When did you first play TFT?

[DarkPumpkin]

Thought it might be interesting to take a poll of when folks started with the game. Playing solitaire counts, as does any form of TFT including simple Melee.

[JLV]

1977 -- original edition Melee, in El Paso, Texas. I was 17.

[DarkPumpkin]

Originally Posted by JLV

1977 -- original edition Melee, in El Paso, Texas. I was 17.

I wonder about geographical distribution in those days, too. Did Metagaming have a good distribution system nationwide or was there a Texan or regional bias?

For me as an Australian I remember seeing a few copies on the shelves at gaming shops around 1983-85. I didn't buy it, although the covers left an impression with the gothic font and gloomy coloration (which I'm glad to see have been retained in the Legacy Edition). There can't have been many players in Australia at all, and if there was ever a hardcore Australian fan base I never came across it.

[JLV]

I think Metagaming had a pretty good distribution throughout the US -- they'd been around for a while (though not one of the "giants" of the US gaming industry like TSR, SPI or Avalon Hill), and had a good reputation in terms of quality of rules and games (physical components were a bit weak, but printing was harder to do back then than it is now, too). But I don't think they ever got much entry into foreign markets. This, despite the fact that I think it was a good deal cheaper back then to ship something overseas, and customs duties and VATs and the like weren't as deadly back then to physical products.

Of course, the above opinion may or may not bear much relationship to the reality; I'm just remembering what I knew at the time about gaming in general.

(I would have been a big hit in the gaming community if I'd moved to Australia back then -- I had a collection of several hundred wargames and RPGs at the time Melee came out; and I found out years later that most of you had never heard of a good half of them!)

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by DarkPumpkin

There can't have been many players in Australia at all, and if there was ever a hardcore Australian fan base I never came across it.

We started our TFT campaign in 1981 when I was at Melbourne Uni. I don't think we'd qualify as hard core though…

[Desertmonkey]

I grew up in New Jersey and picked up Melee in my FLGS in like 1979, maybe 1980. It was the first game system I bought on my own after a friend introduced me to D&D. That store carried a lot of the Metagaming line.

[Venomous Filigree]

Probably 70s, maybe early 80s.

[zot]

We started playing Melee and Wizard in 1978 and we got all excited at Metagaming's announced "In the Labyrinth" (which it had announced the previous year). We waited 2 years for that but we loved it!

[CON_Troll]

Picked up Melee and Death Test in '78. Realized I was hooked when I played Death Test until 6 in the morning. Went back for Wizard. Later, got Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard as well as In The Labyrinth.

[brionl]

That would have been back in late '77 and early '78. My friends and I would play Melee/Wizard at lunchtime in high school, then play D&D or Traveller during the weekends. I lived in Tracy, CA at the time. There was a fairly good gaming store in Stockton, but they mostly seemed to carry TSR stuff. ISTR having to mailorder almost all my micro-games.

I've still got the Death Test book, and all the maps/counters from Melee & Wizard, but nothing else. I used to have both of those, Advanced Melee, Advanced Wizard and Into the Labyrinth. But in the early 80's a trunk full of my rpg stuff got flooded out in the basement and ruined.