Cormyr and the Dalelands

We're all nerds here. But we all started in different ways and from different things. So what got us all started on the path to nerddom? For me, this scene was my 'eureka' moment where I knew I was a nerd.



What cemented my infamous love of comics, it was this big bad boy right here! (Yes, my first comic at 5 years old was "Spawn". That says a lot.)



So what about you? What started you on your geeky path?

These were probably the most formative components in cementing my early nerdiness.

My mother introduced me to D&D at five years old.



Best,
Arya

When I was growing up, my dad was a fantasy nut who got me reading The Hobbit and a bunch of stuff I don't really remember now (there was some David Eddings stuff in there, I'm sure, and the Bernard Cornwell Arthur books) but certainly inspired me to start writing fantasy stories when I was a kid. I also devoured the Tamora Pierce novels when I discovered them at school. Strong female heroines! Yay!

Movie wise, I was obsessed as a kid with these three: Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, and Jan Svankmajer's Alice (a masterpiece of dark and creepy stop motion, incidentally!). I also had (and have!) an incredible fondness for Ray Harryhausen's animations. I adored the Sinbad movies, Jason & the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, and others. I also really really loved Barbarella even if the sex references (uhm, yes, that's most of the movie...) went way over my head. It did spark my imagination for sci-fi/fantasy though   Oh! Krull! Have you guys seen Krull? It's terrible and amazing all at once. It's a glorious sci-fi/fantasy blend with one of my favourite character introductions ever (Ergo the Magnificent!). And Star Wars goes without saying. I don't remember when I saw it, but I absolutely remember wanting to be Princess Leia and shooting a blaster while my brothers were both being Luke Skywalkers fighting with my dad who would do the lightsaber noises and the breathing noises XD

Aaaand yeah, I nerded around with things like Master of Magic, Caesar 2 (and the later games like Pharaoh) in terms of computer games. I remember being addicted to Heroes of Might and Magic (we played hotseat multi, my brothers and I) and then the Might & Magic games where you had a first person party. Oh! Dungeon Master! I loved that! I remember mapping the dungeon out on grid-paper as I played and insisting on assembling an all-female party from the hall of portraits   edit: Forgot, we had a Snes and I adored Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana. Also played a bunch of other games on there ofc, and got a N64 later for Zelda and Starfox. And Gameboy for Pokémon.

My first experience of D&D was via Baldur's Gate, which was recommended to me by my nerdy uncle because I'd adored Diablo so much

I never had a eureka moment, I was just a dorky child who enjoyed books and things because we moved around a lot so it was easier to just be boring than make friends and play outside with strangers every two years At some point I must have figured out that it was kind of weird, because I remember I didn't ever go into much detail to people about what I was interested in.

My precise start I can't even tell anymore. I read a _lot_ as a child. I think all in all growing up I must have read around 300-400 books. (which is a conservative estimate, I'm mostly going by how many books I still have in my room plus how many I got from the public library over the years - keep in mind not all of these were 1000 page long epics  and I lived in a village where I had almost literally nothing else to do, for years. ) emphasis on the fantasy and adventure sector.

Roleplaying wise, my first contact was the relatively obscure Siege of Avalon, later a variety of others, half the names of which I can't even remember nowadays, but included the full range of bioware games, some jrpgs along the way and finally play by post forum roleplay.
Also Lego, dear me did I spend ages building stuff out of it... I think its not so much that I had an Eureka moment, its just that there was never much of a question about it!

Never really had a Eureka moment, just kinda did my own thing. These were some of those things.

I've always loved history books, especially books about ancient historical battles and wars.  From there I branched out into watching crazy Disney movies about fantasy and magic.  Then I started into the books of the same genre.  Watership Down, Bunnicula, The Mouse and the Motorcycle series, CS Lewis, and another series of medieval fantasy novels the writer of which I cannot remember.  GI Joe, Transformers, Saturday morning cartoons, and once I got up a little earlier, really bad Chinese kungfu movies that came on right before said cartoons.  By the time I moved up to the Seattle area where so many gaming companies existed, and Shadowrun was based in, I was already making up stories in my head, giving my action figures back grounds and personalities.  Then I was introduced to Final Fantasy for the NES and Darklands on the computer.  From those two games alone I was hooked.  It's easy to transition from either of those two games to D&D, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade, etc.  I've always been a nerd in the sense that I read far more than I played outside.  But when I played outside, I was acting out stories I read or created.
I was, however, always the hero.  It wasn't until after college I started to branch into the anti-hero or into the villain.  It's never sat well with me to be evil.... just not in my nature.  But boy is it in my nature to have a quick temper and hold a grudge.  I'm a really good dwarf.  

I started on Atari  

I used to watch She-ra, He-man, and the stupid DnD cartoon on Saturday mornings. I thought I was adopted since no one else in my family liked fantasy anything.

My sister got suckered into playing a lame halfling rogue (we'd tell her when to roll - she was clueless otherwise) when her first boyfriend and I wanted to play DnD in high school.

That's how I started!


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Nintendo, sega master system, PS1, PS2, PS4.  PC games.  Comics, Venom, Spider man, Wolverine.  nerd dom came to be without warning, I'm slowly recovering.