How did you start gaming?

My first White Dwarf, Issue 201.

Its Xmas 1996, The Spice Girls are performing 2 Become 1 on Top of the Pops and I'm opening my presents, including a copy of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Quest (my Brother got a copy of Warhammer). Such was my first introduction to wargaming; that Spice Girls song is now forever linked with gaming in my head.

Though, actually, my first dalliance with wargaming came from buying a copy of White Dwarf off a friend a few months earlier. Without any models or actual rules to use, my brother and I played a makeshift game of 40K whilst on holiday in North Wales, using some dice and a load of tidlywinks counters to represent space marines. Even before that I had played Heroquest and Space Crusade in the early 90's.

After getting Warhammer 40K I played regularly for about 3 years before slowly giving up. I still played some of Games Workshops other products (in particular Mordheim and Inquisitor) but my days as a wargamer were behind me.

8 years after first getting Warhammer I was at Uni, representing the Alternative Music Society at the Freshers Fair. Sandwiched between the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Society and the Live Roleplay Society I asked which of them would be best to join to start playing some Warhammer again: "Granny" the President of the LARP society responded "You don't want to be rolling dice, join us and do it for real. Its much more fun". I ended up joining them and not playing any Warhammer but spending almost every weekend larping for the rest of my time at Uni.

I still roleplay every week, mostly tabletop these days but also at a large professionally run live roleplay system called Empire. The games of Warhammer 40K I played at our club were the first in over a decade. I enjoyed it enough that I may actually get round to finishing the Imperial Guard army I've been considering for a while.

Empire LRP. Photo by Charlotte Moss.

Used with kind permission from the photographer and Profound Decisions Ltd

How did you get into gaming?