Larian Studios Forums General Chat Games that made us gamers

Hi folks, as we (I!) struggle with impatience through the last 80 or so days before BG3 release, and as the old BG games or other cRPGs have such warm places in many of our hearts … and as I enjoyed getting occasional glimpses into folks’ gaming pasts from mentions in other threads like the ones on what else we’re playing … I thought it might be fun to reflect on the games that most influenced our love of gaming and that perhaps shaped the sorts of games we most enjoy today.

So, what were the first games you played? What games first blew you away and made you the gamer you are now?

If there’s any interest in this thread, I’ll share mine too.

I like this thread. May not get many posters, but I'll post my story.

My very first RPG on computer, which also happened to be a game that blew me away, was BG1. Before that I had played D&D and other TTRPGs quite a bit, but my video gaming was entirely limited to wargaming. Even that was very minimal because I had no money and couldn't afford my own computer, so I got to play video games only on friends' computers. In 1998 I was finishing up my grad school, and a good friend and fellow grad student was raving about this new cRPG that had just been released. As luck had it he needed me to house-sit for him, which allowed me the use of his computer while he was gone. I started playing around 7 pm, and did not stop until the sun was coming up the next morning. What especially hooked me was the beginning of BG1. Leaving the safe walls of Candlekeep and "venturing forth" with my father felt so very safe, and I was expecting things to start out nice and easy and happy. But as we all know, things went a very different direction, and that just set the mood and tone and my emotions for that game thereafter, because all I wanted to do was to hunt down you-know-who and pay him back.

BG1 introduced me to cRPGs, and that's why the BG franchise has a special place in my heart.

I have to say that the first game I ever played was Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I remember being completely captivated by the colorful world and the sense of adventure. It sparked my interest in gaming at a young age and set the foundation for my love of video games, especially RPG

Thanks for sharing . As promised I'll chip in too.

Our family got a computer when I was a kid, though it wasn't a gaming powerhouse like the Commodore64 or even a ZX Spectrum, but a nice educational BBC Micro. We did nevertheless have a bunch of (probably pirated) arcade classics for it, but for some reason the games that really grabbed me were the text based adventures. I know I played a bunch, but the only one that really sticks in my mind was The Lord of the Rings. Partly because I loved that I could become one of the four hobbits and set out with my friends for Rivendell. And partly because I lost all my inventory when loading the second of, iirc, four cassette tapes it came on and could never finish the blasted thing. I'm totally going to try it using an emulator now I've thought about it again.

My teenage years were given over to ... other stuff ... so it was only at uni where one of my mates had one of these newfangled (to me) PC thingies and I watched with envy as he played, in particular, party-based RPG Wizardry VII and point and click adventure Day of the Tentacle that my interest in video games was revived.

I didn't play either of those games myself until years later (DotT was reissued a few years back and I reckon stands up remarkably well, for Wizardry VII I'd guess you probably need to have been there). But when after uni I lived in a shared house with access to a PC, the first games I chose to play myself tended to be RTSs and sims. Sim City 2000, Civilization II, Command & Conquer, Warcraft, Dungeon Keeper and Theme Park were the first games I recall playing lots of.

It was only when the PlayStation was released and I read reviews of this game called Final Fantasy VII that I returned to RPGs. And so when this new party based RPG called Baldur's Gate was released a year or so after I'd played and adored FFVII, I thought of that and back to Wizardry VII, and probably also to the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon I'd enjoyed as a kid, and decided to give it a go. So I created my paladin, rolled the dice for stats (probably just once without changing them as I had no idea what I was doing) and ventured forth ... and fell in love with the game, the setting and the genre.

First game I remember vividly?
Spear of Density/Wolfstein.
First cRPG = either BG1 or Might&Magic VI.

I would say that these were hard years but at the same time golden, as I now remember how I used to go to computer clubs where I could play for a few hours...

I have been gaming since I was a toddler - early years were are more about the platform than an individual title. When I was about 3 my Dad brought home Comodore64 that was decommissioned at work. Lots of fun stuff there.

The game that really dragged me into gaming was Baldur’s Gate2. It was a title that made me splinter from my older brother tastes and follow my own. It was first game that felt like immersive world and story to me, rather than a toy. What followed was year of playing and replaying any RPG I could find - all Infinity Engine games, Fallouts, Arcanum. Really though most of my high school I played almost exclusively RPGs and Tomb Raider games - the fascination with TR games came from unlikely place - a clunky TR clone named Indiana Jones and an Infernal Machine.

I also have to shoutout DosBox through which I discovered some amazing classics, when our family PC became unable to run modern titles (I beat Jade Empire on what must have been 10 FPS it was a laggy slideshow) like prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback, Pirates1, UFO: Enemy Unknown.

So are you excited for inXile's Clockwork Revolution?

My first game was contra.

I really enjoyed and appreciated that the entire Infinite collection had a proper pause available. I can certainly understand why pausing would be limited for multiplayer, but Larian has never been capable of producing a game engine that, even with the mod communities, had a proper pausing function available.

My first cRPG was Dragon Wars on the Apple IIgs. I was 9 or 10, and I never got very far in it.

The next game that I spent a ton of time in was Exile III

One of the things I've always loved is how D&D and similar rulesets really lend themselves to computers. With tabletop, there's always some degree of "wait, isn't xyz dependent on abc? Just a sec, imma look that up..." and it's really nice to not have to rely on humans for getting the rules right.

The first TT experience was the Night Below Boxed set campaign. The city overview of Menzoberranzan was mesmerizing.

My first dnd game was Cloudy Mountain on the intellivision.

NetHack, Fallout 1 & 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, list goes on... but cRPGs (especially of the DnD variety) have always held a special place in my heart.

Spear of Destiny, Wolfstein, DOOM, Warcraft, Dungeon Master, Might and Magic, UFO

My first game was the Mechwarrior 2 Titanium Trilogy. Not only was it three mecha games, it was three mecha games set in a rich and detailed setting with huge amounts of lore available in the game.

Hi all. My first game was Tetris. I was 5 years old when I first played it. Then came Nes, after Sega, after PC and Playstation.
The first game that left a big impression was Prince of Persia. It's a really dark, complex, and incredibly cool game. The second game, or rather a series of games that left a mark in my heart - a series of Heroes of Might and Magic. I still play Heroes to this day, after so many years. Then I was subdued by Fallout 1 and 2 parts. I still think Fallout is the best RPG. I would like to play the new Fallout by Larian Studios)) It is a pity that this will not happen.
Looking forward to the release of Baldur's Gate 3 more than anything. Never been a fan of the series or D&D games, but I've always been a fan of Larian. The game is already ranked 4th on my list of the best games.
I wish the Larian studio incredible success and hope that players will buy the game on all possible devices - like me. Such developers, who really put their soul into their products, should have all the money in this world. Larian is the last bastion of the RPG.
P.S. I apologize for bad english. I study the language and use translators.

The first PC games I remember playing were Fallout 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and my personal favorite Planescape Torment. From those games came my passion for rpgs, I even started playing tabletop Dungeons & Dragons when I was in high-school.

The first games I played were on the old Nintendo, Sega Saturn, 64, etc. Just tons of random basic games.

I think the first games that really griped me though was on the ps2, went to K-mart and picked it up on a wim no thought just went by the cover. It was called Shadow of Destiny (looks like Shadow of Memory was a rename for it). Interesting side note the demon in the game I always thought was a lady was actually a guy, I didn't find this out till much later.

Vids are still huge for whatever reason so putting them in spoilers.

Did the same thing and picked up Ico, same system ps2. Game was amazing but it was subbed in french or something so I had no clue what they were saying. I just remember at the end I wished there was more.


I keep getting a feeling there was another but I don't remember so I'll post one of my top favs. Dragon Age Origins, it was just the base game on a console no mods and only played the expansion once I think. So it was more so just the base game that was amazing. Not going to bother with a trailer, everyone should know DaO.

Anyway, interesting reads, I'll keep a eye on this thread.

I probably spent a lot of my free or leisure time playing games throughout my life. In my early years I was fortunate that my family decided to get a NES or Nintendo Entertainment System. It was mostly for my older sibling perhaps but I also had some opportunities which was nice. While I was 6 or 5 at the time, I couldn't read that well but the few games we had to start with were a racing game called Rad Racer, Mario Bros, Zelda, Rampage, and Dragon Warrior. Now as a forming youth, it was fun to play these type of games but they all lacked something that couldn't keep my interest; all except Dragon Warrior. Dragon Warrior was my first rpg, a jrpg to be exact. Dragon Warrior is actually Dragon Quest I and it would unknowingly help shape my tastes for RPGs in the years and decades that followed. I had my sibling help translate the menu and I just stumbled my way through the game but with imagination, excitement and perseverance. Unlike a lot of games I actually finished Dragon Warrior I. Which really was a rarity for me as for some reason or another I just lose interest after things get too easy, no more character progression, no more excitement or mystery to solve. Looking back with these somewhat old eyes, it was a basic rpg with not much to it and would feel real boring real quick had I played it again. Coincidentally I picked up and played the recent Dragon Quest for PC and there is much to appreciate for its creative spirit that remains the same to it's IP and satisfying to relive that series again with a sorta of nostalgia. However, I found the game easy and the mood and tone not to my liking. Perhaps I had changed having experienced so much. Perhaps I compare it to my true favorite games.

Not that this was the end of it mind you. Back during this time and for a great while longer, we had rental stores to rent games over here and there was even places to buy used games at. Might and Magic for NES comes to mind with its classic dungeon crawl, the first I had experienced of the sub genre or rpgs. Later on as you would expect I played Dragon Warrior 3, never finished it and then got gifted Dragon Warrior 4 for NES. DW4 was perhaps my favorite game for the only platform my family would go on to own for quite some time. I had completed it perhaps only a couple times. During this sad era of gaming drought I would go on into sports and paperback novels.

It wasn't until many years later that my family got the Sony Playstation 1/PSX and while I had missed out on the many, many Consoles/Systems in between I had been very lucky to be in this era, as I consider the golden era of jrpgs at least for me. I am also grateful for my time spent and fun had. I pretty much played every rpg on that console, mostly renting and as you can imagine not finishing many. I would like to say my first rpg for the PSX was "Beyond The Beyond", a very important true favorite of mine and one that in my eyes made up for missing out on Super NES Console. Beyond the Beyond had SNES sprites (something that I had never experienced), a interesting beautiful story if not slightly above basic, companions, secrets, coming of age concepts, class upgrades, puzzles and that traditional turn based rpg mechanics from Dragon Warrior. I completed Beyond the Beyond multiple times. Little did I know that this would pale in scope & comparison to Final Fantasy 7 and then Final Fantasy Tactics which I would go on to complete both. I won't write more on those except those were my first entry into the Final Fantasy Series and I had indeed missed out on the previous entries. I imagine they are more popular worldwide and don't need descriptions, but I would later regard them both as true favorites.

Now I had completed Xenogears but the game didn't hit the same way as FF. I also finished the Vandal Heart series but #2 while a more truer rpg than the first, was exceptionally hard with chess like combat and hard secret alternative endings. Worth experiencing but not favorite material. I wished I had finished Wild Arms but I got stumped midway in a play through never to be finished. I had just about rented every other psx jrpg or later in life found other "ways & means" to play them all, every single one, why not? I could really go on and on but I feel sticking to the highlights are more important.

I can't leave the PSX era without commenting about my #1 true favorite games of all time, Suikoden I & II. Still to this day, they are far more important than perhaps anything I ever played, yes even Baldur's Gate or Fallout 1 & 2. Although a tough choice, its a personal matter for sure. I feel that Suikoden, Baldur's Gate and Fallout deserve more words than what I had already typed but its late and my post is already long enough. I didn't even discuss Breath of Fire or Star Ocean or the entire PS2 Era including the likes of Lunar Silver Star Story etc, not to mention many PC Games.

Btw my favorite games of all time Suikoden are getting a HD remaster on steam. There is also a spiritual successor and a lot of creative talent from Suikoden series is involved with making "Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes" after a successful kickstarter, also on steam. I feel there is more to be said perhaps I might have to return for a follow up post.

Played plenty of consoles going back to the earliest ones (I'm pretty old) but gaming doesn't start till you get a PC and I bought my first PC to play Everquest after having a bit of a go of it at my friends place.
What a game! Still have accounts, 2 life memberships, currently in limbo but they're there.

In 1974 I was introduced to table top DnD, that started an obsession that has never ended. In 1977 I sat down at my first computer, a main frame system call Plato and played a game called Bugs and Drugs that used the DnD format for educational purposes. I was hooked and never looked back.

My first tabletop game was DnD - second edition back in the days. My first character there was an elven ranger lady, so pretty standard and basic.
My first computer game was actually Baldurs Gate 1 and it got me hooked.

Well - that was basically Baldurs Gate. It came with a graphics card, I think ? Without addon, back then.

I didnt liked BG too much. The final battle for example, oh boy. I was so happy when I found out that you could win by just flooding the place with summons from wands. And indeed that did the trick. They later "fixed" this "bug". Also I wanted to play Bard, and boy turned that out to be a poor choice.


BG2 was the breakthrough though. The levels got higher and the magic system turned out to be a lot more complex and interesting. And trying to optimize my Sorcerer spelllist was such an interesting challenge. I think I must have played through BG2 as a sorcerer at least half a douzen times, total.

Ever since I tried to find another BG2, but it never occured. It still has an unique charm, a charm BG3 doesnt have, even if BG3 is a great game in its own right.


NWN2 for example was a boring game. I really hated how the races looked. Only humans looked tolerable. I didnt liked any of the party NPCs much either, they are boring. The "romance" you could get with that elven lady was literally ONE DIALOGUE. Compared to what you get with Aerie in BG2 (the only one I ever really romanced in BG2), thats just so bad. All in all I only played this game once, as a human Rogue(4)/Fighter(16) with Intelligence 14 and fully able to handle traps and locks. I took the Rogue levels just so I wouldnt have to party with that annoying Tiefling all. The. Friggin. Time.

My favorite piece of NWN2 was actually the second expansion Storm of Zehir. It contained interesting trade and crafting options. Ultimately I never played it more than once either though.


Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic had the good storywriting from Bioware, but nowhere near the depth. The game was in most places really easy and turned even more easy when I found the optimal build, with which even the final battle isnt much of a challenge. Still, thanks to the writing, I must have played this game like a douzen times or so in total.


Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines was probably my second favorite game after BG2, but its completely different. You play only one character, and its a vampire, and it plays in modern times. Still, it has awesome art, especially also the speakers, and it has four very different vampire clans to play (Malkavian, Nosferatu, Gangrel, Tremere), while the remaining three play sort of the same (Toreador, Brujah, Ventrue).


A really awful, but in some aspects great game was The Temple of Elemental Evil. It had the best combat I ever saw in any game. Really challenging, up to about character level five. After that it was less interesting. I hated this game in every other regard though. Like, the party NPCs you could pick up had gross stats and stole from you. Thats why I only played a five people party. You could have up to eight people in party, but only five of them selfmade. And the interface. How often did I want to move a character to a place and instead they started looting a character, losing the action. I didnt want to loot anything, I wanted them to be in the right position. Boy did I hate the poor interface. And the bugs of course. Yikes.


I never finished Planescape: Torment. Thats the one game that just had too much dialogue. I also didnt really liked I was forcefed a character.


After that there wasnt really going on much with roleplaying games for a very long time. And since thats my favorite kind of game, well, that was really bad. I did have some fun with No Man's Sky though. Even if thats not a roleplaying game.

By the way I tried Fallout but I really didnt like it. I was forced to do a dungeon and, well, I died. And that was that. I had trouble motivating me to play this in the first place, too, because I just find the whole setting so depressing.

I also tried Gothic and really hated it with a passion. The world was also depressing, you couldnt create your own character, the lore was horribly uninspired, stereotypical and boring, the class choices have been very limited, the first game IIRC had no women at all and the later parts would also not have great female characters, and finally of course bugs would be rampant. My least favorite roleplaying game of all times.

Hey that's very cool. It was exactly the same for me, except for that my elf ranger was male. It's why I still have a soft-spot for the ranger class.

8bit era: Maniac Mansion. Mostly playing arcade and sports games at that time: Still remember seeing that on a school friend's Commodore 64 and being all excited about a game with "real people" talking and walking around an actual place you could relate too... even chasing you... unfortunately, I had an Amstrad CPC at that time. (Actually still got a C64 after the disk drive went bust much later).


16bit era: Probably Ambermoon on Amiga. It's the first beefy RPG I spent a whole lotta time on. It wasn't merely an RPG to me. But a foreign world to escape to... helped by the map that's shipped with the game. It also had texture-mapped 3d dungeons you explored real-time in first person, which at that time was fairly novel still, in particular on Amiga computers (combat was a seperate mode switching to a 2d turn-based screen).

PC: Thief. As a recent retrospective on Looking Glass Studio's other cult classic, System Shock, had it: "We were trying to build the holodeck." You see, Looking Glass tried to bring the agency roleplayers had in a pen&paper session likewise to the screen, ever since their first game Ultima Underworld. Only that they did this by different means than copying pen&paper stats and to-hit rolls. Like systems interacting with one another, which can be manipulated (which BG3 actually has too, like the elemental combat systems, physics etc.)

True to LGS "holodeck" ideal however, Thief also sported a really minimalist UI and HUD too. Nothing was supposed to remind you that you were just playing a damn game. Thief has one mission dumping you into a series of crypts and caves and tombs, with barely anything to go by but a vague in-universe map at your hand (at one point, even the game's character just notes down a "WHERE AM I"? on it.) Then you suddenly HEAR the item you came looking for -- and can navigate the crypts by its 3D sound, which still holds up. In 1999, that looked (and sounded) like the future of gaming to me. Everybody's talking Virtual Reality these days. But LGS tried to do it back then. All with software.

Unfortunately, it never much evolved from there, as nobody's picked up Thief and completely RAN with its ideas -- it's not that this had ever been the perfect execution of those ideas, you know. And aside of visuals, things often times regressed. As so many first person games CONSTANTLY remind you that you're just playing a game with all their markers and intrusive UI and HUDS, tutorials, cramped corridor levels (or open world theme parks) etc. to the degree that even a three billion Dollar holodeck wouldn't save them.

(There was one exception. Which was Trespasser, a game based on Jurassic Park. Made by former Looking Glass staff such as eventual XBox designer Seamus Blackley, it took the whole VR idea a tad further -- a tad too far perhaps. The game had no HUD whatsoever and also lets you control the characters arm. And it also was overly ambituous, performed like poo even on the best machines and not much fun to actually play. But yeah).

I played D&D with friends back in middle school, but it didn't take at the time. (I ended up playing a decent amount years later with some friends using...3.5 I think), but the first video game that got me hooked on video games was Pong.

Yes, Pong. Just that little console you could attach to your TVs antenna that advertised itself as having "seven different games". Four of which were just pixel tennis and then the other three were "Breakout." For me, I think the initial draw was "ooooh.... TV you can interact with!" Because I was like 7.

We had the Atari 2600 afterwards, but those games didn't grab like Pong did. Just basically more of the same in slightly more complicated forms. I got more interested again when the Super NES came out, but really it's PC games that would make me what I would consider to be a gamer. There was an old game that came out in the 90's at some point.. The Journeyman Project. It was first person. You were a time agent and you traveled through a photorealistic (which was a big deal at the time) future solving a mystery. No combat, but it was the first time I really had the sense I was navigating a character through a virtual space, and felt not only engaged by the fun, but immersed in it.

Free to download demos of games from BBS systems like Wolfenstein, Duke Nuke'em, Doom, and Quake gave me a thirst for virtual blood.

And then Baldur's Gate came out, which I HATED at first. Hated. Wanted to throw the CDs across the room. A month later, I tried again with a fresh perspective, then I went out and bought a new monitor because it didn't look pretty enough on the old one. It is the only game I have ever played at a LAN party. Kicking ass with Minsc and Boo saw me through plenty dark winter nights. (and neverwinter ones, too.)

mhmm, for me the anwser is simple my father bought me an OG xbox and on there I played the first game that really pulled me into gaming, well two actually. Halo Co-op splitscreen with my brother and the first Fable.
Both of them hold a special place in my heart and made me get a good bond with my older brother. It kinda made us best friends in our childhood as we are only 1,5 years apart.

The game that started it for me was Star Fox 64, 20 years later and I still have my original cartridge! It was so amazing to play with aunt, she would play the hardest levels for me when I was little, then we would just take turns when I was older and had more ability.
She also used to play some games on the computer like World of Warcraft, and liked to collect dragon statues. Even though she didn't play D&D, she liked to bring me to this park where a lot of people would play it and we watched their adventures.
I only really started to get into RPGs when I played The World Ends With You (which is really different from other RPGs) in middle school. After that I started playing Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, etc., and fell in love with the genre.

Cool topic..
Well the first time i get to enjoy a Game was Tabletop the classic.. playing with my cousins
We used to travel the entire family toguether to a Place pretty far from the city.. like in the Middle of Nowere for real..
So we used to Play a Lot the Classics.. like Wheel of Life, War, bunch of Deck stuff too..
But i always looooooove to play the Table top man.
That stuff for me was like Freedom.
i could really do whenever the hell i want.. and my gm always eat my balls becouse of that.. fun times..haha lol

I get to Play first the Classic D&D but i play a Lot of Cyberpunk.. the classic tabletop..
So lets burn my way down the Rebel Path! lol
Hell Yeah Jhonny! lol

BTW since then i eat this stuff alive.. like some of yu may notice from the topics i make on BG3 forum..haha
im that kinda a Guy when i love something i really eat the stuff alive..
Did the Same with Witcher 3, RDR 2, BG 1, BG2, Doom the classic and remakes, man SOULSBORN BAYBE!
Yeah i play all of then.. till max lvl and start to just gank people online.. i even get to Met the Real Blood God in a pvp on Bloodborne..
Holly molly that battle was amazing.. made me cry.
Theres nothing better then to become a god in Souls Like..
That thing teach me to never gave up man.

Another Crazy game that made me love JRPG a lot were the Nocturne.. jesus..
That thing was amazing.
and i Deep Down on Persona Becouse of that..haha
But it all started back in a day when i was a Stupid Kid that love to Be a Thief in a Table Top! haha xD

When I was reading PCGamers as a kid, it came along with a disc full of demo games and one in particular just so happened to grab my attention called Thief - The Dark Project..

The idea of being able to sneak into places you are not suppose to be in without getting caught felt like the most exciting moment and being able to do so in a simulated virtual world safely but little did I expect that this was all 100% story driven and because the system was designed with a minimalistic approach rendered the game extremely immersible, you could literally feel the atmosphere of the game environment and cut it with a knife and this kept me hooked leading up to Thief - The Metal Age..

Then simultaneously the game blew up with hundreds upon hundreds of fan made mission packs while the company behind the core game went bankruptcy as odd as it may sound, they released the toolsets before bankruptcy which kept the community together and the game alive for over 20 years.

So goes the story for why I started to enjoy games by one simple reason, to explore the story the game has to tell through a beautifully executed narration and indulge into rules of that world, it also means that I was about close to move on from gaming entirely for lack of games by my standards, the last game I enjoyed for this reason was Red Dead Redemption 2 for example and by some true act of serendipity Baldurs Gate 3 caught my attention and doing so in perfect timing before it went full release on steam, I had no friends telling me about this.

Now I feel like that inner child in me has been rekindled and what it felt like back then, to have never even been aware of this whole dungeons and dragon type of games which might come as a surprise but now you know from where I am coming from.
Baldurs Gate 3 to me feels extremely immersible to a similar degree to how Thief - The Dark Project was, like a work of art brought alive and getting smitten by it.

Sorry, wasn't in here for a while. I moved on to bards pretty quickly, I just lova that class.

My favourite, very early crpg was and is Vampire teh Masquerade Bloodlines. It is very dark, but has some of the best characters I ever encountered in a game, some of them based on the ttrpg lore, like Beckett, others own creations like Gorgeous Gary Golden, Mitnick, Jeanette and Therese, Andrei and basically every other npc. The game is a flawed jewel, because it was released unfinished due to the studio going broke, but until today, a dedicated modder community is working on it.

As for ttrpgs, I play a lot this days. Still DnD, but also Cthulhu, Vampire, Liminal - today we will play The Expanse.

I wish I had a local TT group with whom to play. I miss that whole atmosphere and experience of gaming with a group of friends face-to-face.

I've tried playing remotely using such venues as Roll20 and Discord, but the problem there for me is my hearing impairment which makes following what people are saying very difficult.

I've avoided such genres as vampire games in RPGs because I find the mechanics of guns difficult to accept. It's not the guns per se; I have no problem at all with firearms. It's that I cannot suspend my disbelief with respect to how much damage a single gunshot would do to a person. Yes, the same can be said for fantasy weapons such as a huge club wielded by a giant. But I don't know. Somehow, I can handle suspending my disbelief with fantasy weapons, but not firearms (or energy weapons in sci-fi games).

I don't have a problem with that tbh. And VtMB is such a good game. And they've put into consideration, how much damage you can do to a more powerful being. There is even one being, you can't really hurt much as a new born vampire xxx you have to avoid that being.

As for ttrpgs:I play both remote and at a table and am ok with both. I prefer to play horror RPGs at a table in person because you can bring the atmosphere better across.

I think it is that with fantasy settings you have magic, and I can use magic as a catch-all excuse and explanation and justification for whatever happens in the game. But in other game settings you don't have magic (or anything equivalent), and so it becomes harder for me to accept certain things within those games. I know these are fiction-based games, but I still need quite a bit of realism to be able to accept the game. This is also why it is so very difficult for me to accept TB combat, because nowhere does combat happen in turns in reality.

I'm a big Lovecraft and horror fan, do for me, Call of Cthulhu is a great game. It has magic, but that comes with a price. Mostly your sanity. I love that tbh.
I also like Urban Fantasy settings like Liminal or Rivers of London, because I like the mixture of our world and fantasy a lot. I played Liminal two years ago the first time and it got me hooked.
I also like Sci-fi, because exploring the galaxy is fun. I played The Expanse this weekend and I just love the very different way to approach problems from say DnD or other high magic games.
I generally plays lot of very different ttrpgs, and found a lot of very different settings,I liked through the years. I would say, I can adapt to nearly everything nowadays and always find something, that gets me hooked. I'm more character and story driven.

Maybe I'll look into some of these, as I also am very strongly in the story-and-character-and-roleplay-rich box. Thanks!

kani: Sorry, was away, but those games are highly story and character driven. I really enjoy them.
There iskso a nice game called Koriyo, which uses DnD rule setting, but is based in Korean mythology, which gives it a very unique flair.

For me, it was definitely The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

My first big gaming love was definitely Baldur's Gate II, it blew my mind with its deep storytelling and complex characters. I was hooked on cRPGs from then on. Before that, I had a blast with Diablo II and its loot grind.

1980s, Space Invaders. That was my first PC game. Before, it was a very simple cannon shooting pixelated black and white game on a small tv. It then progrssed to : Madden, 1992 Dune by Cryo Interactive, 1993 Doom. Yes, the games were on floppy discs. They were initially very big before shrinking down to smaller squares. I started visualising what games would be like back then. I was thinking beautiful colours, characters would move realistically, a filled out game world, conversations.

What I dreamt of gradually came true through the years. The pinnacle of arena contests started with Unreal Tournament 1999 and ended with it because I could find no other MP like it in the years that follow. RTS started with Command and Conquer. Adventure games like The Longest Journey. My first RPG is Baldurs Gate 1. The first MMORPG is Asheron's Call, the last is Guild Wars 2.

I have very fond memories of Asheron's Call because the developers interacted with the players. Participating in story events in which they play the main antagonists of the story. It's fun, awesome and very funny because sometimes hiccups happened as in the case when Bael'zharon accidentally or seemingly killed Asheron. It wasn't in the script so the dev had to adlib and made a hasty exit, leaving the players wondering what had happened.

Not the first game I have played, but the one that got me playing a lot: Heroes of Might and Magic III. I still remember some of the factions and battles, even after all the years.

My very first game was 007 Goldeneye on the N64. I spent sooo much time playing that game haha The next game I can remember is playing COD with my half-brother on... PS1 or 2, I forget. Then Sims 3 on PC.

It was ages before I finally got me a PS4 and my first games were Life is Strange, Watch Dogs and GTA 5. I feel like I was born a gamer, to be honest. I just love games so much. Exploring new worlds, meeting cool characters and learning their stories... it's just so lovely to me. Not to mention getting to me everything under the sun! A villain, a hero, a merchant, a criminal... there's no limit to what you can be in games and I love it.

I used to play more or less D&D based computer games before the internet was even a thing. It's been so long, it's hard to remember. Names like Hero's Quest and King's Quest. One of those used to be on Mac, but I think we had an HP. Hubby was in IT & I'm sure he'd remember. I recall floppy disks, and accessing games through a command prompt. Very rudimentary gameplay, sort of like 8 bit D&D, if anyone even recalls that old video. Then I discovered BG1, and then Diablo, or it could have been the other way around. Then Diablo II, and the almost mmorpg experience of playing with strangers and online pals through Battle.net. My son bought the Seige of Dragonspear and BG2 expansion pack for my birthday, what seems like forever ago, and I played for a long time. No joy after that until Neverwinter Nights. I got very immersed in the Aurora Toolset; the game itself seemed like it was over in a minute, but the mod building went on forever. I ran a builders guild for a few years, burned out, and didn't play anything at all until BG3 came out, once again, a gift from my son. He gets his love of gaming from me. That's all I did with my spare time when he was young, and he's played everything under the sun even vaguely reminiscent of BG 1 & 2. I don't know that I'm proud of that role modeling, but at least he's a programmer, and doesn't live in my basement. Anymore.