How did you start wargaming and when was it the most fun?

[Mr Mystery]

Though I would say Promethean is best run with an experienced group of players, ideally long term players of WoD, which is arguably a downside.

[YorkNecromancer]

Though I would say Promethean is best run with an experienced group of players, ideally long term players of WoD, which is arguably a downside.

Absolutely agree with all points.

Of course, when you have that group and run a game? Magical.

[Mr Mystery]

Indeed.

Especially when even the least mature of the group figures out that not having a moral compass can be a real pain in the bum, let alone a massive liability!

Sadly I never finished the story I ran. Getting my group to commit to regular games is a lot like herding cats. Cats with no sense of direction whatsoever.

[Mr Mystery]

Oh, and notably, Promethean is one of the few roleplay games I've found where you can actually win. Every character has a set end goal - achieve mortality.

Compare that to 'get as 'ard as you can until something 'arder squishes you' and you get a refreshing change in dynamic. That it actively encourages cooperation is fantastic, as all too often my group have a single antagonistic player out only for themselves. There's even an example of how that should be handled, with the remaining Promethean tearing his former compatriot apart as soon as they achieved mortality.

It's just glorious, glorious stuff.

I really need to get those books again!

[Denzark]

I was on a school trip to France - about 89/90. Having finished all the comics and books that were being passed around, my mate lent me something I had never heard of before - White Dwarf. I was 10. This was WD126 - which contained epic Knights, some Space Hulk stuff - and the full set of rules for Ork Madboyz. From there I was hooked, Space Crusade followed, then Roguer Trader, and many miles and several thousands of pounds later...

When was it most fun? Such a difficult question for me. The only time it wasn't fun was the initial change from 2nd to 3rd Editions - which coincided with the usual 'I'm at Uni I'm too busy drinking and cavorting to do this'. So luckily I missed that - 4th into 5th were good times I think.

[Captain Bubonicus]

Got into wargaming with cardboard Chiclet wargames in the 80's, caught the miniatures bug from historic miniatures gaming and found 40K with Rogue Trader - my favorite 40K era was second ed.

[CCS]

My first minis games would have to be my brother & I playing in the basement with dads old plastic figures: Army men, Alamo Texans/Mexicans, Cowboys/Indians, & Revolutionary War Americans/British back in the late 70s-early 80s.

We'd divide up the forces, tin buildings, walls, etc.
We'd roll a pair of dice to see who went 1st. It went MOVE, SHOOT, FIGHT.
Movement: Was 1d6 for infantry, 2d6 for mounted figures (mostly cowboys), & 2d6 for the plastic tanks. We didn't have any planes.
Shooting: Roll d6 On 4+ you got to throw a lead fishing weight at something of the other guys force! Then do it again. Your shooting ended when you rolled less than a 4. Anything you knocked over might be destroyed/killed.
Fighting: Any figure that was touching an enemy fought in hand-to-hand. Each player rolled 1d6. Lowest knocked his guy over.

Then the other guy repeated this process.

Then anything that had been knocked over in either players turn rolled to see if it survived. 1d6: 4+ it survived & was stood back up.

Victory conditions varied game to game. Many random extra rules were tried.


THAT was the most fun I've ever had miniature wargaming. Lots of fun since, don't get me wrong. But nothing has ever truly topped being 11 years old & throwing lead fishing weights at the other guys toys....


As for how I came to real/GW miniature gaming?
Flash forward a few years to '88 & college. I'm visiting a friend & we're attending a local gaming con his university hosted. Our main focus was D&D. But I find some tediously slow & boring model airplane game being played. Looked cool, but was WAY too slow paced.
I also find this BEUTIFUL American Civil War minis game. Ranks of troops, cannon, cav, even supply trains. And the terrain was fantastically modeled. So I get in on the next game.
It turns out to be nearly as slow paced as that plane game. Worse the other players were just **&^%s. And they expected the game to follow the same path tactically that the real battle had. (but I know how that turned out, so why wouldn't I outflank you here & there, & see how that affects the battle??) It was a long 3 hour game.

Meanwhile, on a large table across the aisle..... There's a bunch of people actively having a blast shooting the crap out of each other using giant robots.
Checking that out I discovered Battle-Tech! My buddy & I played in the next B-Tech game. This is awesome. And definitely something the gaming group back home will enjoy.
Wich once home, led me to searching for a hobby shop that carried it.
The shop I found then introduced me to WHFB (3rd ed). And eventually 40k 2nd ed. And other GW games. All of wich led me further down the rabbit hole to other miniature wargames of every genre/company.

[thrawn404]

this confuses me to no end.

why is it so bad to have points and balanced games with structure? if your a painter and collector you don't care for it anyways and will throw out the rules. if you play for fun it'll make your games even more fun because it'll be balanced and fair, you can use the models you want and not just the "good" ones. and if you play semi-competitively or tournament competitively then even better, you have a balanced/structured game you can play. GW's competitores get it, they make great models, with great stories and make a balanced and competitive rules set, everyone is happy, all customers got what they want.

why are you eliminating customers for absolutely no reason at all?

if GW AoS's 40K I'm going to say, with a great deal of confidence, that will be the end of GW.

When AoS was released here in Ontario is devasted the Warhammer community. they three local hobby stores i go to have told me they haven't sold anything AoS and if they could would not even carry it. all tournaments, events, communities, every, GONE. terrible.

[Andrew Thomas]

Ummm....

I may own everything White Wolf ever published (with the exception of most Mage and Werewolf books because I never much cared for either of those two games).

And yes, that includes the 20th anniversary stuff. Which is F**KING GLORIOUS, I might add.

I may also own twenty odd kilograms of V:TES cards.

...

Yeah, around 1994, I got off the addiction of 40K and straight onto the addiction of White Wolf. And I have to say, the new game-line stuff's been pretty good; especially the new Demon rules. It's really just a WoD adaption of 'Kult', which is honestly all I wanted a WoD Demon game to be. I don't care much for their story modules, which are always a bit... crap. But the 'world-building' manuals are great: rules lite, background heavy, as all my preferred RPGs are.

And don't knock the NWoD. It's brilliant, because it's pure inclusion: everything OWoD can be fitted neatly inside NWoD with very little effort. I know a lot of people disliked it because it dropped the metaplot, but honestly, I was okay with that. The OWoD has the most wonderful atmosphere, but the metaplot had just gotten too convoluted; too many authors with too many disparate visions of where they saw the world going... Although the answer was 'always in the direction of my favourite supernatural species'.

No to mention, NWoD brought us 'Changeling: The Lost', which is utterly incredible, and 'Promethean: The Created', which, for my money, is the greatest game they ever did.

Sorry, yeah, this post was a little longer than I planned it on being... Sorry everyone, go about your business.

Paying any attention to the newer stuff? Loving the newer lines after CCP sold to Paradox.

Also love that they're moving away from defaulting to the bad guys winning.

[Andrew Thomas]

I got rooked into it. Gw's business model at the time (2002) worked on me to a point (i.e.: sell the starters and the game lines sell themselves), so a couple of gift purchases later and I'm playing at the store. And then it closed.