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Monday, May 18, 2009

My roleplaying history - Part 1 - The beginnings

To give a better understanding of my future posts about roleplaying and RPGs in general, I thought it would be good to go back to the roots and see how I came to discover this fine hobby and gravitate around it until it grabbed me.
I can see it's going to be rather long, so I'll make this into multiple smaller posts and hopefully talk about other things in-between.


Gamebooks

I'm pretty sure it all started with the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. They introduced me to dungeons, strange humanoid monsters, traps and such things. Gamebooks in general were quite popular when I was around 8 and, in France, many series were published under the same hood, giving us quite a lot to have fun with, from heroic fantasy to space opera and survival horror.

Of these, the ones that I now hold in high esteem are actually from a series called "Destins" in french and "Virtual Reality Adventures" in the US/GB. One of the books is "Among Dead Men" and the other is "Heart of Ice". I'll certainly come back to these in a later post.

L'Oeil noir

The actual first entry into the world of roleplay... well... "-play" at least, was L'Oeil Noir, known as Die schwartze Auge in Germany and as the Dark Eye to english people. It's a gritty fantasy game that I discovered at my best friend's who got it from his older brother. I think he GMed the first game and... that's as much as I remember about how the game went. I think I wasn't entirely satisfied but saw potential. What I'm sure happened is that I bought the game from him later on (he didn't like it). I still have the box to this day, even though I've never truely invested myself in it.

Casus Belli & Backstab

I don't remember when it was exactly, but I started buying roleplay magazines with scenarios and articles about how to play and GM. I loved reading the various scenarios, discovering quite a few game systems through them, and reading the GM aids about such things as "how to deal with conspiracies in your game" or "how to introduce a circus troupe in your medieval adventure".
Accordingly to my personality, I spent a lot of time being quite content with just reading these, as if they were some kind of stories. I think I really liked reading about the possibilities within the scenarios, too (if my current obsessions are any hint).

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