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Wargaming - I use this term ultra loosely - can cover, RPGs, DnD, Wargaming, Model building (Trains, Airfix etc) - whatever basically

My very first experience has got to be my Dads 1950 "Airfix" kits (of which he had several US WW2 Naval Destroyers and Destroyer escort kits).
He got these circa 1955 when he was in Hospital and quite sick/immobile.
They kept him going / stimulated / active (since he couldnt walk).

As an absolutely bizarre side note:

He stuck all of the kits together with chewing gum - literally.
Melted it down and applied it to the joints.

They are still together to this day. No bull

What was your inspiration?

Dunno... just always had toy soldiers since I can remember (toys were more warlike in the 70s) and wanted something more to do with them.

Que first edition warhammer in 1983 and a collection of Donald Featnerstone books fro a second hand bookshop.

31 years later and im still playing witn toy soldiers.

I was introduced to D&D as something to do at a lock in event and from there I wanted to build terrain which i got to Miniwargaming.com and the rest is history.

I went to a comic book store that had some gaming tables and saw some guys playing a neat game, and was like whats that? Turned out to be 40k, so I bought the box set with the marines and orks and in no time I was servicing members of the arm forces behind the local 7 eleven to buy enough money for super glue and epoxy.

I used to be a complete history buff, now less so, but I saw FoW and was hooked immediately.

I used to frequent a brothel in Brussels and saw two half naked prostitutes playing a game of Necromunda with a dwarf dressed a cowboy.

Intrigued by this turn of events I walked over and asked for a game.

Well....... actually a good friend of mine got me involved after we played with some fantasy top trumps back in about 1987, but who wants to be friends with a guy that tells a story like that?

Back in the early 80's my mom used to build all kinds of scifi models from that era like Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, the black hole, dukes of hazard and even gi joe vehicles. She also did painting by numbers and used to get the terrain kits to build forts and stuff from Popsicle sticks.

So around 8 or 10yrs old I started doing the same. Guess it just runs in the family. Around 1991 I discovered my first FLGS. I saw battletech and warhammer minis for the first time. When I had enough money for a game I ditched school, headed over to my FLGS and bought my first minis game. Battletech 3rd ed. I bought whatever macross inspired minis I could get for BT.

I've never looked back. :-)

Well my first exposure to the Hobby was the Heroquest advert on TV in the late 80's. I asked for it for Christmas but my parents bought me another GW game DungeonQuest instead. I was a bit perplexed as it wasn't what I asked for, but as it happened I loved the game. I've actually still got it and refuse to eBay it.

I never really connected it to any wider 'hobby' so never really gave it much thought until a about a year later when I went to High School. There where books in my old school Library on the subject of historical Wargaming that dated from the late 70’s. There were two books on Napoleonic Wargaming, one by Bruce Quarrie and the other by Charles Grant and a book on American Civil War Wargaming by Terrance Wise.

A couple of my friends started doing Napoleonics off the back of these books and I later on joined in. We played with 1/72 plastic figures which I bought from my local Model Shop. A box of them was about £2.50 which was pocket money prices. A couple of years later I discovered my local GW, this was just as Warhammer 3rd ed was about to come out (1992?).

For a while we exclusively played GW stuff until I was about 16-17 and discovered a local club who played Historical and I went back to Historical gaming. I've swayed between the two ever since.

Well, one of my high school friends from back in the day introduced me to the Dawn of War series for PC, and we would often play that at small LAN parties together, just 4 of us. After a while, we started looking into the tabletop game, and three of us bought ourselves some Battlesets for our respective armies. We played for a bit, then went our separate ways in life, so now I'm here in the hobby mainly for painting and collecting for the time being. Of course, that's not stopping me from working on recruiting new friends into the hobby!

I denote wargaming separately from RPGs, but I started Wargaming because of one of my older sister's smarter boyfriends who, knowing my interest in WWII, showed up and handed over a copy of Avalon Hills' Russian front game Panzer Blitz to keep me out of their hair. It was 1977 and I was 10 years old. In those days it was just counters and hex maps, but it stuck. I went on to buy my own copy, Panzer Leader, Squad Leader, Advanced Squad leader, D&D and AD&D first edition and the rest is history. Eventually I discovered WFB 3rd edition, Rogue Trader and Adeptus Titanticus.

It was one of two pivotal moments in my childhood that both occurred that year. The second was the release of the movie Star Wars. Both gaming and Star Wars have played a big role in my life ever since then. I am still a wargamer in sci-fi and historicals (British Colonial period and WWII) and have been playing RPGs for almost as long and am currently running a Star Wars themed RPG game and about to start running a new Shadowrun campaign. I am also a member of the 501st legion and do charity work in full Star Wars costume.

I do prefer minis to counters, nowadays, but still get just as much enjoyment out of wargames as I did that first time I opened up the Panzer Blitz box.

Skriker

I lost a bet and I'm forced to play 40k for 17.5 more years...

Man that's harsh , what if I may ask was the payoff if you won the bet?

Bullockist wrote:
Man that's harsh , what if I may ask was the payoff if you won the bet?

A Houston Astros Jersey signed by Babe Ruth. Seemed legit.

When it comes to Wargaming (which I also think of differently than RPGs) I went to an independent store in a mall up where my relatives lived when we were on vacation. I saw the Warhammer Fantasy Battle set with the warmaster art on it and was hooked. The map they had in there of the Old World really fired my imagination. I still had the full size rulebook until a few years ago when it finally gave out and wasn't worth keeping around. Around the same time I received that set my friend from school got into it with his Dad and we soon became best friends, with many a night and day spent at his house fighting battles and poring over White Dwarfs at school. Those were the days, and I'm saying that with no rose tinted glasses on.

Was in one of those big malls during 2006-ish, it had a GamesWorkShop store in it. Loved going in and looking at all the models. Always into monsters and dinosaurs, so I was really interested in all the dragon figures for the elves; but then I saw Lizardmen. Dinosaur people? Heck yes. Been a lot more collecting than playing, because I love the lore but have trouble going to meet people in person. Trying to get back into it now!

Had a friend in junior high get me into Adaptus Titanicus, little foam buildings and all. After that came wood elves and eldar (we'd pit them against each other. Wood elves lost. Badly) The rest is history.

I think it was the 2012 Fanime convention where there was some Frontline Gaming people showing some WH40K stuff and later they got some of us to play Dreadfleet.

My uncle, he also showed me the site.

For Dungeons and Dragons I saw a first edition, TSR starter box at a "nerd store" at the mall. It had a big, kick-ass dragon on the front of it that was setting some peasants on fire and my 12 year old mind thought that was amazing. My parents got it for me for Christmas.

As for tabletop Shennanigans there was a game and comic shop LITERALLY down the street from my highschool. Needless to say they made a killing at the time, at least until the owner's lease ran out, but there was a routine Warhammer 40k group up there. At the time I was dabbling in Magic the Gathering, Heroclix, and some Star Wars miniatures game which I can't recall the exact designation of but I wanted something that I could put my own stamp on. Like Dungeons and Dragons I wanted to have characters of my own with their own narrative. So I bought some stuff and put it together, rather poorly I'll admit. I thought Witch Hunters looked cool because their codex art was badass so I bought an Inquisitor and some Sisters. My first game was as part of a Mega Battle. With my scant 300 points I hardly made an impact but my Inquisitor did manage to skewer a Dark Eldar Archon with his Force Sword and turn the tide of the battle through dumb luck.

From then on I was hooked. That was about a year before 4th Edition came out.

Avalon Hill's Gettysburg + Old Marx toy figures = 1 lifetime wargamer. Multiply that by AD&D and cool figures to paint and the result is WHFB.

I was born into it. My dad had me playing simplified versions of DBA, Starfleet Battles, and numerous rulesets he devised since I was old enough to roll dice. I'm the wargaming equivalent of a crack baby. 40k's been the thing to keep me into it since, which I got into when I found a 3rd ed starter set at a flea market at Historicon when I was 13 or so.

Back in the 70s and 80s, my older brothers played Wargames (Avalon Hill, SPI, etc) and also built and painted WW2 models. One of them was much more into sci-fi and fantasy, and so had a huge collection of books - Moorcock, Harrison, Asimov, he had also bought D&D 1st edition, Tunnels and Trolls (solo adventures) and a solidly decent collection of Minifigs from their various historical and fantasy ranges.

With early key influences like that, how else could I turn out?

Then I discovered 40k RT at Games '88 (a Melbourne Con) where a guy called Andrew Buttery and his mates had scratchbuilt a table-sized crashed spaceship to run demo games on. It was one of the most awesome things I'd ever seen at the time. I didn't get to play, but I then spent all my money on Imperial Army models. And then did the same for the following two days. Went home and started painting them in my parents' lounge room alongside the Minifigs I'd by then inherited and the Humbrol enamels. When you add it all up, that weekend has turned out to be the most expensive one in my life...

I was into DnD at an early age, my dad used to have guys over for sessions. I later got into 40k when a friendly old chap let me play against him, after teaching me the ropes, him with elder, and me with marines.
Then I played the first battle in the LotR's, commanding some gobs and a rapidly depleting orc squad, when the moderators decided I would command sauron... Who I then used to slay all three hero's of the last alliance, thus winning

When as a child, I was on a holiday trip to London, I saw and bought a D&D starter box at Harrod's. Then I needed miniatures and mail ordered them from sources found in an English Wargaming magazine, that a.o. included an ad by Games Workshop. Used Citadel miniatures for D&D rounds.

Only years later I started Warhammer Fantasy, then 40k. Still playing RPGs though.

For a long time now I've been a storyteller. Back in 2000 I started writing in Star Trek Play by E-mail games (yes, big trekkie), which got the ball rolling. I branched out to fantasy, horror and other sci-fi RPGs, eventually settling on Shadowrun for the setting and build system. Even though some rules are a bit clunky I still like to play from time to time.

Back when the first Lord of the Rings movie came out there was a monthly magazine from GW, which gave you fluff, a miniature and paints as well as techniques. While at the time that mostly went by me I still have the miniatures to this day and recently I started painting them again.

My love however lies with science fiction and as such the game associated with the LOTR table top never appealed. Enter Warhammer 40K. Which is a new hobby for me which I started about two months back. I have been steadily building up my Dark Eldar army and have even completed my very first conversion (Baron Sathonyx, what else )

Well that's the short, short, version anyway...

When I was a kid, my dad bought me two casting molds for lead toy soldiers, one of a french Old Guard grenadier and the other of a prussian infantryman.

We casted almost a hundred men that HE patiently painted while I made them battle on the field (our living room table).

It was all dreadful marches and volley fire.
It was wonderful. And I was hooked forever.

Grew up on Star Wars/similar.

Obviously they had a huge range of figures with which to (re)fight battles.

Somewhere along the way I also picked up a few sets of


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britains_Deetail


https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=deetail+britains&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=UjtaU7KpK7Ho7AaH-IH4Bw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=979

A friend had some of the Space range they did

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=deetail+britains+space&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=JjxaU9iwAcaN7Aay2YDgCQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=979

he had a pretty extensive collection, which I remember literally seething with envy over


Built the occasional Airfix kit and wound up with these models

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=airfix+alien&_dcat=2631&Brand=Airfix&_osacat=2631&_from=R40&Type=Figure&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR11.TRC1.A0.H0.Xairfix+space&_nkw=airfix+space&_sacat=2631

which on and off over a few years must have had 12 or so coats of very thick and poorly applied enamel paint caked on them.

Vaguely dabbled in writing some crude rules -- I had a movement system worked out relating to the number of ( my) hand lengths a model could move or shoot etc etc, which was then resolved via Rock/paper/scissor.

Stealing from the classics even then.

Read a lot of books as well....

which led me eventually to the Jackson/Livingstone Fight Fantasy books.

Which then for a year/few months were all the rage at school.

I think they replaced yoyos and/or Panini Football stickers maybe ?

Cool as those books were/are we were, obviously, far too sophisticated 11/12 years olds ...

.. which led me to buying/getting the Red Box edition of Dungeons and Dragons -- in the long closed Forever People in Bristol.

http://ifanboy.com/articles/paul-cornell-my-first-comic-shop/

This, of course, led to us hanging out in our local gaming/comic store -- Krackers in Taunton. Which as it also had arcade machines was pretty much geek heaven for us.

From there we wound up buying a blister pack or two -- my first pack was a Citadel Barabrians blister, swiftly followed by some undead heroes/champions.


Picked up some White Dwarfs -- #96 with the Casket of Souls cover was my first.

40K started coming out, with the plastic marines .....


.. all been downhill since then.

I wandered into a Games Workshop looking for a Nintendo 64, didn't get anything that day but it wasn't long before I went back and picked up my first box of 20 catachan warriors.

My brother in law sold me some Tyranids for a steal of a deal... then I went and kept buying. Well and truly addicted to the entropic space dinosaurs now. My wife thinks I'm crazy.

My dad brought back hero quest one day, some one just gave it to him because it wasn't what they thought it was. At the same time a couple of friends went out and got space hulk and advanced space hulk (I think). I was instantly captivated by the design of both games and wanted to find out more and was told to pick up a white dwarf by my friends. I picked up my first copy and that was it in recent years beasts of war have steered my in the direction of the other games I have started playing and looking at playing.