Looking for the Earliest Surviving RPG Recordings...

Posts: 21 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 4:11 pm

Someone on RPG.net suggested I should post this question here, also, so here goes.... (not exactly sure which woul dbe the correct forum).

As part of research into some roleplaying articles, I'm looking to find the earliest extant RPG recordings. For the past five years or so they've been appearing online, but I know that people have been taping games a lot longer than that.

If you have any info, or have an early recording yourself, do post here!

Many thanks,

Paul

Posts: 597 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:15 pm

Well, there's the scene in E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982?)

Foul

Posts: 21 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:19 pm

Looking for non-fictional, really!

So far, someone's got a d6 WEG Star Wars game recorded from 99/00, can anyone beat that?

Posts: 4545 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:27 pm

PaulofCthulhu wrote:

Looking for non-fictional, really!

So far, someone's got a d6 WEG Star Wars game recorded from 99/00, can anyone beat that?

In 1985 my group video taped our final session of Q1...this group was the first one I ever played with starting in 1978, and it was the completion of a 7 year campaign that saw us go through the entire g1-3/d1-3/Q1 mess.

Anyway a few years later I watched it and thought "what a stupid tape...nothing happening except us talking and rolling dice". So I erased it Shocked

Stupid, stupid me. What I wouldn't give for that tape now. Crying or Very sad

Mike B.

Posts: 21 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:38 pm

Darn, that would have been priceless from a historical point of view (which is what I'm actually after)! Definitely wiped?

Posts: 1200 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:48 pm

Mike,
Did any of the other players have copies of the tape?
If so are you still in contact with them?

Posts: 4545 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 6:34 pm

PaulofCthulhu wrote:

Darn, that would have been priceless from a historical point of view (which is what I'm actually after)! Definitely wiped?

Definitely gone. I distinctly remember taping over it.

No one else had a copy....I had been meaning to make a copy, but in the 80s it involved a lot more than just popping down to the local store and getting a few copies made, so I never did it.

Nope, the guy that saves everything pretty much pissed that one away...while no doubt keeping many, many more worthless items. The other one that kills me is a film my best friends and I made as seniors in high school for our radio/tv class project. It was an insane take-off of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, starring me as the Kolchak type and my best friends as everyone else. Honestly I pretty much kick myself in the ass every month or so when I remember that piece of lunacy and what happened to it....one of my best friend's borrowed it to watch after high school, and his sister taped an episode of Facts of Life over it. NO lie. Crying or Very sad

Funny thing is all the times I had various groups, we had the equipment to tape/film right at our fingertips (tape recorders and cameras right beside the table practically), and everytime I would say "Naw, who is going to watch that crap".

Mike B.

Posts: 21 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 6:39 pm

Ouch!

Some things do survive... even though not strictly an RPG game recording.

Monterey Jack and the 3-D House of Pancakes

Features some of the younger members of Sandy Petersen's Call of Cthulhu group.

Audio places this c. 1985+

Please do keep posing about any recordings you know of!

Cheers,

Paul

Posts: 2938 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:57 pm

There are snippets from a session from the 60 Minutes Gygax interview; it was part of the intro. I think that dates from 1983 or so, but I'll have to check my transcript to confirm.