Cool, you played Dragon Warriors? I never knew that. I love Dragon Warriors! It's *almost* an indie game, in the sense of small publishing, but neither creator owned nor story driven.

I'm guessing my first game that would count as Indie would be Renegade Nuns with Guns, which I guess I owned either in my last few years at school, or just after, so in the early 90's. After that it would be STOCS Lite (Magi, Heretic and the like included) which I bought either at Gaelcon in the mid 90's or when they visited Conpulsion (which I guess would be 95 or 96?). After that nothing till Pokethulhu.

Note these are Indy games but, with the exception of Heretic, not story games.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I tried a thread exploring the modern definition of Indie Games recently, and it turns out that there is no solid accepted modern definition of the term. Kinda makes the question difficult to answer really, and it doesn't help that I have a terrible memory for dates.

I suspect that my first Indie game would have been third edition FUDGE but I can't remember when that was.

Ash

I would respectfully suggest Dragon Warriors was one of the least indie games ever published, being published by publishing giant Corgi.

It was also my first rpg though! And I still love it! :)

Edit: First so called Indie would be Dust Devils.

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.com

...on rpgnet though, right? I mean I tried a thread on rpgnet about which way was up and discovered there was no widely accepted definition. If you're posting on site full of Forgies* like here I think there's a pretty safe definition.

*I say this with luuuuurve, not hayte!

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.com

Note: no semantics about what is an Indie Game in this thread, ta.

Yup, these are Indie...

Renegade Nuns with Guns (... Renegade Nuns on Wheels, right?)
STOCS
Pokethulhu

Fudge, definitely

Dust Devils, oh good start!

...Hmm, I had Dark Realms by Guild of Blades in about 1997, but I thought it was rubbish and didn't play it. My first must have been Porter/Midgette's Macho Women With Guns. Will find out what year when I get home tonight.

(I played a lot of obscure kind of games in the late 1980s and especially early 1990s but I'm pretty convinced they weren't creator owned. Maybe we were also into home brewing more back then?)

Dragon Warriors is now owned by James Wallis. And I'm totally looking forward to the new version due to be published later in 2006, er, 2007, er... :^)

First Indie (as in, creator owned dirty hippy game) game I played was Dust Devils which I ran on the 23rd of January 2003. Please don't ask how I know that.

It was... quite interesting. Getting everyone in the group to get to grips with Scene based resolution (as opposed to task based stuff) was quite hard at first. Actually, to be honest, getting my head around it while reading the rules was a bit of a headfuck too.

Still it was mostly fun after a couple of false starts.

[edit, unless you count HeroWars, which I'd played/run a bit in 2000-2001. It's certainly grubby and left wing if not actually a dirty hippy game.]

Sorry for debating that Gregor.

(Yeah I was homebrewing like mad in the 80s. I'm still very proud of the diceless Ewoks cartoon game I made suitable for play outdoors in the playground at school. We couldn't use dice cos big kids battered us for being nerds. We were too wee to really get past needing randomisers, so I came up with a system where you had skills/abilities rated one to five, and that let you have that many guesses at the secret target number to successfully use that skill. It had genre emulation in that you couldn't die, you just got knocked out and left the scene for a bit. So innnovative! So ahead of our time! I even have a full illustrated colour rulebook in the loft somewhere. :) Ah happy days!)

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.com

...and I'd love to see that Ewok game. I periodically come across homebrewed stuff of my own from way back when. Really awful, probably, but we were trying to make games as best we knew.

Oh, Hero Wars certainly gets labelled as Indie by some and trashed as non-Indie by others. So, I'm feeling generous and we'll count it.

Another Dust Devils too.

Um, of the current popular modern Indie Games the first I bought was a Burning Wheel but it is too crunchy for me to play or run.

it was Spirit of the Century - a game whose core system still seems to call as a default gaming 'platform' for many of our group

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

I think I've got that game somewhere at the bottom of my big box o' stuff here. I really must get around to trying it myself.

Ash

I ran/played the Window in 1999, I think, as a trad. GM-controlled game. Character generation was fun.

First modern indie: Dogs in the Vineyard in 2003 or 04, but at the same time experimenting with Sorcerer and The Shadow of Yesterday 1ed.

First one I bought: Dust Devils 2003. Reading that changed everything for me regarding how I look at and play games.

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

It's worth noting that I bought Sorcerer in 2001 and tried several times to read it. But never managed to penetrate Ron's writing.

To this day I have no idea how the hell that game works, except that it has a really ropey die mechanic.

{edit: Since we're trying to discuss indie games with no consensus of exactly what that means, I thought I'd start that particular thread elsewhere.}

Let's start a "getting Sorcerer" thread!

I bought it in 2003, and it's the point of reference for many modern Indie games. I absolute love it, though the writing is super-dense and Ron's describing things that at that time didn't have an accepted terminology (Conflict Res fx).

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

If we were counting homebrews as Indie then that would push my start date way back, since I created and still have many (some of which I would love to play again).

Yes Gregor, Nuns on Wheels is right, that shows how long its been since I looked at it!

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

...and then they would be Indie Games.

:-)

Home Brew =/= Published Game.

Anyway, lots of Dust Devils, again.

It occurred to me that The Adventures of Luther Arkwright RPG might be Indie, except that it was a licence and so I'm guessing not.

Window, for sure, and an online published game for free.

I've got the manuscript and two cover paintings right here in front of me. Bwahahahahaha.

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.com

(Well I'm thinking about Inbetween, first world war hamsters living in the walls of your house, as well as Termite, but reaction was lukewarm last time I mentioned the former and the later has a very bitty system now)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Neil .... reply here http://www.collective-endeavour.com/node/1101 so as not to threadjack

Actually I was thinking on this as in some ways they were community owned rather than creator owned, but had more Indie cachet than OGL/d20.

(Oh, deleted your edited out comment Neil as David has pared the talk of the Hamsters to its own thread. Cheers.)

Golden Heroes met the criteria of an Indie Game before Games Workshop picked it up, and it's back to where it began, really, as Squadron UK.

Well, if we're counting homebrews that were later published, I ran an early version of Vanishing Point (so early that the published version is the third) way back in 1997, maybe earlier.

Ash

...we'll go with "Home Brew =/= Published Game" and a game becomes valid "post publishing".

Vanishing Point is an Indie Game.

Did you always see it coming out under your own control, or was there a plan to publish it some other way (set up a games company with investment, partner with someone in a games company, have it published through a third party, publish yourself on the web)?

Cursed Empire was run for 10 years or so, and evolved through that, before Chris Loizou got it published. Chris is small press (though one of the bigger ones at that) in the UK. He's Indie, in the way that Contested Ground Studios is.

Hmm, if it counts then Whispering Vault would be my first.

Otherwise Hero Quest or SotC.

Currently Playing: Cold City, Pendragon
Currently Testing: Duty and Honour

I thought of having it published by other folks first, but as I looked further into the industry and learned more about it, it soon became clear that my chances of managing that were slim to none, so I changed my aims toward self-publishing instead. I never actually showed the concept to any publishers as a result. At one point I did think about publishing it under the Magnum Opus deal through Guardians of Order, and boy am I glad now that I didn't go that route!

I'd guess that Whispering Vault counts, doesn't it? I mean, the authors did show it to White Wolf and I believe there was some talk for a while of WW publishing it, but they had a sudden change of heart and I think it was the original owners who eventually went ahead and published.

Ash

hmm... I thought it was maby Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy, but that was published by Puffin.

Does anyone know if the old Aliens RPG was an indie production?

Otherwise it was probably Fate back in May 2005 (gotta love those last modified dates on pdfs).

Whispering Vault was small press, Rich trounces on Hero Quest's claim in his thread, and Fighting Fantasy was big coin, seriously. Aliens was published by Leading Edge of Phoenix Command and Living Steel fame and had money behind it. So, none of these meet the bill.

Fate is Indie.

Oh, and I probably missed counting Rich's struggles with understanding Sorcerer up the thread.

Per had Sorcerer, Shadow of Yesterday, Dust Devils and Dogs in the Vineyard.

No one start with a Paladin? Or My Life with Master?

My first game was Dogs. Run by Steve at a convention in Cambridge.

The first game I bought was My Life With Master, because it was recommended in the back of Paranoia XP.

Graham

So, we have another for Dogs in the Vineyard as play, and a My Life with Master on book bought/read. Excellent.

I first remember seeing MLwM as Steve Bassett's, and he was also the first person I knew who played Sorcerer.

By the way, I dug out my Macho Women... and found it was second edition from May 1989. It would now been seen as Indie, and Greg Porter is part of the Forge booth, but we didn't have the term for another 10 years. It does have a really non-mainstream vibe to it for sure.

Didn't realise it included bought!

That would be a joint purchase of Burning Wheel and Primetime Adventures then.

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

Gordon, you played in my Dogs game before 2005, remember? Steve was playing as well, and it was GREAT. (Edit: or was that after May 2005?)

When it comes to buying, I bought as many of these new strange thingies as I possibly could. Dust Devils and Sorcerer simultaneously, then Sorcerer & Sword and Sorcerer's Soul a month later, only to buy Sex & Sorcerery the following month. I also bought the very early, before the whole POD thing kicked off that is, Pool-based game The Questing Beast, but I never played it. The Pool!

The Primetime Adventures 1ed, the the revised edition, which I played to complete series of. I mentioned the Shadow of Yesterday 1ed as well - I bought it when the 2nd Fudge-ified version came out.

The memories. Lots of good memories.

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

It was just after I had picked up fate. I remember talking to you about fate shortly after we met and you directed me to the forge for more indie goodness :-)