Incline How did you first discover RPGs?

[Morkar Left]

RPG in general...
Back in the day when I was a 9 year old kid (late 80's), there was a collaboration between Games Workshop/Citadel and Milton Bradley (MB). MB used the general background and flavour of Warhammer Fantasy / Warhammer Quest and released the board game Hero Quest. At the time such a board game was amazing; it had a shit load of plastic minis instead of simple counters and furniture and stuff. The game was even promoted regularly (!) on TV commercials and available in every large general store. As a kid who saw movies like Willow, Conan or LotR (the cartoon) it made an amazing impression. I didn't know about Warhammer or Games Workshop or DnD. Such things weren't available in Germany, especially if you had no English skills whatsoever. Not much of an rpg but it was when I started to make up some new rules on my own to allow the chars to get better and keep equipment (like potions). I bought all upgrade packs as well (I think 3 of it and I had the Master Edition) and really liked the continouos story that unfolded.

Around the same time I got introduced to Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye / Realms of Arkania) pen and paper rpg. This was a hasty two-man introduction with me as a player and the other as the DM. The rules were all photocopied. It took only two hours (we had to went to sport) and only the basic rules but I was hooked. It was like Hero Quest except you could do ANYTHING you wanted! I shortly after copied the rules as well. I mostly played Hero Quest (and Star Quest) with friends at first because it was an easier concept to introduce people into. But I read all the background material and rules I could get my hands on (copy or buying with my pocket money) of DSA. For boardgamers rpgs were amazingly complex and the detail of the background information was unheard of. I slowly managed to acquire some gaming groups over the years and had lots of fun, much later on with other systems as well. I have to mention it took some years till pnp rpgs really took off in Germany besides DSA which was basically the German AD&D. AD&D was played here but never really had much of a chance. My first introdction to AD&D rules was in Baldur's Gate and I wasn't really impressed. Btw the second popular game system played was probably Vampire in the 90s followed by Shadowrun.

Around the same time in late 80's/early 90's I (or better my father) had an Amiga were I played a mix of games (all pirated copies with no manuals ofc). I mostly played strategy games (civ1 was my favourite) and most of the Amiga classics people know today (adventures were probably the most popular genre in Germany). I had Dungeon Master (boring), Bard's Tale (cooler but all the grind was really getting on my nerves) and probably some other rpgs I couldn't figure out because a lack of the manual. All in all I thought crpgs were not in the same league as pnp rpgs. I even preferred pnp solo adventures (DSA ofc) over crpgs. There was one exception: Starflight 2! It was awesome! Not much of an rpg (you maxed out really fast your chars and on planet you were always in your terrain vehicle) but you had a complete fully fledged freeform universe and you could and must talk to other species. Still one of the best gamers I ever played but I didn't consider it as an rpg at the time.

Might and Magic 4/5 were easy to understand and not as grindy as Bard's Tale. But my biggest impression and finally converting me to crpgs was Amberstar and ofc the RoA 1 and 2 which I got cheap. Those were probably the first crpgs I played were I could say these were real rpgs similar to the adventures we had in pnp. Great fun and extra awesome for the RoA games was that I already knew everyhing about the world and the rules system. I remember that even the tavern names of the towns from the first RoA game were fitting with the pnp descriptions (yeah, DSA is ridicously detailed). I could even use my pnp rule books for the game! The rules were a bit dumbed down (but not much and I think mostly because it was based on an older edition). Some other games like Planet's Edge etc. followed.

It was the time were I knew most rpgs from hearing because I had several regular computer magazines I bought. There were always articles about boradgames and pnp rpgs as well in the magazines and my first introductions to other systems than DSA happened there, mostly Battletech and Shadowrun.
It was in that time that I stumbled about an edition of the White Dwarf - Games Workshops' house magazin for their tabletop games. These dudes on the cover looked exactly like the Space Marines from Star Craft! Awesome! There was an after battle report about WH40K and it was the first time I learned that Hero Quest and Star Quest were based on these Games Workshop games. There was my new hobby. Soon I bought the WH40K rules (2nd Edition - which was awesome) and later on Warhammer Fantasy (I think 5th or 6th edition, the one introducing the Bretonians) and played that with friends as well. I still have that first White Dwarf magazin storaged away. Amazing in retrospect how much the GW deal with MB managed to ease me into the whole hobby and how much money they might have earned that way in the long run. It was at that time that I discovered that there were entire stores dedicated to rpgs and tabletop and comics... we even had two of these shops in our town!

Then the Amiga was gone and I later got a pc on my own. My father already had one but I mostly played WC2, Privateer (first full price game I bought) and X-Wing on it. In late 90's I got my own pc but had a break in gaming. In the early 2000 I remembered that there were crpgs and I wondered which amazing games were out there. With the new evolved wonder of the 21st century - tha intanet - I googled on my restricted access (probably google or rather Telekom search engine, maybe an hour a day with lots of offline reading, I don't know anymore) some recommendations. Surprisingly there weren't that much of it because I didn't know the genre died in between my absence.

The (German) recommendations were: Diablo, Gothic and Baldur's Gate. Allo over the german speaking internet always the same recommendations. I went on a shopping spree and got these three games. Diablo was in a Gold Games bundle together with Fallout 1, 2 and Might and Magic 6. Since Diablo was recommended the most I started with that. Not a bad game but considering it an rpg was a stretch for me. Gauntlet otr Moonstone weren't rpgs back in the day either. On to Gothic... Somehow a cool game but hardly an rpg, it was an action adventure (that's how Lara Croft games were called, Germans just loved adventures I guess). Maybe later if I'm in the mood. And then... no, not BG, crabbed the bundle and started to play - no not Fallout 1/2 either. I didn't try Fallout 1 or 2, that came way later after I discovered the rpgcodex, I was mostly interested in fantasy at the time. But Might and Magic 6! There I mostly knew what to expect and I had a lot of fun with it! After that I tried BG and that was the first game that truly felt like an evolution of the older rpgs with all the advancements I wanted to see. Still not perfect, but with such developments we will truly have amazing rpgs coming around in the following years! Well, not quite... After that I enjoyed Gothic more than I would have imagined, Morrowind as a blind buy surprise and later on a lot of classics I catched up on as well as other rpgs. I'm still missing out on the Goldbox games.

I never came back to Diablo.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

One the first PC games (and games in general) I played, back when I was 9, was The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Ence why I like Sandbox games and ARPG's so much.

 

[Nevill]

The same 3 stages Hamster went through.

When I was less than ten, I used to watch my older brother play without really understanding what he was doing. Some of them were RPGs or RPG/tactics, I can kind of remember Eye of Beholder, Daggerfall and Jagged Alliance.

Then later there was Diablo/Hellfire, - translated by pirates, of course, - and it was simple enough that I could play it and be pretty good at it. Then in 1998, after having played the game to hell and back (literally), I was passing by a computer game store selling pirated games for like $2. On a whim, I went in and started browsing cardboard CD covers (plastic boxes would be expensive!) with screenshots and descriptions. I noticed a game that had familiar isometric perspective (except I didn't know the word back then). Noticing my interest, the shopkeeper asked me what I was looking for, and I told him I want the game because it looked similar to Diablo. Couldn't be that different, right?

He gave me a looong stare and, seemingly struggling to choose words, said that I probably won't like it. But money is money, and so I went home clutching a new cardboard-wrapped CD in my pocket. Joke's on him, the game was Fallout 2. The Temple of Trials was pretty Diabolical!

It was the original copy, too, untouched by pirate translations (likely because they didn't make it to the middle-of-nowhere town in East Siberia yet). It was fun to play with my English limited by, like, 100 words. What does this stupid Klamath schmuck talking about moons and shines want from me? Is it a quest that can only be done at nighttime? But I persevered and even made it to Vault 13 before giving up and buying another game copy, this time a translated one. Internet? What's that?

Later yet there were M&M VII, Baldur's Gate 2 (which made me step up my game and learn the language) and Planescape: Torment along with dozens of smaller titles, but Diablo and Fallout 2 were undoubtedly the ones that formed my preferences for a long time.

 

[Wysardry]

I discovered CRPGs via text adventures and Fighting Fantasy games on my uncle's Commodore 64. The first CRPG I played was probably Wizard's Castle on the Sharp MZ-700.

I think the first PC RPG I tried was Moraff's World, but I also tried a few Sega Megadrive/Genesis games - such as Rings of Power and Warriors of the Eternal Sun - around the same time. A small group of us would take turns at using the controller, drawing maps and making notes. We spent the most time on Might and Magic I believe.

 

[Paul_cz]

I played pirated Fallout 1 after a friend brought it from somewhere. I was 10. Then local magazine level released czech translated version. Rest is history.

I played Diablo 1 before it but I do not count that as RPG. It is an action game with some light stats.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Betrayal at Krondor

 

[nobre]

Demo of Baldur's Gate 2 which I played A LOT. Still find the opening area quite fun.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Babbie's first RPG was Tunnels of Doom on the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A in 1985. It was a 3D blobber, with a top-down grid-based battle map. I was about 10 or 11; it put a real crimp in my school-work hobby.

A few months later, my neighborhood friend, had gotten the Mentzer Basic set of D&D, and we wasted all summer killing endless hordes of characters in endlessly stupid ways and it was awesome.

Tunnels of Doom was awesome, I had a TI-99 mostley because of this game. I was introduced to it by of all people my grandmother who would play it with me for hours when I would visit her in the summer. My Grandma loved Crpg's, she continued to play them into her mid 70's and played games like god box DnD CRPG's and eventually even baldurs gate.

I have found memories of going to her house in the summer and putting the cassette tape in the tape player and then going down stairs to make sandwhiches while the tape loaded Tunnels of Doom for about 15 minutes.

 

[Ramnozack]

I only really got into RPGs after I started playing WoW right before WOTLK came out when I was like 12 or something. I was broke because I was just a kid and didn't have a good computer growing up, hell I couldn't even play fucking Runescape HD without lag. Anyway one of my guildmates taught me how to pirate games, and told me to pirate Dragon Age: Origins (I fucking know) and so I did and ever since then I've loved RPGs, and have since played all the classics. Fallout, Arcanum, Baldurs Gate, etc.

I quit WoW after Catacylsm came out because at that point everyone in my guild thought the game was shit at that point and pretty much disbanded. Sad, because we were one of the only guilds on my server to beat Heroic Lich King 10 and 25 man. Those were good times, though looking back I wish I had never played that fucking game.

 

[Nutria]

The family 386 PC was in my bedroom. I woke up from a nap and noticed my dad quitting out of something. Suspiciously, I walked up and looked at the screen. What was C:\DARKLAND? It sounds like a game! What is this, dad?

 

[Nutria]

It was the original copy, too, untouched by pirate translations (likely because they didn't make it to the middle-of-nowhere town in East Siberia yet). It was fun to play with my English limited by, like, 100 words. What does this stupid Klamath schmuck talking about moons and shines want from me?

In real life, there are so many Russians in that part of our country. Maybe not in Klamath Falls, but along the coast and in Portland.

I've seen so much about bad translations in this thread. What exactly was the problem? Did they not know English well enough, or did they not know how to write it in your native language?

 

[Jrpgfan]

My first RPG IIRC was the first Shining Force when I was around 11 yo. Played it as a suggestion from my english teacher back then. Liked it so much that I played all the sequels(including the Saturn one). After that I really got into jRPGs and couldn't play anything else, although I only played the good ones(Earthbound, Brigandine, Tactics Ogre, Warsong, FFT... no DQ and FF vanilla crap).

Then I discovered Fallout and everything became shit.

Reminds me how I miss those days. My english teacher let us play adventures and rpgs on his PC after and sometimes even during his classes. I remember finishing Full Throttle there.

 

[Humanophage]

In real life, there are so many Russians in that part of our country. Maybe not in Klamath Falls, but along the coast and in Portland.

I've seen so much about bad translations in this thread. What exactly was the problem? Did they not know English well enough, or did they not know how to write it in your native language?

Translations in late 90s Russia were made in a hurry because the first pirate company able to produce one would have a major advantage selling the game. A decent translation of fiction is hard enough, and even something like Harry Potter presents significant problems. When you have a small illegal company of amateurs trying to produce something swiftly, you can imagine the result. Some of the text was inaccessible. Much of it was missing context, and even if the translator was doing it all manually, he was still barely familiar with what the game was about. Sometimes they would make jokes or ambiguous translations (e.g., a spell in BG1 sounded like Larlorch's Minor Blowjob). Any original wordplay or jokes will generally be missing. The quality of writing in Russian would be at the level of a forum post. Moreover, a sufficient knowledge of English and Russian is not enough for a good translation. Over time, they even started doing automated translations, which were barely comprehensible. Voice acting was stupidly amusing, as a rule, and often had silly effects. Needless to say, the translated versions added plenty of new bugs to what was already a badly hacked game.

Fan-made translations were often a bit better, since at least they knew the context and had enough to time to polish the text, so often a particular version of a pirated game would become popular because it is a good translation (and bug-free). However, when buying a game, you had no idea if it really was a fan-made translation or a mere marketing ploy, and the only way to know was by word of mouth.

Official translations usually came with a delay of over a year, and were often unimpressive as well. E.g., Gothic II was released in English 8 months after its original publication, which is long enough, but it took them 25 months to produce the first official Russian translation.

 

[anvi]

I read about Elder Skyrim on IGN and bort it and it wos the awesomest game since CoD and now im hardcore at RPG games.

 

[laclongquan]

Cousing lend me a copy of Diablo 1 circa 1997, not so far from there I bought a game magazine with a Baldur's Gate demo on a CD. It think that was it, I was little kid then.

How the hell does dawcio rate a Sailor Moon in lingerie avatar?

 

[Nevill]

I've seen so much about bad translations in this thread. What exactly was the problem? Did they not know English well enough, or did they not know how to write it in your native language?

I think a part of the answer may lie in a file that can be found on a Fallout disk pirated by Fargus, the best studio from the 90s that later went legal (they are now peddling their translations on GOG). 'The best' does not necessarily mean 'good', it means the rest were worse.

Spoiler

Essay on animal nature of an English-Russian translator
*** only for inside reading ***

A man took upon himself to translate 2.5Mb of game text in 3-4 weeks. That's a huge workload, so he claimed he outsourced a significant chunk of text to two more acquaintances of his promising them a cut of the profits. It has to be mentioned that this was far from his first rodeo, and he knew full well what he was signing up for.

Three weeks of peppy progress reports later, a revision was made which established the real state of the project. A measly 150k, which amounts to about 6% of the total text volume. Quite a strange result for three hard working men, to put it mildly. The translator couldn't articulate what exactly has happened there, but acknowledged his faults and swore that the rest of the text was nearly done and will be coming soon.

It soon became clear that what we've seen was all that was done, since the text continued to trickle by in small doses in a few days that followed.

One and a half months in, the situation got critical - the translator stopped giving a shit and only brought us what his acquaintances had translated, and rarely at that. Overall, we only got 650k of text or so. No amount of persuasion, promises or threats could get through to him. He kept repeating that he was working on the translation with the sweat of his brow while at the same time compiling some 100-on-1 CD game collection for some company or other, which naturally didn't leave him time for much else.

For everything I went through because of him, I just want to say this:

THIS FUCKER'S NAME IS YAROSLAV!!!

I can only hope that our common acquaintances won't trust him with any more urgent work and won't have to feel the same way as I did.

The rest of the text had to be hastily translated by a few volunteers who came to our help in this dark hour. If not for them, the game wouldn't have seen the light of day. A huge thank you to you guys! The headline does not refer to you in the slightest, and neither does it refer to any translators I don't know.

I think Yaroslav got a country-wide fame among the gamers. In a time when there was no Internet, that was no small feat.

The problem was lack of qualifications, lack of motivation, and not in the least, a lack of demand for better translations. A lot of people were starving for games no matter the quality. You can play Starcraft regardless of whether you can understand the plot. Why bother putting in extra work when you can throw a half-assed translation and having it sell just as well, if not better, because it's the first one available.

The situation didn't necessarily improve after game piracy got outlawed in the 2000s. If anything, it eliminated competition, and left whatever translation the local publisher decided to pay for without an alternative. Not that the alternative was much better, but at least it provided some impetus for a better quality. Right now we can still get translations that are nigh incomprehensible and at times manage to look worse than if they were made by Prompt (I am not exaggerating, it happens). Even among AAA titles. Outsourcing work to students who might not even see the context of what they are translating (you are given a file with a character's replies, the other half of the conversation may be in another file, and you have no way to tell where it is) could do that.

There are, of course, objective reasons for lackluster translations. RPGs, for example, are hard to get right, with multiple dialogue choices that have to still make sense regardless of what was chosen (sometimes connections between the phrases get lost even if each phrase is technically correct). We have different verbs and adjectives depending on the gender of the person (Fallout 2 localization had to expand half the scripts to account for female characters - but that's one of the best localizations with absolutely huge amount of work and attention to detail from a person who loves the game - and even then some fans are trashing them for the few mistakes they overlooked. It also makes Russian version incompatible with a lot of mods and patches). We have different sentence structure and length, which makes lipsync and gesticulation a nightmare. And then we have creative people who think they know better than the authors and can improve on the original. More often than not, it's a case of Dunning–Kruger effect.

But the biggest problem is the low number of people who could compare a translation to the original and tell the difference. As long as the quality satisfies most gamers, we are unlikely to see the standarts improved.

 

[Vorark]

Sometime around the early '00s I stumbled upon the emulation scene and many people were praising a game called Chrono Trigger, so I checked it out. Fast forward many years later, after a couple of botched attemps at getting into the fabled "western RPGs", I bought Fallout New Vegas during a Steam sale and eventually enjoyed it very much. Then I decided to brave the waters and play the original Fallout, since I wanted to know more about the NCR, BoS, ghouls, super mutants etc.

The saying usually goes "curiosity killed the cat" but in my case it led me to a small treasure trove.

 

[Roscoe Scaggs]

Same here! Born a console peasant, immigrated to PCs later.

Put me down also as starting with Dragon Warrior (and Final Fantasy).

6 years later, I get my first PC and play Star Control 2, and Ultima 7. Then finally with fallout 1, I went full CRPG and never looked back.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Same here! Born a console peasant, immigrated to PCs later.

Put me down also as staring with Dragon Warrior (and Final Fantasy).

6 years later, I get my first PC and play Star Control 2, and Ultima 7. Then finally with fallout 1, I went full CRPG and never looked back.

I owned the terrible SNES port of Ultima 7. It was pretty bad, so I couldn't understand why the game had such a good reputation. When I finally played the PC version, I felt retroactively violated!

 

[Nutria]

Translations were made in a hurry because the first pirate company able to produce one will have a major advantage

I see. We have the same problem with fan translations of foreign TV shows. Most people want to see them 2 days after they come out and don't care if there's spelling errors, grammar errors, or it just doesn't make any damn sense.

As long as the quality satisfies most gamers, we are unlikely to see the standarts improved.

I hear you. Consumers will get they want, and most consumers are perfectly happy with crap.

 

[YES!]

When I was five I walked in on my parents rpging. I asked if I could join in and they accepted. But I was not able to become erect at that age.

 

[Danikas]

Played Gothic 1 on release as a 9 year old kid, best game ever.

 

[Luckmann]

... I walked in on my parents ... I asked if I could join in ... I was not able to become erect at that age.

Roqua: The Origin Story.

 

[Stavrophore]

Started with tactical tabletop games -my first one was Talisman the magical quest, then with Heroes of Might and Magic[not the blobber rpg but the classic turn based tactical combat game]. From tactical turn based games i went to the more stat oriented games, albeit with turn based characters. I still like to play rwtp RPGs but the experience is mostly not as good as turn based. I yearn for a rwtp RPG that will have combat as good as turn based -with great fluidity and situational clearness.

 

[JarlFrank]

Funny thing about JRPGs is, I never played any of those back in the day because I never had a console, only a PC.

The RPGs I played as a teen were very varied in their subgenres, so much that they feel almost like entirely different genres:
- Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale 2
- Arcanum and Fallout
- Morrowind and Gothic 2
- Might and Magic 4, 5, 6, 7; Wizardry 8
- Deus Ex
- Diablo, Diablo 2, Sacred

All of these are vastly different, yet they can all be called RPGs to some extent.

When I first played a JRPG, Chrono Trigger in 2017, I enjoyed it but I couldn't help but feel that it's not an RPG. It's more of an adventure game with combat.
It's weird how insanely different JRPGs are from the real RPGs we play here in the west. Must be incredible to grow up with Final Fantasies only, and then discover what real RPGs are like when you're older.