How?

[Malifaxis]

How did you guys learn to kick so much ass?

What roleplaying roots did each of you have, I simply have to know...

[Dakurus]

Armageddon mud sends us to training at least twice a year, plus the required conventions and vocal tutoring.

I was raised by goblins myself, who encouraged role playing games over church. Then there was that whole second and third life, plus the starring role in the musical, 'Annie'.

[Nusku]

I'm a complete geek, albeit not the socially inept variety.

Roots: Got started playing D&D at 11. Played through many of my dad's Infocom games (Zork I, II, III, Sorcerer, Enchanter, etc). Did many other stereotypical geeky things, including, but not limited to: attending roleplaying conventions, running tabletop campaigns, attending the Ren Fest, playing Bard's Tale, owning an Apple II GS, writing a mud core in LISP in high school, playing Magic: The Gathering, and so on and so forth.

[ashyom]

Roleplaying?  You mean this isn't real?

[Naiona]

Someone said we'd be given cookies.

I wanted to go to the convention but they cut back the training funding in the 'bitches that eat brainz' department and all we get is a weekend excursion to the local senior center, where for practice we walk around in doctor's costumes, look at medical charts and stare in horror at the hapless patients before walking away mumbling without having explained a thing.

[Halaster]

I was born this way.









In all seriousness, my story's about the same as Nusku's.  Played AD&D and crap like that as a kid and a teenager.  Went to college, found out about Arm, and started playing it.  I even played a LARP for a little while.  But, truth be told, all my good roleplaying experience has been Armageddon.  AD&D was usually the stupid, geeky Mothy Haul style play.

[Raesanos]

I played console role playing games for a long time before getting into real role playing.  My favorites are Final Fantasy (4, 6, 7, and 10 particularly), Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire 3, Mario RPG.  I also liked adventure games with RPG elements like Secret of Evermore and A Link to the Past. At some point me and a few friends tried DnD, but found it way too focused on mechanics.  We played some home-grown tabletop system for awhile though.  Eventually I tried muds, played another RP mud for awhile then came to Arm.  I stopped playing awhile after I came on staff, and now I don't really roleplay that much.  The occational console game is about it nowadays.

[Vanth]

I always thought D&D was for geeks.  I got started on a MUD that wasn't D&D themed, then slowly got sucked into the more D&D type stuff.  Then I discovered that geeks were actually pretty cool.

It's been sort of like being assimilated by the Borg.  The more so since coming on staff.

[Adhira]

I never played D&D or any tabletop game, I once asked the boys who did my physics homework if I could join their group but they were all a little too scared to let a female in. It wasn't till quite some time later, when my job decided that they were going to remove solitaire from all computers, that I found mudding.

I started on a HnS 'roleplay encouraged' mud and stayed there for a couple of years. The hours of skill spamming got a bit much for me so I joined a few others from there on Harshlands. I played there for quite a while and would get annoyed at people who would idle for 15 minutes between sentences, that's when I discovered they were all playing Armageddon.  I joined the trend.

[Savak]

No roots, just Arm.

I always thought computer games were cool, period.  The various single-player "RPG"'s were a little cooler, but always lacking and limited to rudimentary AI (at best). Pitting myself against someone else's thumb-speed, as in 99% of two- or multi-player games, was only entertaining until I or they proved to have the most hypercaffeinated thumb. At some point I asked around (in RL..there was barely more than Prodigy at the time as far as asking online went) for real multiplayer roleplaying, to no avail.

Me and a couple of buddies toyed with the idea of tabletop D&D more than actually playing it, though we went as far as a session or two.  That turned out to be exactly as much rule-questioning as every other tabletop game, with too much left to the whim of the DM's prejudice.

Anyway, eventually someone said "hey, those MUD things are getting fast enough to be useable.." so we jumped around a few of those (which were getting old faster than my fading thumb-speed) until a new guy said "oh, I used to play this game called Armageddon.."

And the rest, as they say, is history.

-Savak