (TM).
Okay, then... why don't the rest of us collaborate on the 31 - 39-year-olds? I'll start it out.
31 - 39 - You only got into D&D through its loose relationship to Magic: The Gathering (which you still secretly think is the height of sophistication and literature), but you have to be careful now not to let the grognards know that you used to tell all your junior high school pals that D&D was just a rip-off of MTG.
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I'm in the first camp, except I'm fine with firearms and eastern weapons. In fact, I plan on arming all my orcs with guns that shoot katanas.
20 and I just started Tabletop gaming mid last year.
I feel so out of place.
Though as long as I can remember I've been on the fringe of the community, playing Neverwinter Nights/2 and similar D&D-esque RPGs, and I own a bunch of manuals and such with spell lists and the like, but as interested as I was in trying it out I could never find anyone else who was interested in playing.
Right up until someone mentioned it in passing that he played Pathfinder (which I only knew existed because of Spoony's Counter Monkey videos) on a forum I frequent, I showed interest in getting a game going online, and he posted the Tabletop RPG Corner over there, we gathered some players and we're now juggling two games between us, a Serpent's Skull game he GMs and a Carrion Crown I run on alternating weeks.
As with any fandom I get invested in, I spend way too much time on the forums (I have nearly 13,000 posts on the TF2 official forums on Steam Powered, and I only joined up August 2011) trying to absorb as much as I can as quickly as possible so I can know enough to get into arguments with people (one of my favorite past times).
I'm also an avid videogamer, of many genres. Mostly RPG and FPS, but quite a few platformers from the PS2 era (personally my favorite era of gaming, though I'm familiar with the SNES and N64), and my favorite game of all time is likely Dragon Age: Origins, followed swiftly by the Kingdom Hearts/Jak and Daxter series', and whatever game I happen to be enjoying at the momet (Currently: The Hitman series, worked my way up from Hitman 2 and up to Absolution just recently).
I tend to read quite a bit, 99% of it fantasy. Favorite series from that vary, but the Dreden Files is currently my top pick. The majority of my room is taken up by bookshelves. I do enjoy the Forgotten Realms novels, though funnily enough I hated them when I was younger. There was something about The Crystal Shard that rubbed me the wrong way when I was 10 or so.
And that's probably more than you needed to wanted to know from a filthy noob. =p
I really don't understand the appeal of My Little Pony. I'm going to be attending a con this weekend where the media room will be showing a few hours' worth of My Little Pony and the room will be full of adult men. I don't get it.THE ONLY TRUE D&D SOUNDTRACK IS
the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic OST
It's a very relaxing show. I've only watched about half of season 1 (and that was last year) but I enjoyed it. Not like some where I go "New MLP? Yah!" every week, but it was very relaxing to watch a show that doesn't really have much going on in the way of consistent plot and is just "non-threatening". And the art and voices are good.
I truly don't understand the level of severe, childish hatred for people who watch the show.
And Twilight IS best pony.
Actually, what I REALLY don't get is why so many people even TOLERATE Trixie, much less were fans of her.
So any speculation of what would happen if Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2 had a love child...what the child would be like?I've seen it. It ain't pretty.
Oh come on share. I think I can handle it...it can't be worst than the detailed reveiw of FATAL I read. Can it?
Oh come on share. I think I can handle it...it can't be worst than the detailed reveiw of THE GAME THAT MUST NOT BE NAMED I read. Can it?
There, fixed that for you. :p
The fear, screams and shouting always prevented the gems in FATAL coming to light.
It has to have some merits.
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my group is mostly example 1.
i am personally an example 2.
i love anime, am 24, love the touhou music, despite never having played the games. love Zun's touhou character designs, love cute small framed moe blob women in general.
favorite fashion if done right on the right framed girl, is elegant gothic lolita.
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Keep it coming, everybody.
This thread is gold...
25 I was introduced to D&D through something called youth school.
(which more or less, just is different activities and sports, that is free to attend)
The guy running the D&D team was a oldschool gamer but rather awesome so me and my friends were hooked instantly.
I have tried 2ed, 3.0, 3.5 and fourth. But pathfinder is my preferred d20 system. (my favourite rpg is still Shadowrun)
My literary taste, is to say the least not selective. And i read and enjoy books of extremely varied quality and genres.
21. Didn't read any of those walls of texts. Sorry :P
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I'd play at a Mikaze table in a heartbeat.
So would I.
My first encounter with D&D occurred when I stumbled upon an old AD&D Monster Manual in a Salvation Army Thrift Store near my home; I couldn't have been older than 10 at the time. I was captivated by the art. I can still remember going through the book and coloring in the pictures with pencil. I filled the interior covers with monsters of my own invention.
As soon as I managed, I got my hands on some 3rd-Edition rulebooks (shortly before the re-release/updated rules). I bought them for the art, but ended up learning the system. I didn't end up playing the game until some years later, though.
My favorite tabletop-RPG artists are (in no particular order): Steve Prescott, Chris Seaman, Mike Chaney, Leanne Buckley, Sam Wood, William O'Connor, Jon Hodgson, and Eric Belisle.
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38. Mostly grognard. Started with gammaworld. then BECMI, then dove into 2e advanced. Little cyberpunk2020, heroes unlimited, rifts, giant hiatus when all the gamers left town. New group started with 2e, quickly jumped to 3.5, some heroes unlimited. A little dead reign, and now some 1e warhammer. A smattering of d20 here and there... Still consider 2e and palladium to be the way it should be done. Greyhawk was before my time, I avoided dragonlance like the plague, was thankful that they dropped psionics in 2e, and had to pull the rip cord on TSR when they started that spelljammer giant space hamster crap. 3.5 is a travesty, 4e equally so. Pathfinder is a poorly written, poorly edited argument festival thats leaves too little clarity, too much funky wording that leaves issues open for debate, its too mappy and too crunchy and for a palladium guy like me to say it takes the numbers way too high is saying something. I play it because the rest of the table seems to like it and i'd rather game than not. I like my magic items to be creative not crunchy. D20 is an oversimplification, d6 style fasa star wars's little brother. Battlemats ruin the game, and systems built around use of a battlemat might have been where the games got started but they evolved. Now they're just devolving. By the same token pure narrativist theater of the mind like vampire the masquerade is closer to 'how to host a murder mystery' rpg than it is to any kind of gaming I like. Middle ground. Gotta find a happy medium. Caster martial disparity is a fact and balance is for sissies.
White wolf and games workshop seem to have bred the kinds of players and gms who think the gm is god and the players should be thankful they have been given spoons before hitting the beaches of normandy and I don't share their enthusiasm. Your character should be badass. Not ass.
The first law of gming is you're there for the players. You're not god, just another guy at the table. If their fun doesnt match your fun, you step down. God GMs are to gaming what Kim Jong Il is to global military politics. An impotent farce scrabbling feebly for power and relevance they can neither handle nor deserve.
Owning the actual books is always far superior to pdfs unless you're the only one with the books and you're gaming at someone else's place. Tomb of horrors was a relaxing stroll. Real gaming was creating a giant pyramid filled with wall to wall Grimtooths traps. I do happen to like anime, but my niche is more fanservicey pap martial art harem romcom (ranma/amg/goldenboy/inuyasha/kimagure orange road) than emo/freaky/mechbattle/escalationfu(evangelion/bleach/ghost in the shell/dbz/naruto/urotsukidoji)...
I like to keep editing my posts until my 60 minutes are up. That doesnt mean i'm trying to make them better organized. These are my biased opinions and i'm sticking to them. In my opinion that lends itself strongly to the very definition of grognard. It has been pointed out to me that while I may be clear, I am not concise. I am a long winded blowhard and I approve of this message. Get off my lawn.
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You mean Kim Jong Un? To be fair, he's pretty much a clone or simulacrum.
How smart was of me to write my gaming history... Now I can link to it whenever a topic is highjacked to share one's experiences! :P
Drejk's gaming history part 1, 2 and 3.
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You mean Kim Jong Un? To be fair, he's pretty much a clone or simulacrum.
I think I meant to say kim jong un... yes. Of course in the grand scheme of things, as you say, the only distinction between them are 2 letters in the alphabet. One is a cold soulless impotent worthless sack of meat and the other one is dead.
I like to keep editing my posts until my 60 minutes are up. That doesnt mean i'm trying to make them better organized. These are my biased opinions and i'm sticking to them.
I'm with this part of the post 100% =)
I like you Drejk, but that's so much reading, haha!
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Dark themes and shades of grey are OK, can handle that unless it's about sex-related stuff in which case squick, this is America son, not some European red light district.
I'm sheding tears of laughter here.
Thank you, Gorbacz.
As for my profile:
I'm 28. Started playing in 1996 with AD&D 2e and Dragonlance. Though I like to pretend I don't, I think DM's are the gods of their tables and should get first dibs on the type of pizza the group's ordering. Also, I always say DM, regardless of game. Planescape is the measuring stick I use for all settings, and the 4e cosmology gives me at least four different types of rashes. I talk like a war vet with nostalgia helmets when it comes to AD&D and how "Dragons have negative AC. Deal with it" isn't really that hard to understand. I got gang-pressed into DMing 3.5 and finally realised it made life easier and stuck with it. I stick with Pathfinder because I am a compulsive book collector and they offered me shiny new books. While I like the smell of just-opened Pathfinder books, my weakness is the smell of the old AD&D books. I think you can never have too many dice, and while I use tablets/laptops for background music, I like my tables as XVIII century as possible (I'm flexible about quills and pencils, though). I prefer long, once-per-month sessions over shorter regular ones, and in the period between I will often bombard players with very detailed but amazingly useless information about the campaign regarding things like monetary systems and why they can't just go out and ask for a printer. I expect to keep playing until the day I die and, while I will protest and maybe kerfuffleize, I'll still buy every single new edition of D&D they come up with.
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So, since everyone else is sharing...
...currently 20 (21 in July), surprisingly varied in my tastes (from silly harem anime like Zero no Tsukaima to dark stuff like Berserk and Elfen Lied) and have read everything from Tolkien to Gaiman and Ursula Le Guin, but never liked the Harry Potter series. I was 15 when I started out with 3.5e, as my friend called me and my childhood friend to a group of his. Now I've known the guy for a long time, and I had known him quite well. Oddly enough, he was a completely different person on the DM seat than he usually was outside it.
He abruptly switched from 3.5e to Pathfinder, during the time when I thought this was a good thing, though he didn't ask me nor anyone else if we were okay with this. I gamed with him till I started getting fed up with his tyrannical, egomaniacal and just plain mean-spirited behaviour (which led me to ragequitting once), and around the times of high school I met up my second group to be. We tried out 4e, which was disappointing but not the worst thing ever. We later on also tried GURPS (which is better than most claim), 2e (decent but has its flaws) as well as Dark Heresy (others like it, I don't think it is that good).
Second group was under the belief that Pathfinder is a better 3.5e, and by the time I was there to tell otherwise, they had already bought all the books and they had all abandoned 2e and 3.5e. A few of the players have wanted me to run a 3.5e campaign for them now, and I am happy to oblige once I get my Kingmaker finished and my homebrew campaign setting into a good condition. If that won't cut it, my backup plan is just running Legacy of Fire for them. The former DM is considering continuing the Council of Thieves game my friends had walked out from, but I am having second thoughts considering past experiences.
Pathfinder is at best a poor set of 3.5e houserules, which I am forced to work with because of the groups insisting on it. Caster/Martial disparity is a fixable problem people are overlooking despite evidence, I rarely agree with SKR, Tome of Battle was a decent book regardless of theme, and most grimdark I see goes to grimderp and is more worthy of a "meh" rather than any acknowledgement as a masterful piece of art. The good DM knows what compromise means, knows how to work with a group instead of forcing a group to do his bidding, is willing to make some adjustments for the sake of fun, but is also ultimately having the final say in a given situation.
Both as a player and DM, I enjoy both roleplay and rollplay. Also, the more diversity the better, especially when it comes to playable races if you ask me about it!
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Sweet thread!
At 20 years old, I guess I'm one of the youngest people around. Grew up with my parents thinking I'd "Grow out" of roleplaying and all around being a geek. Good to see so many examples of how they might just be wrong about that :)
Been playing since the age of 10 but only been active on messageboards since I was 16 or so, and I kinda started the gaming group in my school. That means I had no outside influence when I started playing, which helps me free my mind from what I "should" be thinking. There were times when I thouht running tomb of horrors could be entertaining. Those times have past, and I am now in a place I believe is a solid middle ground between being story focused and game focused - me and my group enjoy a good mix, sometimes entire adventures would pass with 90% roleplay in them (Sea Wyvren's Wake, I'm looking at ya), but we can certainly get in the mood of the ocassional sweet dungeon crawl. Even when we do, it's never just senseless murder and the story always advances in the dungeon.
So I am a 20 years old, self made eternal GM, with remote fantasis of maybe being a player one day after I'm through running Curse of the Srimson Throne... that would be at least a year in the future. I'll wait and see, I guess :)
I guess I better post mine here.
16 (I feel awfully young here), got my start at a 3.5 game (roughly 10 players with two GMs). Only really got into it about a year and a half ago. As far as grognard vs. whateveranotgrognardis, I like to think I've paved my own way. I can respect the grognard mindset, as well as understanding the opposition.
Went to GenCon last year (I live in the American southwest, but spend the summers with extended family in central Indiana so it really wasn't that hard to take a car ride for half an hour every day to get there at opening) and had a great time. Learned a lot about the community (mostly good stuff but saw a sliver of the ugly side).
As far as GMs vs. players, I feel like we're both here to have fun. If the players or GM aren't going to compromise on what is or isn't allowed, then the game will cease being fun.
The only non-Lawful-Good PC I've played is a cleric of Pharesma in PFS, and that was Lawful Neutral.
I've GMed and played about equal amounts, I like both for different reasons. I enjoy GMing for the fact I get to try different builds, characters, monsters, and so forth. I enjoy being a player for RP and teamwork.
As far as grimdark, I absolutely adore Lovecraft, and have read most of his stuff. Call of Cthulhu is over-hyped, Whisperer in Darkness, At the Mountains of Madness, and Dunwitch Horror are his best of the longer stuff, while Pickman's Model has to be my favorite. I also do like Warhammer, but must confess I do find it a bit of a one-trick pony (everyone is evil to a degree).
Edit: And I suppose I should mention that MLP:FiM is great. If anyone wants to see how to advance a character's personality, look at Fluttershy or Twilight. Geez, such good character writing. And the comics do go oddly grimdark, which is surprising and a little disturbing.
21 started playing 3.5 a little on and off got more devoted near the end and right when 4th was realsed. IN 4th I treid and did not like it that much with combat seeming too long and drawn out and no fun for making npcs in the rules so then found out abuot pathfinder. I actually played a short two session 2nd ed game in there and then have ahd samll gourps of pathifinder with my brother have started playing play by post which is possible to do in the library. I also like music from 70s like Steely Dan and Jethro Tull.
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Ok Ok...
28. Started playing 2e with some older friends of my brother's when I was but the ripe age of 12. Played videogames and MUDs. Final Fantasy fanboy right here (and JP VI/US III is the BEST). Played through to 3e but took a looooooooong break from 15 - 24ish (girls and moved away from the gaming group).
Got a group around when I realized a couple of my friends were into tabletop in Columbus, OH. We played the Star Wars d20 and my first session and first 3 rolls after that long hiatus, I rolled 3 natural 1's. My medroid tripped down the stairs, lost hold of the blaster, and somehow shot its own logic board out. Then we finished up that game, and I started making a Harry Potter based GURPS Lite game for the group, we were a few sessions in when I moved out to Southern California where I got introduced to PF by my wife's old friend.
Loved PF and I'm stickin' with it!
The GM is not God, but is pretty close. Players are supposed to have fun, but death is ALWAYS just around the corner for the unprepared. Anime is fun, re-watching the Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai X stuff right now.
Haven't used music in my games yet, mainly because I haven't found a good mix...if anyone has any guides that would be great.
Tablets/etc are cool especially with things like the PRD and PFRPG RD. Can be distracting.
Monks aren't imbalanced...I one shotted a dragon! It only took a magic item in almost every slot, a couple of potions of True Strike, Improved and Greater Grapple, and spider silk rope to tie up/Coup de Gras. Ok...maybe there are some balance issues but that's part of the fun!
Min/Maxers suck unless they ham it up in the RP :) (just kidding...they don't suck but I will be harder on them if there's no RP and just crunchy war sims).
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I'll turn 40 this year. Started with 1st edition D&D, I have played every edition, I think that evolution worked through 3.5, then D&D turned into a weird RPG/video game/MMO platypus. I have tried it, and the system is funtional and it seems easy to learn, but it is not my D&D, and I don't care what the books say in that regard. I have playtested Next, and I do not think it is moving in the correct direction. I have played a lot of other games as well, and some of them are great, some of them are barely playable, still-mobile trainwrecks that can be salvaged by good GMs or made worse by bad ones. I can go grimdark, but I don't like to stay there too long. I never really got into Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. Really never played in published settings until PF, also never really ran published modules. I also never played most of the big ones. We had money problems. Mostly my friends and I made up our own adventures with a story, a monster manual, and some graph paper, usually at the table. I also didn't read a lot of the core sci-fi or fantasy stuff that most folks seem to think are required reading for a grognard. I still cling to the DM as god, inasmuch as I understand that the DM (or GM) controls everything BUT the players, including the actions of the gods. I still prefer playing on and making it up as I go to having to refer to the book for every detail, so I don't run a lot of published adventures, although I love to use the maps! I prefer to play with a group that has played for a while, but I can work new players in, as long as they mesh. I have tried to play with folks that wanted to argue the meaning of this sentence or that asterisk, but they didn't last long, for a variety of reasons. I don;t play a lot of video games, including some of the major rpgs that people like and some of the ones I have played I do not like. I don't like trying to play an entire adventuring party. I don't like MMOs, and I am not at all excited by the PFO game, although I did support it to get the Emerald Tower PDF. I like PDFs at the table, because I am pushing 40 and one laptop is a lot easier to carry that a ton of books. I still have the books at home and I use them a lot. I have GMd more games than I have played, but I really love to play. The last couple of game groups I have played with rotated games to allow everyone to play and GM, so that has been great. I do not get the My Little Pony thing, but whatever, at least it isn't Twilight. Vampires don't sparkle. I never read Harry Potter, nor have I intentionally watched the movies. What I have seen has not inspired me to read them, but my son loves them, and they get him to read books longer than a pamphlet, so it is all good to me. I dislike Magic:The Gathering intensely, as it drew a lot of tabletop gamers away from RPGs when I was trying to keep groups together when I was in college and the Navy. I have a long history with game and I do not appologize for it. I am a tabletop role-playing gamer. I like rules, but I understand the time to skip past them for the sake of the story. I like battlemaps because they help visualize movement and everyone can be on the same page as far as where they are and we don't have to have a long arguement about "my character wouldn't be standing there!" ever again. However, I draw the maps to help tell the story, I can add features and details as needed, even on the fly. DMs are gods, but gods without followers are forgotten, and no one hears their stories. Characters are not beautiful unique snowflakes that are worthy of plot devices to save them from logical consequences. Unique, non-opomized characters are fine, but characters without any usable skills should not be going out into the big scary world to go adventuring, and if they die as a result, well, that is verisimilitude in a game world (not realism, because they go eaten by a f*&^%$ng Dragon!)
WALL OF TEXT--END
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41. Started at 10 back in '81. While I am firmly in group 1 in some respects, I didn't care for the warm and fuzziness of 2e. I stopped playing AD&D around the time they were deforesting to make 12 books a month of crap with maybe 100 pages of good stuff between them. 3e brought me back and Pathfinder has found a special place in my heart.
I am reverent when referring to Greyhawk. *head bowed*
I never did care for arbitrary DM's/GM's back in the day, I always thought of them as fun cancer. I think I was ready for something like Pathfinder back in the 80's-90's which is why I moved onto other systems back then.
I run everything off my iPad, I was always a computer guy so the tech leap was never hard for me.
I've never taken a break from Role playing games so I've been trying new stuff over the past 31 years and have to say: while for other genres I prefer other systems, when I do heroic fantasy nothing tops Pathfinder IMHO.
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We have some serious Great Wall of China thing going on in here!
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I'm 36, and I enjoy holding hands and windy walks. Also crossfit..
Reading Elric, the Hobbit, the Belgariad/Mallorean, and Lankhmar books incited a riot in my brain that demanded D&D. Started with 1st edition even though 2nd was out (while in Rabbinical school). Played all versions. Became obsessed with the oWoD as a fresh boot in the Chair Force.
Now my ADD is so bad that my love for a good story and character detail loses out to my need for rolling initiative roughly half the time.
While I've gravitated between grognard and new school for years now,I'd never go back to pre 3rd edition.
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Hmmm. interesting stuff. In light of that i suppose i'll add that i'm not a fan of suspense/horror/zombies/cthulhu and totally hate grimdark. I'm not a fan of all these new fancy kinds of dice. I prefer my gem dice and all these sparkly marbly cloudy metally stoney fancywoody kinds dice just make me sad. And since someone mentioned it... Elfin Lied was as bad as urotsukidoji and doomed megalopolis in my mind. Arthouse value or no. Those shows are some pretty sick stuff. I'll edit my post to agree with rynjin below that reality tv is just about the saddest stupidest waste of bandwidth on earth. A close second for completely wasteful mindless pap on television is any show where you have to call in and vote for your favorite singer/dancer/juggler/whatever. I did watch the entirety of last seaons's Germany's Next Top Model because Luisa Hartema is probably the second hottest thing on the planet to Gemma Ward. And Edyta Sliwinska's piratey outfit for her paso doble with Joey Lawarence was a gem but didnt make me want to watch the rest of the show. 1 awesome minute in 200 otherwise annoying minutes does not a great show make. As with sports. I'm only interested in the highlight reel.
I like this thread. Its very theraputic. And interesting to see some of the unedited core beliefs of some of my favorite threaddies in the spacetime continuum.
Oh I forgot the other half of yon stereotypes.
Yeah I like anime too. Pretty much anything except Romance/Harem anime and the majority of the "Slice of Life" genre. I can watch life outside, I don't need TV for that (that goes for Reality TV and "Real crime dramas" and anything like that as well).
GM should have power once the game starts, to keep things running smoothly, making calls on the fly, and so forth, but I think anything to do with how the game is going to be run should be agreed upon by everyone before it starts.
I don't like dictating to people "This is what you can play, this is what you can't, no arguments please" and I'm sure my players wouldn't either. Generally my rule of thumb is "If I wouldn't like it if I was in the player seat, I'm not going to do it" or at least try not to do it (Hard to tell if an encounter is better on paper than in practice before it's put into practice, so scratch "I dislike tedious encounters" off that list).
I also like Tennis (even though I suck at it) and Soccer (ditto). Never liked playing baseball which is funny because it's the only sport I was ever any good at it.