D&D - Humble Beginnings


Gamer Life General Discussion

Sovereign Court

I started playing D&D in 1978... There was no guidance, no players with decades of experience willing to teach the ropes to the n00bs, no internet to research. Someone played one session with me (I straight rolled my character... a cleric because my high stat was Wisdom... at 13) and I fell in love with the game. I was 11 but turned 12 by the time summer came. That's when and me, my cousins and several friends would gather on my back porch most days (even when it rained... I had an awning) to play. I liked drawing maps so I was the default DM... and grew to love it. Back then, a campaign meant just playing the same characters through several dungeons. Plot? PLEASE! You opened a door, fought whatever was behind it (which might not necessarily fit through the door... no one asked how it got there.. or ate), dealt with any traps, gathered treasure and went on to the next door... tapping away with your 10' pole to open any pits in the hallway ahead (at the standard movement rate of 120' every 10 minutes!)

The following year, we had our brand new AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide and the fun started to grow. One day, my cousin (I guess he was 11 at the time) said he'd like to DM. I'd only gotten to play once the year previous (the game that got me interested in D&D enough that I did every chore I could to make $12 so I could go to Leisure World on 18th Avenue and buy my own basic set). He said I could bump that character up to everyone else's level. Everyone else got to bring their usual character through the dungeon he'd created.

He created... 'The Dragon Hotel'. It was a vacation spot for dragons, complete with pools, spas, tennis courts, paddle boats... everything your average dragon needs when he feels like getting away from defending his horde from the various would-be dragonslayers in the realm. The amenities would have been incomplete without including a vault where all the hordes could be secured.

So we raided the vault... which the dragons, in their infinite wisdom, had left guarded by a solitary rock baboon... that was scared off when he was sufficiently stared at. My cousin then proceeded to roll up the random treasures within the vault (like 20 dragon hordes?) and we went shopping.

That all took about an hour. Then I got to return to DM'ing for these characters... which was no issue at all at the time. Only looking back on it would I call it a mistake... at the time, we were young kids giggling through it all.

So what were your earliest years as a roleplaying gamer like?

Grand Lodge

I was four years old and my oldest brother was the DM for his friends. He let me roll the dice for the monsters and I loved looking at the pictures in the Monster Manual and later the Deities and Demigods and Fiend Folio.

A couple years later, half way through first grade, it was Christmas time and we had to just do family stuff. So I got to make my first PC and play in my first adventure.
My PC was Fred, named after the greatest character "fighter" the universe has ever known, Fred Flintstone!

By third grade my oldest brother was at West Point so I had to play with my older brother -- who was not the fair, benevolent Player my West Point brother was. He was more like a Nazi, barely out of elementary school himself and using the DM title to lord it over his kid brother.

So by fourth grade I was showing my friends and playing with them.


Hmmm, I started truly playing D&D in junior high school. Me and a group of friends played Magic the gathering, and one of us mentioned how it would be cool to just be one of the monsters and whatnot in the cards. One of my friends had played AD&D and pulled out the players guide. We were all hooked pretty quickly and so started our lunchtime gaming sessions.

I remember lots of stumbles not understanding rules and frantic attempts to get through events before the bell run. We were definately alot more rollplay then roleplay in those days. That ended after 8th grade and the friends i played with mostly went their seperate ways. Didnt do any realy tabletop gaming after that untill midway through highschool where I met the core of the group I still game with today.


Hmmm... first time playing D&D? My older cousins came to visit when I was 11 or so. I played a fighter and remember getting possessed by a cloak (looking back, I think this was an attempt to stop me playing or something, but ah well).

I was so intrigued that for two days I told an interactive story to them (with no rules, just imagination) combining GI Joe style lore and some weird resolutions. I sort of wish someone had recorded it. It literally went on for a few days and I remember that they weren't that annoyed. I'd say it was the first time that I 'dm'ed anything, except when my friends and I played GI Joe and Transformers (and Star Wars and Lego and what not), I was usually the story-teller, setting up the world and the situations, taking suggestions or hints from everyone.

Shortly after, in middle school, a friend bought the red box, and we made characters. I remember that it was very interesting playing, and that there was a damned carrion crawler. That first adventure and the Larry Elmore art in it established a lot of how I saw things for a long time.

Soon, I started running the games (and shortly after we picked up AD&D on clearance at the local toy store). We were thrilled that we could play Elf Clerics and Paladins and other strange and exotic combinations (for the time).

My backpack usually (and still does to some extent) held tons of game books. So much so that I was able to use them to great effect when a gang of bullies tried to pick a fight with me (I was usually a foot taller than everyone else, so it took six to get the courage to try me as I walked out from the library).

Learning is a weapon. So are sixty (yes, sixty, we weighed it once) pounds of school, game and fiction books in a sturdy backpack.

We made a ton of mistakes. I learned never to share a campaign with another DM (who gave the party insane magical items), I learned to fight dirty. We learned not to cheer when we beat the big bad guy at three thirty in the morning in the spare bedroom when everyone else was sleeping (ok, we didn't REALLY learn anything, we still do it on occasion).

In college we had two to three games running, each weekly, and not for four hours. Usually, there were weekend marathon running for twelve hours or more down in the dorm's lounge.

But it was (and still is) a lot of fun. I've made the best friends (and more than a few of the worst) of my life through gaming.

I still get a little nostalgic looking through the sheaf of old characters retired with honor (some posthumously).

Dark Archive

I was 7 years old, 1979 and my Father who was in the Navy at the time decided to teach my older brother(9)and myself how to play. We rolled up some characters, a Elven Ranger for myself do not remember what my brother rolled up and we started off the adventure on a little road entering the Village of Hommlet.

Well a few hours later my brother and my characters were killed by town guards for looting and pillaging the sleepy little village. No one told us we were the heroes. I remember running off telling my father that his game was stupid and that I would never play such a dumb game again.

Later that year for some reason my father (He now calls DnD devil worship) game me all his DnD stuff for some reason and I have been playing ever since.

Dark Archive

bigkilla wrote:
Later that year for some reason my father (He now calls DnD devil worship) game me all his DnD stuff for some reason and I have been playing ever since.

Its sad that something changed his perspective so radically. But alas, it happens. At least you gave it a chance again and are still in the hobby.

I never could get my parents involved in D&D. I tried all I could.

I remember being in middle school and finding the Red Box at a yard sale one weekend. I only had two REAL friends, and I quickly inducted them into the wonderful world of D&D. I was always the DM, as no one else ever wanted the responsibility. I shouldered it well though. We played all through middle/high school, occasionally recruiting the infrequent player or two. Eventually I picked up a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia and that opened up an even bigger world of Adventure. A couple years later, 2E was out, and we gobbled that up as well. We also played other games as well (Rifts, TMNT, Heroes Unlimited, etc).

Now, years later, I look back at those times and miss them greatly. I moved away from my hometown in 1999 and miss my old group. I'm disabled and can rarely get out of the house without a great deal of pain. I keep up to date though, in hopes that I'll eventually be able to get a more frequent group together. I only run about once a month or so currently as my players all have less freetime than I. I miss those nights and weekends when it seemed like the gaming never ended though. I'll always look back on them with a great fondness.

Liberty's Edge

Back in September 1977 I started at university in Cardiff, studying botany. During that first week, a whirl of enrolment and finding where the department was and getting timetables, there was a 'Freshers Fair' where all the student societies had stalls and tried to get people to join... wandering around, my eye was caught by some model soldiers and - being good on uniforms - I went by muttering "French Napoleonic, 21e Regement du Ligne, those are voltigers and those the grenadiers" and was pounced upon by some burly lads inviting me to join the wargames society.

"Why not?" I thought, and did.

A few days later there was a note in my pigeonhole inviting me to the first meeting, so along I went. Once jawbones had been retrieved from the floor and the gasps of "It's a WOMAN" had died down, a lanky youth approached and asked, "Do you want to play D&D?"

"What's that?" I wondered... and have rarely been far from dice and plotbook ever since.


Wow these stories are all great. Red Box for ever.

I was somewhat aware of D&D at a very young age because I had a much older sister, and I would see her husband and his friends playing in the back room, but it was no kids allowed.

This was about the time that the Saturday morning cartoon series was released and I tried to realize what the game must be like based on my impressions from the cartoon. I remember being told that the Dungeon Master was who created the dungeons, and all I could imagine was this small toy that looked exactly like the dungeon master from TV show. I figured that you must wind him up or something, and that it had wheels to move around the paper and draw the map.

Fast forward a few years later. I had stayed the night with close friends of the family and they had a son my age. The next morning we went to the local comic book shop, probably my first time inside one. I saw the Red Box and I knew that I must have it. I had exactly enough money to buy it after bumming an extra dollar and change off my friends older sister.

Man what a happy day. Funny part of the story is the Mom finds out what I purchased that morning, makes me keep it put away, and then advises my parents that it was satanic literature. Iy would be a reoccurring thing with a few other friends and their moms talking to mine about what amounted to devil worship or worse... I'll say one last time, thanks a lot Mazes and Monsters!

I was always very thankful that my own parents were sensible about the game and didn't bite on the demonic propaganda, although they did make a few calls to my sister, just to make sure everything actually was ok with that game her husband used to play.


My first recollections of the game were small ads in Games magazine; at the time, I was living in the Yukon and had little knowledge of gaming or the FLGS... ;) Fast forward a couple of years and we moved back to Toronto where I hooked up with a great friend in middle school. He and his brother introduced D&D to my brother and I and we had many a great battles and sessions. Of course, back then it was all about power, wealth and power - good times.

We initially dove into the Red Box, then the Blue, followed by the Green and ultimately, the Gold. However, the bug had taken hold and it wasn't long before AD&D became the goto game, with Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Shadowrun and Battletech all vying for game time.

I find myself today thinking on these memories very fondly, and wondering how I could ever have spent so much time buried in books, maps and figures... ;)

AJC

Liberty's Edge

Great thread!

I'm being a little lazy and pulling some of this from my Paizo profile but ...

I started playing D&D as a kid in the mid to late 70’s – good ol’ First Edition AD&D! We started with the boxed set (the one with the Keep on the Borderlands) and then quickly moved onto AD&D ... We were all around 10 years old I guess.

My best friend's parents were pretty wealthy and had a huge boat (calling it a yacht would also be pretty accurate :). We would all go down to his boat sometimes for the weekend and play D&D while sitting on the back deck. I fondly recall playing Tomb of Horrors while sitting in the living room of the boat as we went on the bay from Baltimore to Annapolis. What a great experience!

We also played many other RPGs back then … Marvel Superheroes, Champions, Elfquest, FASA's Star Trek, Star Frontiers, the list goes on … but it always came back to AD&D! I kind of faded out of gaming around the time 2nd Edition came out - mainly because most of my gaming friends turned into grown ups when I wasn't looking and moved away but also because 2nd Edition just didn't quite do it for me (although I did play it a little and there were aspects that I did like).


I picked up the box set in a K-Mart I believe. It sounded like the coolest game ever. I tried reading the rules several times, but without assistance, I was lost. Two of my friends and I just started playing free form during recess and lunch.

Eventually, I started to understand the rules and shortly after that I was trying to create a Star Wars game out of Basic D&D. Tell me Clerics are not obviously Jedi.

I think I got Gammaworld after that, but never got into. Then it was James Bond and I never went back to a class based system.


I received the red box set for Christmas in 88 or 89 (I forget which year). I ran the solo adventure for myself and of course I was killed by the Carrion Crawler right away. It felt like a choose your own story novel which I guess it kind of was in a way.

I figured it would be much more fun to play with my friends. So over the weekend we got together and played. A year or so later we got the AD&D books and started playing it pretty frequently. I got away from D&D by my senior year in high school and into Vampire the Masquerade.

After college I came back to D&D when a buddy of mine picked by the 3rd edition books. I was hooked all over again and have been playing 3.5 since that came out.


Hmm... Let's see...

2 years ago, in about tenth grade by mate started to talk up the system and setting constantly. So we gave it a whirl. Was nearly scared off by a fellow player (let's just say he was quite vocal about some strange interests of his and played an eight year old girl) but the roster was switched up a little and there were... -gasp- GIRLS playing. :O

We played a tonne of different games back then. I had some futile quest to get a gnome character taken somewhat seriously (didnt help that I was playing a 3.5 gnome swashbuckler and was next to useless in a fight) and we had some awesome villains. A black-dragon with a lisp who spoke only in iambic pentameter (mostly just plain ol' ripping off Shakespeare). It was mostly plain ol' goofing around, being 14 was fun like that. Casting Grease to slide away from a bear made of teeth on a giant mecha.

Our DM was actually a surprisingly good writer, as it turned out, but a series of friendly-fire kills from the party mage (among other things) killed off one too many characters, until we were simply too irrelevent in the mess of a homebrew setting and it fizzled out this last year.

Fun times.


hehe I remember those days; back in '78 when my friend got the game for xmas and we all made characters and played a module; new, fresh, lol; had a dwarf with a 14 strength and was the strong guy. The GM didnt share his dice; so we all had numbers in dixie cups as there were no polyH dice anywhere. Hehe; we were so new back in those days; we found Dragon Magizine and it was like the Grail. We told some other friends about it; and people who played in Wisconson started coming out of the woodwork; wierd for a very small town in New Mexico. Then got me first look at AD&D snobs; hehe; those guys who say your not doing it right even if your having fun; then rules lawyers and on and on till we get to the game today. Looking back; I cant say any of the improvement matter that much. I could play with pencil, paper and a dixie cup if I had to; guess that would be in my "if your stuck on a deserted island" supplies hehe.


Summer of '79. My cousin and I started playing, although we didn't have much by way of actual gaming materials. I think he had the Basic Set, I do remember the chits we had to keep in a cup. I was tasked to be DM, and I ended up having him fight (and kill) and bunch of stuff with very little idea how AC or HP worked. I know I gave his character a wand of fireballs, which unfortunately had infinite charges, so my first dungeon ended up looking like a rather large BBQ =P.

Later I got more into the DM craft, but those early days with a random graph paper dungeon stocked with demons and dragons will always hold a speical place in my memory.

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