How Did You Get Started In Tabletop Gaming?
May 23, 2014 by brennon
One of the biggest conversation starters with other tabletop gamers is 'How did you get started?' and it's certainly one that's come up a lot of late. So, I was thinking about this today and decided I'd put forward how I got involved with wargaming, role-playing and more and then hopefully you'll share your stories of what and indeed who got you into gaming.
For me the beginning of this journey started in Secondary School where I was stood in a lunch line talking to my friend about Warhammer 40, 000. I think the entire of the lunch hour was spent talking about each of the different races you could play as and in particular the Eldar. I know now being the resident Dwarf this sounds like quite a change but I was obsessed with these Space Elves. I was totally enamored with the thought of playing as the desperate Iyanden or the eerie Ulthwe.
So, that weekend after school was done I headed up to Games Workshop with my parents and got myself a set of Eldar Guardians (they haven't changed in all these years and the box I had was even older than the one above) and one of those starter sets they used to do with the tiiiiiiny pots of paint in them. Needless to say these miniatures were terrible caked on monstrosities but they were my first shot at the hobby. From there I bought myself a Farseer and played little games against my friends. I think in my first game of Warhammer 40,000 my Farseer managed to blow up a Dreadnought with his Singing Spear and I was very happy with the outcome.
The Eldar army slowly grew and I ended up with more badly painted Guardians, Farseers, Swooping Hawks and at one point I had a Falcon Grav Tank which I managed to mess up when I glued the plastic cockpit on and clouded it up. Still my bright red army was fun and it became my first step on the path to tabletop gaming taking over my life. All thanks to a talk in the lunchroom at school.
Next up I branched out into Warhammer Fantasy. This was a period where Games Workshop still did sales and so my first leap into this world of grim dark sword and sorcery was a £10 box of Skaven Clan rats! Yes! Much like with my Eldar these were terribly painted but I'd also learned the power of 'Flesh Wash' at this point - just not worked out you had to water it down. I had some very, very tanned Skaven at this point. I still actually use that same pot to this day.
From there the Warhammer Fantasy expansion continued but instead of Skaven I had opted to head down a more human route. So, on one of my birthdays I got the Empire Army Box and a metal hero on a massive Griffon. This was the coolest thing I'd ever had and I ended up with a reasonable 1000 point army I think. At the moment this army is lying pretty battered and broken somewhere in my cellar but it was brilliant. I played proper battles against proper opponents and even though I always, always lost to my friends Vampire Count army I managed to beat Dogs of War, Dark Elves, Dwarfs, Skaven and even High Elves with these guys!
At that point I think I'd found my niche. I loved Warhammer Fantasy from that point on and to this day I think it's remained my favourite of the Games Workshop games away from Mordheim. Needless to say this love for Warhammer Fantasy also took me down a different route.
The love for Warhammer at school meant that we set up a Warhammer Club (we even got cool membership cards!) with one of the coolest teachers I knew as a kid. Every Thursday evening after school we took over the Graphics Tech room and turned their massive tables into gaming rooms. At one point we even controlled the Art rooms and were able to paint and game in there to our hearts content for two or three hours. This also became the point at which we were starting to find other games like the old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game. This was epic. I get to play IN the world I love wargaming in? Count me in!
And so we begun a selection of random campaigns that never went anywhere but allowed us to have a whole lot of fun. I will remember till the day I die the time where an explosion went off in a tavern and an ugly goblin baby shot out of a room window and knocked one of us out. This eventually turned into a massive expansive part of our geeking lives and my first ever real character, Ronan Bane, is still one of my favourites. He was sadly cruelly killed by snakes but he was brilliant!
Role-playing then continued as one of our main pastimes away from wargaming. A friend of ours picked up the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules and we played some awesome campaigns of that over the years before turning to 3.5 and onwards. It was great playing it over a lunchtime with these funny looking dice and dunking a mayor into the well because he refused to pay us for our adventuring. We were decidedly chaotic neutral back then.
Board gaming also became a neat way of playing games when we couldn't get to wargaming and I imagine RISK was, like us, one of the ways you got into it as a major exercise in patience! I think we played this for hours at one point at the top of my friends stairs just getting in the way for no other reason than there was a Warhammer 40,000 game going on on his floor.
From there we almost let it lie for a few years until we picked up Munchkin to fill in time during Dungeons & Dragons downtime and then, weirdly, the Sin City board game after we'd watched the movies much later on. That was quite the intense game back then with a lot of bluffing and 'worker placement' if you can believe it. Sort of a eurogame really! It's only been in recent years that we've really dug into board gaming and it's easy to see why. With wargames being a lot more expensive and time intensive board games provide you with a quick and easy way to get gaming straight out of the box.
I think that pretty much sums up my headstart in tabletop gaming across a range of genres and now I pass the floor over to you guys. How did you get started in tabletop gaming. I imagine most of you will have come through Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer in its many guises but let's see what it's like past and present!
Comment below folks!
"I'd also learned the power of 'Flesh Wash' at this point - just not worked out you had to water it down..."
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Started with Chaos Daemons in Fantasy in like 2004, got absolutely freaking annihilated by my High Elf friend every game and it was ZERO fun to play. Then went on to Chaos Space Marines in 40k soon after which were a lot of fun. Took a huge break and now I play Salamanders 🙂
I started with Space Hulk and Blood Bowl that a friends older brothers had when I was in high school. Then moved to Necromunda and 40k but left the hobby for many years until Dust and Dread Ball in the last few years but have got really in to board games over the last 3/4 years.
A guy I went to school with, Chris Bingham aka Bing, showed me a bunch of miniatures he had and told me about Warhammer and that got me hooked.
I was shown a metal preslotta based skeleton way back in the early 1980s in school. I popped into the model shop in bangor that weekend and came out with loads of blisters ( skeletons, knights of chaos and some sci fi traveller ) all at 40p per blister
Started making Airfix model plane and tank kits in the 60’s (does that mean I’m too old to be visiting this site?) and then found a Donald Featherstone book in the local library that let me play games with them on the living room floor.
Hi ferb. Pretty much the same for me (and similar time as well! We “oldies” should stick together!). First attempt at a proper war-game was Airfix ACW. Loads of badly / partially painted troops wedged together so tight I doubt they could have moved in real life. My interest in fantasy novels (LotR etc.) led me to D&D, and from there to other fantasy games. I also tried to write my own rules, and still adapt commercial rules. My main interest became the Napoleonic period, first army was Hinchcliffe Bavarians (probably in mid 1970s). I dropped out of the hobby… Read more »
My group of mates at school were into D&D in a big way (we still play occassionaly) and this inevitably lead to us out into lots of other games, notably Warhammer Fantasy Battles. We had a brief daliance with WH40k and Epic before I moved onto historical wargaming.
I can pinpoint to either June or July of 1984. I was in class at school and book club catalogue was handed out. I took it home and persuaded my mother to buy me one of the books. It had a lizardmen holding a panther on a lead on the front cover which was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It turned out to be a gamebook, which was new one on me. It was Fighting Fantasy #7 “Island of the Lizard King” by Ian Livingstone, and from that point on I was hooked. I read every gamebook… Read more »
I started wargaming as a way to explore the “how and why & what ifs” of historical battles. It was almost entirely ACW for decades. Lately I have spread out to other eras. I have come to love most though the painting, terrain, and most of all, the company of other wargamers!
I had played Necromunda and Warhammer Fantasy before, but I was mostly into computer games for a long time. Then I built a board game collection over ten years which got big enough for me to stop. Then I found the Judge Dredd miniatures Kickstarter, lived it / loved it, followed by the Empire of the Dead Kickstarter. Geek and Sundry pointed me at BoW; now I’m into Bolt Action.
Started with Avalon Hill hex-and-counter games in 1983 like Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, PanzerBlitz, Panzer Leader, Midway, and Flat Top. Some friends of ours played D&D with miniatures, and since I’d done some character portraits for them they asked me to paint some miniatures. I was pretty good at it and was soon well-funded with lunch money. I thought my tour in the military would be a break from gaming, but this turned out to be the exact opposite, these guys were some epic gamers with at least three or four games going on any given night… Read more »
In 1978 went to a club in my local village hall first army was a 15mm Samurai then got into board gaming with SPI and Avalon hill and then fantasy via D&D to Warhammer 1st addition now I play all sorts and all scales
Dane
Started with AD&D in the 70s, got into Risk, then AH Rise and Decline of the 3rd Reich, Advanced Squad Leader.
Started with Airfix kits and the like back in 89 or 90 I’d say (I always remember getting in a *lot* of trouble for spilling a pot of yellow enamel paint on our blue hallway carpet -I was bringing my brothers pot back to him after painting part of a Sea King I think and not paying attention!). That led to finding White Dwarf and GW in the early 90’s -had a fairly large, rubbishy painted Empire army and some Eldar Harlequins (also had a mixed bag of Epic Space Marine bits and bobs). I remember being really excited and… Read more »
I remember playing Dungeons and Dragons Basic back in 1986 when I was four years old, and that game got me started on all sorts of things. From getting into Chainmail (The game that started Dungeons and Dragons), to getting me into reading which shortly got me started on reading comics like the old Warlord comics from DC Comics and the old He-Man and Conan comics from Marvel. Those comics got me into others like Spider-Man who to this day is one of my all time favorite heroes since he has almost always been one of the most “human” out… Read more »
Not really a “gaming story,” @brennon , but I know what you mean about clouding up the cockpit on your Falcon Grav Tank. 🙂 My first attempt at an F-14 Tomcat (I think I was 14) was marred by a big ole’ superglue thumbprint right on the canopy.
“And why did the pilot crash?” – “Well clearly he couldn’t see out of the cockpit window…”
And when he tried to eject . . . he couldn’t because the canopy was glued shut! 😀
Well I was crossing the road hoping to avoid a localised dinosaur stampede and just managed to dodge into the local library Well maybe not but it does seem a long time ago now My brother bought Battles with model soldiers by Donald Featherstone and with my pocket money I used to go to the local newsagent and buy a box of airfix soldiers every week and using the Featherstone rules. Fast forward a few years and got into D&D and Runequest in the late 70’s early 80’s. Met some guys at a local shop ( Modellers Nook Belfast) and… Read more »
Funny opening. 🙂
My dad got me into building Airfix kits at a young age. I enjoyed the building and painting aspect very much but was never massively interested in the ‘history’ or theatres of combat the planes featured in. Plus, I would often shelve the model for ‘display’ once done or hang it with string from my bedroom ceiling. One time, my dad got me a couple of ‘infantry’ kits to try for a change and I remember enjoying making them the most and then playing with them for ages in the garden. They seemed more real than ‘green’ toy soldiers (probably… Read more »
Long days sat at my friends house playing Risk with his dad and a few mates. We mainly played football, a LOT, back in the good old days, so this kinda thing was really new. I grew up in foster homes and a childrens home, so mixing with lots of other kids was kinda awesome for playing games with, especially the chess and pool competitions the staff put on for us, GREAT times. 🙂 my first installment of wargaming was whilst in trade training within the Army where I bought my first issue of WD, which was the one which… Read more »
Needs a bit of updating, but my gaming history is here http://darkerdaysradio.blogspot.de/p/so-back-around-1994-friend-at-high.html The short version. So back around 1994 a friend at high school introduced me to Warhammer 40000 2nd Edition. I was hooked. However my parents were not so keen. GW was expensive even 15 years ago. So I had to make do with just using what my mate had. So when another friend picked up Epic Space Marine, and then Epic Titan Legions, and well I just bought the Eldar forces off him and I had the start of my own army. This over time allowed for my… Read more »
Amen re: Mage the Ascension. Amen. 🙂
It was very good, still is. I more into NWoD these days, simply because as I have grown up, I feel the themes and mood of Ascension are less relevant to me. Also Mage the Awakening has a far better game system, and the upcoming Fallen World Chronicle book will give the game a great new edition.
This weekend on Darker Days we will be reviewing Demon the Descent, which is such a different game to Demon the Fallen.
Twas the year 19XX, and I was very young and playing with Britains and Airfix toy soldiers. Seat of the pants stuff, no rules but lots of sound effects and cotton wool explosions. I built many plastic models in 1:32, 1:35, 1:72 and 1:600 scales. Then I discovered Dungeons & Dragons and the joy of dice. Followed by the original Warhammer and many other things (including women but not in that order).
I grew up playing with the old Airfix 1/72 plastic soldiers back in the 60’s,but it wasn’t until 1972 that I started wargaming. I too began with Donald Featherstone’s rules,( the green and black covered book),then his 1/300 WW II micro-armour rules,(Tank Battles in Miniature),I think it was called,before moving on to Napoleonics and then Ancients(WRG 5th edition-6th edition). I then transferred to Naval WW II,using the General Quarters ruleset,before moving onto 1st edition Warhammer 40K.
1991 with Heroquest, then Advanced Heroquest into Warhammer, Spacehulk and Bloodbowl. Always more of a painter/modeler apart from bloodbowl… left the hobby for years… got a job in a GW store and picked it up again for a bit… left it again… and now epic games of modular heroquest, back on Bloodbowl, loving Deadzone, quick games of Talisman and many many other assorted games.
I started with AD&D in the mid 70’s, plus RISK, KingMaker, Chainmail & Civil War Miniatures. Hooked since…met my wife over a comic book (the Warlord) by Grell became her DM and later when stationed in Hawaii she ended up Managing the Legionnaire (THE Gaming Store there). Guess I made my saving role with her.
Heroquest for me, that led into fantasy and 40K AND dungeons and dragons, I admit I got bored of Warhammer Fantasy quite quickly, but I’ve had a Blood Angels army for 40K since 2nd edition, and various Imperial Guard and such were picked up along the way, I still have my Praetorians, why they stopped doing those I’ll never know, most characterful Imperial troops they made. My friends found Necromunda the best game to play, and whilst we all collected 40 K armies throughout, often we would go months just playing necromunda and never setting up 40K, we found the… Read more »
Back in about ~1993-1994 I had a mate at primary school called Andrew Mckie and he showed me a few models he had and some White Dwarf magazines.
I remember being particularly obsessed with the look of Blood Angels and literally would spend hours just looking at the pictures in WD.
My first models were the old GW plastic skeletons and plastic orcs, I can still remember the smell of the glue as I put them together. Happy times.
All the GW pics on this article I still think of as being ‘new’ models lol
My first warhammer figures were the original multipart chaos warrior regiment.
First 40k figures, the old Genestealer and termagants. Though 3rd ed did make collecting tyranids far easier. My army for a while was a mix of old and new.
And of course my first Epic army, Eldar, had the old school triangular falcon grav tanks.