RPG A Day 2022:Day 12--Why Did You Start RPGing?

 A really short one today to be sure. As I mentioned previously that Dungeons and Dragons cartoon from the 80's looked cool. I thought it would be fun to play a game that was like that. I already enjoyed fantasy from He-Man, The Wizard of Oz movie and Hobbit/Lord of the Rings cartoons. There was just something about it that clicked for me. That first try at D&D--as previously stated--was a bust. I got into comics more and more in my teens which led to thinking the Super Hero RPGs would be fun...and they were. One big thing that brought me back around to D&D and fantasy that I may not have mentioned in RPGADay before was the video game RPG, 'Wizardry'. I got that for the original NES in 1990. I was really into it and bought a strategy guide for it and everything. If you know this game then, then you know that you really had to use your imagination to play just like a pen and paper TTRPG as the gameplay/graphics were almost non-existent. After that, I got the itch to play fantasy TTRPGs again and found what would be my "main" group in 1992. As an aside, I also got into other genres like sci-fi, horror (Vampire), Wild West (Deadlands)  and my beloved Cyberpunk around this time. You really could play anything during that time with all kinds of different gaming mechanics. The group was also playing card games, board games and war games. As things went on and the open gaming license came out, the interest went away for a bit as things felt too samey. As a group we avoided falling into wanting "the latest and greatest" versions of everything we were playing. We were smart enough to see those money grabs for what they were back when the market was being oversaturated, but we weren't smart enough to keep playing our old stuff, and instead pulled back on everything. As previously documented "life" happened for me then and I didn't get interested in the hobby again until Pathfinder and 4E were released. Then, group funding, VTTs and 5E came around and the rest is history or more likely current events with several games of differing mechanics coming out on a regular basis just like the good old days.