Earliest games I ever played…well, there were probably a couple on the Dragon, a computer we had that I can barely remember (apparently there was one before that called the TRS-80, but I don't remember that at all), later followed by the Atari (late '80s) which I do remember, and played many many games on, and in fact still have in my room although I haven't done anything with it for several years. Since I now have the Atari emulator STEEM on my computer that's probably not likely to change either, since I can instantly download pretty much any Atari game I want, whenever I want :D. When it comes to computer games I tend to like Fantasy-based RPGs (preferably first-person, because immersion), and also like some puzzle games (anyone else who likes them and hasn't yet played the Portal games, omg what are you waiting for?) and stuff.
Board game-wise I played mostly stuff like Monopoly, Cluedo, Scrabble, Careers, erm…what else did we play a lot…oh yeah, I also had (and still have, in my cupboard) the board games of the Crystal Maze (which I loved watching on telly), Knightmare (which I also loved watching on telly…and was a member of the fan club for a while, I recall), and a pirate-based one called Skull and Crossbones which came with a video but we only used that a couple of times and generally played without it.
When it comes to tabletop RPGs I'd heard of them for years…well, I'd mainly only heard of DnD, and played variants of it on the computer in the form of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and later Neverwinter Nights…but didn't get round to playing any till…hmm, I think it was probably late 2008 but I can't remember for sure. One of the forums I'm a member of (in fact, the one I've been a member of the longest, since March 2003) is dedicated to an RPG that came out in 1987 on the Atari and Amiga, called Dungeon Master. So it's the Dungeon Master forum. And a new member joined and made a post about how they'd had some experience at being a Dungeon Master and asking for advice on running games or something like that - they'd mistaken the DM in the forum's title for the other kind of DM, so some forum members posted to say hi and to point out the mistake but to say they were free to stick around and talk games with us anyway (this has happened a few more times in the past few years). That person never came back but the thread spawned a discussion amongst the rest of us about tabletop games and how I'd never played 'em 'cause I didn't know of anyone in my area who played. Ended up with someone linking a page they'd found which searches for gaming clubs in the UK, and from there I found one that was a couple of miles away and met two nights a week in the evenings, so I started going to that.
That was where I first played DnD, but was alos introduced to a bunch of other tabletop games, including all four Warhammer 40k RPGs (Dark Heresy, then Rogue Trader, then some time later Deathwatch came out, and finally Black Crusade), Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (aka WFRP), Nobilis, World of Darkness,Traveller, Legend of the Five Rings, the Deadlands setting of Savage Worlds, and a bunch of others I've forgotten. Some people sometimes brought in card games and I can remember being introduced to Braggart, Ascension, and Chrononauts there, all three of which Ja'Ph' ended up getting for us to play (I'd told him about them as he wasn't there, in fact we may not have even been together quite yet) a few months or so later.
And Sentinels - someone at that club brought Sentinels, the original edition (pre-Enhanced), and Rook City, which was all that was available at that time. I found it fun, played the Wraith every time (because I thought her name was cool and I tend to like sneaky, Rogue-looking characters…so basically made my decision based on looking at her character card), and then the guy said that if anyone wanted to get it we should wait because they were gonna release an updated version in October, or something. So some months later (I think I'd stopped going to the club by this point) I remembered this and at some point I looked online (on a website called Games Lore, which sells RPG stuff) and found that not only was the Enhanced Edition of Sentinels out, but that there was another expansion in addition to the Rook City one I'd already seen, this one called Infernal Relics. Rook City was out of stock but I ordered the rest, getting Rook City when it came into stock about a month or so later. And we played Sentinels every weekend, multiple times, for well over a year. And at some point joined the forum, and hello :D.
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