Spaceward Ho! March Madness Day 1

Yes, I'm participating in my first month-long blogging challenge.  Tedankhamen's Non-D&D OSR blogging fiesta.  I'll be posting mostly this month about games other than D&D or Chanbara, although I may find some time for some updates there, too, since I've already prepared some posts for some days.  

So let's get down to the first question:

1 What was the first roleplaying game other than D&D you played? Was it before or after you had played D&D?

Star Frontiers, TSR's sci fi game, was the first non-D&D game I played. There were ads for it in the back of the Endless Quest books and the back of the Mentzer Basic set, so I got it around 1986 or so. It was pleasantly different from D&D, being a “skill” game rather than class/level based in addition to the sci fi setting.

We played the heck out of the Alpha Dawn box set, but none of us ever got Knight Hawks or Zebulon's Guide.  We tended to base games either following the patterns of the sample adventures (Sathar agents/terrorists/criminals in Port Loren, monster on the loose in Port Loren, rescue/recovery of a downed ship etc.), or on whatever sci fi, Western or action movie we'd seen recently and thought was cool (Arnold movies, Aliens over and over, even Ghostbusters!).  And we had the Volturnus module included in the set, which we ran several times, sometimes just the initial battle with space pirates on the starship.

One other big difference with D&D was that it came with the 1/2 inch counters and maps.  This made our games somewhat more boardgame-like at times, since all we really needed to have fun were some stats for aliens or enemy agents, and just throw counters down on one of the maps.  It made for a lot of quick, simple games, but I didn't keep a lot of the notes, which is a bit of a shame.