Who else plays pen and paper RPGs? Favourites?

I play, on a regular basis, Dungeons and Dragons, Grimm, World of Darkness (the D20 version) and Call of Cthulhu. Dungeons and Dragons remains my favourite, though.

PnP games have a horrible reputation as being purely nerdy - but it's far from the truth. Get some beers (and mix drinks for the ladies) and chips, and game without the need of a distracting TV screen... it's a purely social outlet, and if you don't take it too seriously, is not nerdy in the slightest.

Anyway.

You really are a nerd

I agree.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v519/Agamemnon582bc/Blog/Ma...
Ill condiser myself a game master once I beat all these (copy and paste it into your browser if you want to see it bigger)

I need the tv screen. I have no imagination lol

Ditto

Nerd.

I absolutely would love to play a pen and paper RPG. I have always wanted to. But it is an intimidating beast to get started with. In high school my friends and I pitched in and bought three D&D books we thought would be enough to get started with: Player's Guide, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Guide. I was going to be the DM, but then when they brought the books over I looked at them and said... That's three books! It seems unrealistic to learn in any way other than from someone who already knows how to play, and unfortunately I don't know anyone of the sort.

I've been thinking of trying to make a very, very simplified system of my own based on simple games like Rogue and experience with various RPGs over the year, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Most people say that the rules in D&D are meant more as guidelines than strict rules, so I figure I don't need anything but a basic system to start with.

But that idea is on hold until I have the time for it. Until then, do you have any suggestions, Waltzy? Is there an easy way to get started? Is there a particular RPG system that is already pretty easy to learn and stripped down? Or, if you had it in mind to make a system from scratch, what would be the core elements to use?

You don't have to answer all of that, but one answer to one question would be enough for me to get started with something. It's a fascinating concept. Playing a game with little more than pencil and paper. Wow. An entire world alive there, and the absolute most creative gaming I can imagine. It has huge appeal to me, but I'm unfortunately without a guiding hand here. Those D&D books were super confusing and vague.