How did everyone get into tabletop games?

How did everyone get into tabletop games?

Me personally:

>me and buddy go to game store and get MTG cards
>always look at Warhammer models, but we're always poor as fuck
>as we walk out, buddy spots a box with a warrior on it
>"dungeons and dragons"
>buddy's friend walks in and sees him with the box
>"oh shit! I'm a DM, get the box and let's play"
>three of us along with 2 guys from the table behind us start playing using markers and broken 40K models


Now I play all war games, but I'll never forget my start

I heard about Total War Warhammer and was interested in Total War and wanted to get one of the games. I decided not to buy it until I even knew what Warhammer was and it's lore. It introduced me to tabletop games and now I play 40k!

I knew it existed and thought it sounded fun, so i bought the starter set for 5e (and then the phb) once i offered to dm everyone jumped on board.

I was reading Choose Your Own Adventure books. A church youth leader bought me the D&D Basic Set. The solo adventure in it was a cut above anything I had read to that point. I bought every gamebook I could find after that. I got into tabletop for more of that experience, what a blunder that was.

I was in grade 7 and saw some grade 8 kids playing D&D. I asked to join but they said I was small.

So I went out and bought the Talislanta core book and started my own group. Pretty much forever GM since. But honestly, Talislanta was a much better intro to this stuff than D&D, whose idiosyncracies puzzle me to this day.

I was at a friend's house, we were both 11.

>Hey friend, what are those little models on your shelf for? I've seen them before, and I wondered what they were.
>Well user, that's my Warhammer stuff.
>Warhammer? Oh, like those plastic hex pieces you've got?
>... sorta. That's for campaigns, this is for actual games.
>Well, I'd like to see what it's like. Can I play a game?
>I can split the armies I've got between you and your brothers.
>Who gets these cool-looking Terminator dudes?
>I don't have the rules for them.
>Aww.
>Here, have the Space Marines codex. I'll set up terrain on the pool table, then we'll play.

>Get so wrapped up in the lore that I don't even bother learning the rules
>Game is 5th ed SM vs. 2nd ed IG w/Catachan supplement
>Well-rounded SM force vs. Guardsmen & Basilisks
>Send my Scout Bikers into melee against Guardsmen
>They get shredded
>Regret it so much I don't even bother using the Assault Terminators I called dibs on
>They blow up both Basilisks, magnifying my regret
>But my interest in 40k remains
>Just not actually playing the game

And that's the story of why I chose Fantasy over 40k.

I shit you not
I started watching Acquisitions Incorporated
DM'ed by Chris Perkins
and i thought that looks fucking awesome
and so i became a Fa/tg/uy

In my social outcast 14 year old stage, I took solace in being the "geekiest nerd" around. I figured D&D would be the next logical step to increase my power level, so I would brag about how much I played it. In highschool as a freshman, someone actually invited me to play when they heard me bullshitting. Didn't know what to do. Played one session, realizing how fucking amazing TTRPGS are. Made a d&d club in my last year of highschool, met my current friends, and continue to play to this day. I don't want to get off this wild ride.

I'd heard about Dungeons and Dragons from people making fun of it (not big bang theory), and I thought it sounded more like playing pretend with rules. Ever since I heard about it when I was really young I wanted to play. I didn't actually have an avenue to get into the hobby though until I met my best friend sophomore year of highschool. Him and his dad played so he invited us all over and we had some of the best times of my life.

Too bad I fell in love with the girl of the group, dicked over my friend to be with her and contributed to a big fuckfest that split us all up. Now he's in another state, she couldn't hate me more, and I have a huge love of a hobby that I have a very hard time finding a group for.

also, I'm supposed to save the world and have no fucking clue how
R.I.P.

I always thought D&D was baller ever since that Dexter's Lab episode. I was really interested in the idea of pitting my wits against a dungeon.

My brother called me once and asked me if playing D&D would make him a permavirgin. I said "probably not? you do have a girlfriend". This was back when I thought everything my brother did was the tightest shit imaginable. So he played, got me to study 3.5 for most of a year reading forums and rulebooks (like any baby 3.5 player I had long assumed this was a necessary sacrifice to get into RPGs) and eventually got me to play some sessions with his friends.

If I had studied any other subject with the intensity that I was going in on those fucking D&D rules, I'd have been an expert. I probably was one of the mid-tier experts on 3.5 for a while. I even found a rules exploit or two.

Thank the gods I eventually got out of that hellhole of a game and could play ones that are less horrible. And it wasn't just the rules either, the whole culture around it just made so many players absolutely rotten to their DMs. If a DM wanted to ban so much as a broken class or a non-relevant setting book, the online community tore into him like a pack of wolves. I'm amazed that anyone was willing to DM under those conditions.

i started out with mtg since everyone was doing it
then i needed something stronger, and i got DnD 5e
after a while it just wasnt cutting it anymore and i had to do X-wing just to get by
now i am contemplating warhammer kill team, i dont know where im going in life

I sat in on a session when I was 14. It looked fun, I decided to try it once with my friends who were playing. Third Edition. My GM warned me against rolling up a fighter.

I rolled up a fighter. Best fun I have ever had. To this day I care not how shitty people say they are. Fighter is my favorite class. I've played most every pathfinder class a handful of times but fighter, man, like at least a dozen characters of different archetypes.

My teacher was huge WH40K enthusiast, and played Cyberpunk, D&D 3.0, and some homebrews for Fist of the North Star.
I eventually got into D&D and WH40K, which are the only things you'll play around my place, so when i started lurking Veeky Forums I expanded my interests.

I went to a party back in high school, I was 17, this was 2013/14. So, I'm drunk off my ass, stumbling around the house looking for a place to piss when I stumble into the basement and see the host's brother with his friends gathered around a table. I ask what they're doing, they let my drunk ass sit in, and then at some point I told them it was gay, told them it was cool, told them it was gay, told them it was cool, gave all of them my number, told them I was late for an important business meeting upstairs but to let me know next time they played and woke up in the pool. Been with those losers ever since.

Rollplay on twitch.

Oh for me it's fairly easy:

>I was always a very head-in-the-clouds kind of guy, thinking about fictional characters and how they would interact with each other
>read lots of books and played lots of vidya
>don't know much about RPGs
>play LoL with some random noobs
>some of them RP and they were talking about it on teamspeak
>"what are you guys talking about?"
>they show me
>start playing in a freeform fantasy RPG play-by-chat
>get into it
>play in more than one freeform play-by-chat
>get into a one-piece themed online RPG
>always talk about how diceless systems are better
>play for two-three years or so
>start to get jaded with the freeform game
>hear about D&D and stuff
>decide to give that a try
>play on roll20
>flakes and stuff, but it's still more fun than shitty freeform with strangers

And now I'm here, playing Mutants & Masterminds, 5e, Numenera and Exalted. And having a blast, GM and player!
I still want to try out Shadowrun and GURPS though... one day, maybe, if the current games I'm in stop.

>looking around, wasting my time on the internet like usual
>look at Veeky Forums since I was curious on what it meant by traditional games I was hoping to find tips on chess so I could beat my brother, who has essentially been good at chess since birth
>see 40k stuff
>look at lore and races, remember DoW game my friend was talking about
>get DoW and spend a bunch of my nights reading through general lore before narrowing it down to Necron lore, since I fell in love with the idea of futuristic robotic space egyptian skeletons, all themes that I like
>after a while, start getting miniatures

I was about 7 years old and my grandad taught me to play chess. We also played a host of classic board games like monopoly, Scrabble, ludo etc.

I had Pokemon cards at around 8 but unlike everybody else actually learned to play the game properly using a book I picked up which had a bunch of advice and competitive decks. ( I remember kids in my playground basically played it as a weird version of top trump's where you'd flip your top card and deal damage with it to the other players top pokemon. Energy was not a consideration hence why Charizard was the most sought after card as it dealt 120 damage in one. Despite it not being in any actual competitive decks.

By about 9 I started playing Warhammer with my friend who got me into it and at around that age I got into Magic the Gathering as well.

My grandad who was awesome would take us to the club every week and when we ended up getting frustrated with the store full of 'that guy' owners he built us a board to play on and we'd have games at his house.

Warhammer was in its 3rd edition and Magic was in 7th edition. Thorn Elemental was sweet. I remember installing some old version of a digital magic the gathering game that came with the starter set on my school's computers and playing it at lunchtime. Them memories.

I stereotypically played Ultramarines as my 40k army and had Vampire Counts in fantasy and loved getting all the MTG theme decks.

I got into D&D when I was a bit older at 16 when 4E came out as it was a clean fresh easy to learn edition for me and my friend to play and although ive moved past it, it served that purpose.

Im kind of stuck with that triumvirate of games in adulthood. My real painful niggle now is if I even enjoy playing them anymore or if I do so simply because they give me nostalgia for a simpler time where I didn't even know what damage on the stack was and thought nothing could beat a Land Raider. A time before all my mental health issues and existential angst kicked in.

>Too bad I fell in love with the girl of the group, dicked over my friend to be with her and contributed to a big fuckfest that split us all up. Now he's in another state, she couldn't hate me more, and I have a huge love of a hobby that I have a very hard time finding a group for.

You have cool friends

When I was young my friends and I all ran basically freeform dungeon crawls that we occasionally would use 6 sided dice for. Later on somebody got a hold of 3rd edition and everyone switched to playing that leaving nobody playing the old style game. I thought playing an actual game of D&D might be cool so I got the box set, and found there were so many rules that it discouraged me from playing until I just had nobody to play a game with.

I spent several years without playing rpgs because I thought they were all like D&D, and on top of that I hated school so I got put in the shitty classes and ended up associating with the kind of people that would never play tabletop games.

Then, about two years ago a guy in a videogaming group asked if I wanted to play a tabletop RPG, and I said "eh, why not" and haven't gone back since. For the past two years I stopped playing videogames almost entirely and have just devoured as much tabletop knowledge as I could. My favorite system is Unknown Armies.

Welcome to the party man!

See you at the party, Richtor!

>be at a friends birthday
>talk with some people I don't know
>some weeks/months later one of those I didn't know before writes me a message:
>"You seem like you could like ttrpgs. I thought about starting a little group, would you like to join?"
>I say yes
After that I thought to myself "Wait didn't Veeky Forums have a Veeky Forums board, maybe that could be helpful. And ever since then I browse Veeky Forums as my main board and am into ttrpgs.

>be awkward middle schooler
>want to get into afterschool clubs out of boredom
>hear about gaming club
>think it's a video game thing, get excited
>turns out to be the owner of what would become my first FLGS teaching kids Void and Warzone
>instantly and permanently hooked
>spend every Saturday at the game store playing games, building models, or just rifling through back issues of White Dwarf (dude had a stack like six feet high)
>store eventually closes, continue bouncing from store to store and picking up new games along the way
>now spend my Saturdays working at a game store, and in my free time design tokens and templates