Do you play Paper and Pencil RPGs ?

[mchlk]

I'm curious, I gotta know.

If I left out your favorite game, please post it in the thread.

Personally I'm an Old-School buff, D&D and CoC are my favs.

[Yoc]

It's been 20 something years for me.
V&V and Traveller where my flavours.

[darkmark (RIP)]

I was out of that loop a long time ago.  The one time I played a role-playing game, it was so boring that I vowed never to do it again.  And considering the mental effect it has on some folks, I'm glad I don't.

[cimmerian32]

I used to play Palladium RIFTS religiously every week...  been over 15 years since the last time, though...  I moved away from the group I played with, and just never found a new group.  Still have all the books though

[Astaldo711]

I started playing D&D back in '80 or '81. I stayed around for a little after the 2nd edition but then it changed too much for my taste. The group I played with all grew up, got married and moved away. I still have the original basic edition I bought way back when.

[Yoc]

I still have all my V&V books and character sheets.
I think I came up with some not bad heroes for the time.
'Fables' creator Bill Willingham produced some of the modules for V&V and they were the basis for his first comic series 'The Elementals'.  I blew his mind when I showed up at a convention and had him sign them as well as his comics.  It's one of my more fond convention memories.  Bill was a very nice guy and I'm thrilled for him at the success that the 'Fables' books have gotten.

-Yoc

[OtherEric]

I haven't played any tabletop RPG's in about 4 years; but even so I felt the need to add a couple options.  I suspect most of us here who do will have tried some Superhero RPG's, so I added the two I had spent some time with- Gurps, specifically Gurps Supers; and Champions

[narfstar]

30 years ago some teens tried to get me to play D&D with them. Within two minutes I knew it was not for me

[bchat]

I was, years & years ago, interested in playing Champions (which I still have the books for) and D&D.  Trouble was, most people I knew weren't interested in playing anything that wasn't a video game.  The only person I found who was interested in playing Champions lived too far away.  That's probably the main reason I prefer playing RPGs on the computer and, before that, the Nintendo systems.  Dragon Warrior (the whole series for the NES), Final Fantasy (SNES) and Elder Scrolls (Morrowind & Oblivion) are my favorites ... if that matters to anyone.

[Guardian7]

Ohhhh RPGs...

I could literally write novels about the games we played.

It has been 13yrs as of the 20th of this month (Sept) that I last played an RPG.

I played them all.

I DM/GM'd and rarely ACTUALLY was a player. (Dungeon Master or Game Master for those of you who do not know the terminology).

It would probably be easier to list what I didn't play.

Northern Michigan was a pretty lame place for a young teen stuck in the sticks. SO RPGs were the easiest way to get lost in all that Heroing... Fantasy... Fiction... that I loved so much.

PRIMARY games:

Advanced Dungeon and Dragons (1st Edit only - hated 2nd... and 3rd... and lord knows what they have now).

We played in the World of Greyhawk (A supplement for AD&D). I had on ongoing campaign that lasted 13 years (up until Sept 20th 1997). Yes... 13. You wanna know what the highest level of character was? 12th... It may sound low. But we didn't just dungeon crawl... they traveled the World, stayed at Inns and got to know at least a handful of people from wherever they were at the time... We didn't skip that aspect. If it took two weeks to trudge to a place. They wanted to play it out and we did. They would battle small menaces along the way. A town plagued by Goblins... A murder... strange happenings... Missing merchant caravans... It was a beautiful game. So incredibly rich in detail and character personality. I literally have hundred upon hundreds of NPCs (Non-Player Characters) complete written out that the PC (Player Characters) interrelated with... became friends with... helped... married... etc. There were maps of every town and everything was indicated on the map as they discovered it.

They stopped evil Demi-Gods... put an end to a world spanning Slave nation... Defeated a darkness from beneath the Earth... Stopped a nearly unstoppable evil... rescued a King... saved God knows how many villages, towns and Cities.
They threw down corruption in all its forms and faced the purist of evil that appeared. Battled hordes of creatures of the night or from places too foreboding for anyone who was good of heart.
The game ended when some life changes came for me... So where those characters ended up is ultimately unknown. I am sure they stopped the world from toppling into Darkness and lived happily ever after.

It was awesome. Seriously it really was.

I had six players (locked)... I had a (huge) waiting list of people who would beg to play in my games. But I could only juggle so many players before it became a mess or would take on a crowd mentality.

My family advocated us playing and never fed into the whole "It was bad for people or was some sort of cult" (anyone who thinks that is mentally retarded).

We played Every Thursday (unless a Holiday interrupted) from 1986 until 1997. Yes I know that is only 11 yrs... but we played (too many) more times a week before that... seeing as I discovered RPGing in 1979 - I just had to pan back my own personal time spent doing it to a more reasonable "This day is when we play" thing than to play too many times a week.

Villains and Vigilantes was running on a 5 year "The CRUSADER" run when I finally called it quits. Though Lord knows how many different worlds and games we played using it before locking that particular world in place (lots... too many! LOL).

There were all kinds of other hit and miss games

Dragonlance - Forgotten Realms - Traveler - Star Frontiers - GURPS (Everything) - Spy Games - Pulp Heroes stuff - Call of Chuthlu - Elric of Melnibone - Paranoia - and on an on... we tried and owned EVERYTHING.

It was a fun time... no regrets here.

Do I miss it?

Yeah... sometimes... the camaraderie was wonderful.
I was lucky... I had the same three players that stuck through it through everything (We added players here and there mind you). So I miss that and them (Still friends mind you... but you know how it is)
It just isn't like that time when all your problems would fall to the wayside... and you would immerse yourself in the total delight that is an imaginative fantasy world of your own creation (even when using supplements - because you were still responsible for bringing it to life).

ahhh Good times!

SO yes... I did play Pencil, Paper and Dice rolling RPGs.

Think I am gonna go dig that old stuff out, later today and go over it for nostalgia's sake.

G7

[Yoc]

Great post Les, thanks for sharing your memories.
I still have my V&V stuff packed away in a closet but lost track of the old gang that played it with me.
Ah well, life goes on.

[minipete]

I first played D&D back in the late 70's.... I loved it!!!
It was great at first but then guys began bringing their kids and little brothers.

I got sick of the whinning and crying.

Dabbled a little in early 90's. Just wasn't the same.

[CharlieRock]

I play RPGs and still keep up with the current games even though I only play about once or twice a year last two years. Before that we had a monthly campaign going, and the year before that weekly. I am really interested in the new Mutants & Masterminds Third Edition because Green Ronin (the publishers) licensed DC Comics and are making it the DC Universe RPG.

Like, Guardian7 I could fill volumes on my imaginary adventures. I have played or GMed almost all the games. I started with D&D: Basic in '86 and got the GURPS boxed set after trying out all the different versions of Palladium Games. I also played the Marvel comics (TSR) RPG and some of the White Wolf games that started coming out early '90s. Then I joined the Army and my wicked evil stepmother throw out my "satanic" RPG books (and quite a few comics, and music tapes).
Yes, I got burned by the "RPGs are teh Devil!" hysteria.
But I got back into it right after I got married. MrsCharlie loves Final Fantasy and was intrigued when I told her about the pencil and paper versions of RPGs. We went out and got D&D:3 and pretty soon I found an old player and introduced another new player.
My Favorite would have to be GURPS though I rarely played it after my cousin's passing and then only as Autoduel. (no-one else in my group likes that system the way I do). So my favorite actually played is Mutants & Masterminds, which is a super hero game based on the third edition D&D game rules.

[jfglade]

 I only played D&D two or three times and can't say I cared for it. Had a little better luck with Champions but only played it twice. I enjoyed Risk, which was more of a floor game than a tabletop game once you had more than a few players in a game; Risk really doesn't quite match the games you specified but it anticipated them to a degree.

 I run a diceless All Star Squadron rpg on Yahoo, and we often post scans from Quality and Fawcett books to familiarize players with obscure characters. Before DCM and GAC came into being it was much harder to find scans but DCM is always the first place I look when I'm trying to learn more about obscure characters.

[tomola]

Can someone show me how this RPG looks ?