Dungeons & Dragons - godzilla in my gaming lexicon. I was a trad AD&D DM, then leaned hard into Planescape then after hiatus came back as a follower of the OSR, even if most often the players were looking to run 5e characters. I got the 'run a good session' down way back on the first time around, but more recently I've gotten a grip on what it takes to get a campaign to run and how to run open tables.
I've gotten decades of good gaming, it broke me into new circles of friends in three different cities.
I bought in heavily two three editions so far - AD&D/Planescape, 3.5e and 5e. Alongside that I have ramped sideways to OSR content - zines like A Thousand Thousand Islands, Through Ultans Door and NOD Magazine, books like Stygian Library, Veins of the Earth and Petty Gods and the endless font of creativity that is the OSR blogosphere. Ultimately this is me very belatedly buying into my old Black Box I guess? That was a whole other realm of 'important' to my own personal gaming journey but all under "getting more out of D&D".
World of Darkness - one I have largely put down but I was once a big WoD player and fan. One of the earliest campaigns I played in was a crossover Werewolf/Vampire/Mage game which we got tons of fun out of. I understood very little of the implications of the setting at that point, ridiculous things were done but it was a blast. In college I played a Sabbat 1920s game that was a rollercoaster of chaos; tons more fun. There was also a Kindred of the East game where we got TPK'ed which was great just for the beautiful instance of a bunch of gwáilóu running into the unknown hard and getting shredded. There were some other legendary WoD games happening among the folk I played with, it was *the thing* at the time.
The huge setting lore, advancing with each new splat book was novel at the time and multiple long-haul train journeys was spent with a fellow gamer discussing The Implications as they landed. The singular, strongly rendered setting was energising, at the time it was *the* hotness. This is one I have almost completely left behind without much interest in going back to - very much a time and a place. I could only see a return for a 'long-haul' multi-century campaign or a brief stop in as a red-team player (essentially a systemless role). It was great then, chucking double-fistfuls of attack and soak dice on the table, but it does not call me back.
The League - bottled lightning - the kids these days would call it a forum LARP - it had an Over/Under-esque impact on our games group, with significant consipring, discussions, fiction writing, scheming and conspiracy theorising. I am so glad Over/Under was the huge obvious success it was because now there is a highly visible example that I can point to and go 'that, it was like that, but for us, back then'. The world that unfolded drove months of gameplay, fiction writing, and forum discussions.
The world it ignited in my mind has stuck there for decades, if I could ever pull off one such similar game to give others the same experience, I would consider my gaming career well spent.
Turning to the bonus questions from Sam Seer:
* What was your process for making your three choices?
Games that got me where I am today; I've held myself to games that I put significant time in at table; other that existed more conceptually or solo, see below. Those that made the grade were the games were I put in the hundreds of hours during my gaming apprenticeship that shaped how I game.
* Looking back over your three picks, do you see a connection between them?
As above - what I put the most hours on across formative years. The common factor with D&D and WoD is the relative main-stream-ness of them; different mechanics but we ran them in similar styles with different settings. The DM had an adventure in mind, the truth was revealed through players being clever or making good rolls with character abilities, combat was typical. I developed a preference for high-trust gaming, or playing with others who also ran games because they too know the struggle and are less likely to deliberately derail your game.
* Did you have any honorable mentions?
Lots here; things that mostly served as fodder for the types of D&D I like to run today.
Spelljammer - this was the setting that actually had me staring at the tiny pictures in the brochure - the pirates fighting on open decks beneath the stars - going 'how do I get this to table' though it was not until post-pandemic that I was actually able to run a Spelljammer campaign and then in 5e.
Fall from Heaven II - a fantasy mod for 4X game Civilization IV; actually built to bring the creators D&D campaign into being as a playable mod. I put many, many hours on this over most of my fallow TTRPG period including times where I was working and living very remotely indeed. The emergent narratives that sprang from unlikely remixes of the basic fantasy archetypes, terrains, religions and who ended up next too who were fascinating. A masterclass in geography driving destiny.
Magic: The Gathering - for the windows on worlds, particularly Mirage, that were incredibly inspiring. The first few decades of Magic were masterclasses in show-don't-tell worldbuilding; with card art and maybe a sentence or two of flavour text conveying a whole world. If they had dropped a 'Spelljammer: Skyship Weatherlight' module I would have been all over it - it was the 'Voyages of the Princess Ark' for the late 90s generation.
Heroquest - foundational dungeon crawler - treasures, lethal combat, claustrophobic tangles of spaces, the running against the clock of monsters closing in on you, great stuff. Also provided a hook out to Games Workshop which was the slippery slope to White Dwarf magazine, thence to Dragon and onwards to Dungeons and Dragons itself.
Rogue Trader ('87) - the classic 'important game I rarely played' - with the meaty book of skirmish combat wargaming - but it had a bestiary, equipment lists, fat wedges of lore, amazing art - this was a hugely inspiring sci-fi universe to encounter. I deflected away towards Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine (6mm) for yet more windows on the setting but when Dark Heresy finally dropped I snapped it up. After a few years slogging around in the OSR I finally came to the realisation that Rogue Trader could function fairly well as an RPG system - high lethality, sure but so are many others.
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