Gaming In The 90s

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>>51263756
There wasn't an Internet, so your choices for systems were "what your local store(s) stocks, and the stuff that had enough of a budget to advertise in the TSR and GW magazines".

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Much like buying mail-order comics in the '90s, you were kind of shooting blind because unless you read about it somewhere else or knew someone who could tell you about it, there was no way to know if you would like something until you bought it.

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There were also several play-by-mail games that had started in the '80s (or earlier) and were still chugging along, with paid GMs who doubled as pen-pals.

You think PbP games are slow-paced...

>>51265455
>Fallen Empires 10% off

I remember my local store still had unopened Fallen Empires and Homelands boosters well into 2002/2003, I even bought a couple for laughs.

>>51265707
I don't into MtG, what's wrong with it

>>51265738
No money cards, tons of filler, overprinted to hell. A lot of the cards in Homelands had kinda bad art too.

>>51265738
Prior to Fallen Empires, demand for MTG was so high that stores were ordering 100 boxes and getting 20, because WOTC could literally not print cards fast enough.

WOTC developed the new set, which was low power and introduced the idea of 4 arts per card game, and also fixed their printing issues.

Game stores had "learned" and ordered 400 boxes.

Game stores got 400 boxes. Of a low-power set.

>>51265773
>>51265807
That's some funny shit.

Reminds me of the ending of the Dealers webcomic.

90's...90's, let me see...

I ran two Vampire games for about a year and a half. The party was not your typical mopey, goth, edgelord vampires...but more like D&D murderhobos with pointy teeth. The campaigns were great fun.

I also ran a Cyberpunk 2020 game, following it with a Gybergeneration game. The latter proved much more popular and longer lived. There's something about being a bunch of teenage rabblerousers with cybernetic superpowers fighting "The Man".

There was also a fantasy game using BTRC's old Warpworld system in a homebrew setting. It lasted about 6 months because the players wanted to try out another BTRC game called Timelords.

The Timelords campaign was certainly a favorite of the group. The time-travelling shenanigans are still reminisced about today.

It was a really good gaming group that sadly fell out of gaming as responsibilities with jobs, wives, and kids took up our time.

We still get together now and again to play boardgames and we still quote memorable things from those games.

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I have hazy memories of buying pogs in the super awesome hobby shop we had in Livermore. A few guys I knew were into DnD and Magic the Gathering but never sought to include me. I had quite a few people ask me if I played magic only to lose interest in talking to me when I said no. I'm a bit sore about that looking back since I'm now quite into it and have a huge collection. I would have rather picked it up in 96 than 2012. Over all, I grew up in a christian household and wasn't allowed to have fun.

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>>51263756
fuck, i'll bite.

90's, and i was a teenager.

--early 90's started with off kilter historical wargames, really simple stuff i played with my Great Uncle and His Bud, while my Grampaw dismissed it as bunk. this is 90-92 the Bud owned all the figs, but he inspired me to buy a box of tamiya Japanese, a box of Tamiya USMC, and a P-40 with saved up allowance / scrounging money. my hippie mom was pissed.

and i have loved historical wargames ever since

i looked at FASA and Amarillo for a bit, but only ever got their free mail catalogue (not the thick one, the 4 fold POS)

-- 95-97. i found what DnD was, and i was playing in shitty little campaigns while learning about MtG. in 97, a lot of the not-so-alpha gamers realized i had a great knack for story telling. i began to GM. and i was 'always' the GM after that....

--Legend of the Five Rings. fuck MtG, i get a weeaboo magic samurai game where each game is a shenanigany political build up to AN EPIC ALL-STAKES BATTLE? YES!!! (at least that was how 1st run L5R played. hell yes.) i got in at Shadowlands, never looked back

got pissed at times, but never looked back.

--97-98. Werewolf the Apocalypse: i was into GWAR at the time, and as GM i played the Wyrm. hell fucking yes, it was 3 hours a weeknight of slaughter, rape, and metal.
I had some lower key friends who played in a custom homebrew fantasy game of RPG. it was stoner teenage intellectual fantasy with swordfights, in the 90's

i also bought and painted a Fabius Bile and a pair of Swooping Hawk Blisters. i'm not good at planning armies...

Did a little Middle Earth card gaming..,.i just liked the Angus McBride art...

--98-99.....

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>>51267969

so, one last tack-on:

--98-99: a few things: i stretched out into more WoD games, and i got my own job, so i could buy the shitty new L5R stuff. i really liked the 1st cycle, the new stuff wasn't really it...

Mage was a Mindfuck to a 19 year old with an imagination

Clan Wars: i played what i could, though i later got into WHFB as 2000 approached. i won a few games. i actually miss fantasy games where 50 dudes constituted an army. this carried on past the 90's, those two games....

bought my 1st hex map and a pewter D7 cruiser...i felt good....


then 2000+ came along

though i have a few good things about 2000-2002, i can easily say i miss the 90's. thanks for asking!

>>51267335

you were the kind of guy i would invite to my RPG's

i collected uncool kids who wanted to game. at High School's end, i had an alliance of 10 guys, all hard up to game!

Oldfag here. Worked in a toy and game store chain (now dead) so we had to have some social skills since we dealt with parents. This eliminated the social failure game shop employee problem. Actually resulted in decent customers. You had to be civil in your FLGS because there wasn't much of a choice for getting stuff otherwise.

The Vampire LARP came out while I worked there. The staff were curious as all fuck about it, but we couldn't open in for policy reasons (trust me on this, it was worth the hassle to avoid bigger hassles).

Finally a local group of proto-goth nerds bought it and started up The Camarilla. Good times. Too early for the flood of no-social-skills-players and the groups were small enough that one or two GMs could handle it.

WoD was the big thing back then. I think it was mostly because Vampires were the big thing then. Bram Stoker's Dracula was a hit, Anne Rice was on the rise and along comes a vampire game that's more social than action based. Got people thinking.

Games themselves were improving. Many were on their 2nd edition and had started working out the kinks. D20 and OGL were not yet a thing so the diversity of systems was wide, but not bloated like the 80's.

The Satanic Panic was over, but people remembered it and laughed. Computers were common, but not with the connectivity now. Celphones were on the rise, but not in everyone's hands so blowing off a game at the last minute happened less. Partly because it was harder to call and cancel and partly because bosses couldn't drag you into something once you left work and normie friends couldn't call with other stuff to do while you were on the way home.

Games were mostly played with people you know, or friends of friends, so very few random dickheads joining games. Someone had to invite them and clear them with the GM first, so there was a better chance of compatabilty in the group.

Oh yeah. Magazines. Published monthly that you paid for or borrowed (or stole, none of this "should be free" bullshit). Many by the game publishers (Dragon, Dungeon, White Wolf, White Dwarf) but they would have stuff for games they didn't publish themselves. Letters pages, editorials, fiction. Good stuff. Gave you a chance to interact with the publishers, but you couldn't spam them with shit. Every letter required a stamp. Stamps cost money and letters take time to arrive.

A few people got picked up to write for games companies based on conversations via letter to the editor. Got respect for insight, started actually exchanging letters, submitting articles, and then published and paid.

Wasn't all green fields though. TSR was going full corporate whore, Nigel Findley died (age 35), GDW shut down (big in the 80's).