Was just thinking about this when I looked at my player character notebooks. My first character was created on Dec 26, 1979. Back then we didn't have fancy polyhedral dice; heck, we didn't even know what they looked like nor any store that carried them. We read the little paperback manauls and figured out how to play; a friend of mine had gotten the game on xmas and we spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to play it; luckily; he also recieved a module; don't remember the name of it. We put little numbers 1-4; 1-8; 1-10; 1-12; ect. You had to hold the cup over your head and swirl them about and then pick out a number. We rolled stats by picking 3 numbers in order; then fiting them to a class. I played a dwarf; think his name was Borki, dwarf was a class back then; my highest stat was a 14 and that was strength; most other stats were like 9 or 10; I was the strongest in the group; therefore; the tank. After a few months, we found some polyhedral dice in a catelog somewhere; they were really cheap; but, we loved them; you had to paint the d20 half one color to have a below and above 10 score; rolled it so many times it was practically round with very worn corners. Wow, to think me and a friend have been argueing since 1980 that you cannot roll a 4 sided die; he says it just flops there and doesnt roll at all - I come back with the - it rolls in the air line. Wow, the memories; some people have scrapbooks of pictures; I have binders of characters. One of my happiest childhood memories was getting a hardbound DMG; the 1979 edition; I memorized practically evey line and page; at one time could tell you what page to turn to and where to look on that page. I am interested to know what you guys have as first D&D memories.
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Alright...Buying the Red box with my Dad and little brother. We spent hours reading and making our first characters. Then we were standing outside a cave entrance. We walk in, can't see, light a torch, proceed, and fall into a pit and die. Wow. Yeah, thanks Dad. I'm going outside to play :)
The Keep on the Borderlands, Cave A.
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In 1981, I bought the 1ed. PHB. I had a fighter, Claw the Conqueror (pretty ribald stuff to an 8th grader) with a 16 Str!!!!!
Claw worked his way up to second level, then was beset upon by...a TROLL. Swing...miss. Lunge...miss. RUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!
He turned left....then right.... deeper into the dungeon he fled, until he rounded a corner and BAM smacked right into the troll. Claw claw bite went the troll, Claw the conqueror was a disemboweled smear on the floor of the cavern. Troll snack.
I lamented Claw for 3 days. Then rolled up BLADE THE DEFIANT. Blade had....an 18/72 Strength!!!!! He made it up to third level, had a +3 long sword, and met the doom of his adventuring career in Tegel Manor (Judge's Guild) at the hands of a ghost. Blade was aged to a venerable 78 by the ghost before he fled, using his +3 long sword as a cane. He retired to the City of Greyhawk's Olde Folkes Home.
Next came Tharn the Defender. 18/87 Strength. Paladin. Made it to 4th level. Killed by orcs sieging his keep--the ruined keep out of Village of Hommlet which he had rebuilt.
THEN I decided to work on a module "The Keep of the Centaurs--an adventure for 2-8 characters level 1-10." There was a place called Dreaming Hollow, complete with...you guessed it...a headless...CENTAUR!!!!!!!
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Geez. I remember learning about D&D from a friend at school in 1988. He started DMing for our group from the Red Box (with the cool Elmore dragon vs fighter). I had an elf called Questor (the Gauntlet coin-op was a fave at the time) and we walked up to some castle and there was a hole under the fallen doors. We lifted it and got attacked by a "giant centipede with 10 tenacles on its head". From that moment I was hooked. I year later I started DMing and have been ever since.
P.S. The carrion crawler freaked me out cause I imagined a giant centipede with octopus tentacles!
Reebo
Summer 1980--friend of mine tried to get me into AD&D so that I could join his regular gaming group. He had me roll up SIX characters and run them all by myself. I gave them all Roman sounding names, can't remember them but they were certainly dorky, I can assure you.
So SIX characters being run by a total novice entered the dungeon in module "In Search of the Unknown." We found giant rats in the first room and the fight was on. Pig-sticking giant rats was high adventure and I was hooked.
I was introduced to AD&D in 1988, when I was 14, by a friend of mine. He'd been playing for a few years and wanted to have me play through the Temple of Elemental Evil. My first character was a magic user named Byl the Wizard who had 3 hit points. He was killed by a spider when I was exploring the moathouse. I remember how scared I was when this spider suddenly jumped down on my head and bit me. I was hooked from then on. We never did finish the Temple, but we ran through the first of the drow series D1 and D2, a few weeks later in a long two-day nonstop session where we each had 3 characters. All 6 of them were dead by the end of those two days. Ahh...memories...
M@
My first D&D memory:
Summer of 1980 - I was at my friend's house. His older brother played D&D. He had large rolls of graph paper that he used to detail a town he used for his game. We both went up to him and asked to play. After a few minutes of pestering him, he said:
"Okay, you both walk into a tunnel, fall down a pit a die. There. You just played D&D."
We weren't very happy about it.
It wasn't until 1983 that I actually played, invited by a few friends in high school. I remember my first game. I was a halfling thief. We were prying the rubies out of the statue that was on the cover of the PHB. They told me to do it. I said I didn't want to do it, mostly because I didn't trust them. But they convinced me that I should, and I set off a trap and died. I wasn't really mad, because I figured that was going to happen.
My most memorable character in my high school years was a human "Duh Jock," a fighter subclass we found in Best of Dragon Vol. 2. Bruno, worshipper of Nike, possessor of the Holy Healing Hockeystick of Spalding. He was a lot like Casey Jones (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), but smelly.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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The red box set. A friend's dad had bought the game as something that they could do together...however my friend's dad never managed to find the time to run. So one hot summer day we ended up in his living room and my elf approached a ruined castle when suddenly a carrion crawler errupted from the ground paralized and ate my poor elf. 20 minutes later I had a new character and we started again with my friend running the solo adventure in the players guide. In the first three rooms I killed giant rats, a rust monster and found a secret door. I was hooked. A few days later we added a couple of other guys and I got my revenge on that carrion crawler and cleared out the castle ruis before continuing on to discover the unknown...
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Hmm, it was my senior year of high school, back in 2000 (a late-bloomer, to be sure). D&D was banned at my school and the general suspicion and ignorance of the baby-boomer generation, regarding the game, left even my mother disapproving the notion of me playing it. I ended up visiting to a friend's house on the guise of playing Magic the Gathering (such a rebel was I ;)). I read through parts of the PHB, and rolled up a half-orc with a 16 and a 10, with several other stats, of course... a few moments later, I was the half-orc paladin of 1st level, with a Strength of 18 and, you guessed it, a Charisma of 8.
Sadly, the game lasted only one session, beginning with some stereotypical "D&D geeks" for fellow players (one with a penchant for mentioning that he was accompanied by his *ahem* donkey with every move he took) and a mysterious cave to where we had been teleported...
15 minutes (real life) spent in a teleporting hallway with no apparent solution, the GM scrapped the session, deciding to have us make "dragonslayers" of 4th level... We fumbled through creation for an hour, found ourselves in a forest clearing at its outset, and were surprised by a fairly large red dragon (remember 3.0 dragon CRs? ;)). Somehow, I don't believe we got initiative, I just recall:
DM: Ok, the trees part and there's a red dragon, it breathes fire on you, make Reflex saves *looks at Monstrous Manual*.
Me: Hmm, I got a 14, do I make it?
DM: *frowns as he reads* You know what? Let's just stop playing this...
Me: Even a Reflex save wouldn't have helped, huh?
A year later, at college and free of societal and familial pressures, and gifted with a GM with a bit more experience, I was finally (and officially) ushered in as a true D&D addict :)
P.S. Of course, I ended up purchasing a Dungeon magazine back in 1999, a beholder and stone behir gracing the cover, though I only vaguey understood what I was looking at, and was equally baffled by 2nd Edition.
A Sunday afternoon, about 5-6pm, July 1989, I was living with my grandparents. My brother told me that I should take a look at a book that he borrowed from his friend Danny Holmberg (holy crap, I remembered his name!!). I had just finished taking my bath and was sitting out in the "library", surrounded by National Geographic magazines that dated back to the 60's and Time-Life's "The Seafarers" book series, a three-foot scale wooden model of the USS Constitution and an old wooden jukebox. I was mesmerized by Larry Elmore's cover painting of the barbarian facing the red dragon on the "Red Book". I flipped through the book, absolutely sucked in by what I read in it. My brother came back after his bath and asked me what character I wanted to play.
"Fireball," I said, "a human mage."
"Alright," he said. "I'll run you through an adventure tomorrow."
Fireball met a bad end in the Caves of Chaos from the Keep on the Borderlands.
(PS - I can so remember that day as if it was yesterday. I am reminded of it when I walk into my grandmother's home and the "library" is laid out precisely the way it was 17 years ago. I see myself at 10 years old, sitting there with wet hair and in my pajamas. Ahhh...memories...)
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It all started with the red box and keep on the borderlands. I remember trying to play with some friends from church who had some older brothers that supposedly knew how to play, but all we did was color in continents(islands, etc..)on giant sheets of paper. A couple years later I was lucky enough to have a neighbor who actually knew how to DM, and he ran one session of Isle of Dread for me and a couple of other kids to shut us up for awhile. It was the greatest session ever! It felt so amazing to actually be "playing" D&D. Ahhh....The good ol' days!
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Early 1981; Basic Set with Erol Otus art.
I'd read the rules and figured I understood them, my older brother had rolled up some PCs, and we were away.
Although I understood the concepts of attack rolls, damage, hp, spellcasting etc, I was totally ignorant of how one prepared a game, or that one was expected to have already created a map!
I made everything up as I went along, deciding what was behind each door and round each corner only as they got to it.
Even so, this was still nail-bitingly exciting. My brother played all 4 PCs, and even though it was his first game too, he seemed to have the correct 'gamer' mindset. All characters had 10' poles, hammers, pitons, and every room was picked over, so I decided to reward this behaviour by having the place trapped to heck, to justify his paranoia.
After finding the secret door, in the trapped passage, under the swivelling statue, it was time for the first monster!!!
Having not prepared a thing, I flipped through the book, looking for something to catch my eye.. and lo and behold there was the coolest, freakiest creature I could imagine! (See page B32, for those of you who, inexplicably, still have their Basic rulebook in easy reach).
A giant bug's head with 8 tentacles poked through the door, and the first combat was on!
Needless to say, it won, and all 4 PCs were paralysed by the thing, wherupon, we both looked at each other and wondered "what happens now?". The text said it ate its paralysed victims, but the stat block of the time confirmed it was incapable of inflicting any hp damage, so we were left with the image of the crawler fruitlessly gummimg its prey to death over several hours. This seemed silly to us, so we decided it was obviously intended to be a 'nuisance' monster rather than a real threat. I ruled that the owner had put it there to hold up intruders, and so, the PCs recovered to the sound of the guards completing their rounds, so they fled the dungeon with a few bags of silver and a tea-set for their trouble. This game rocks!
Glad to see I'm not alone in using the carrion crawler. I'm sure it was used by so many simply because of the 'cool' factor.
Spring, 1979. (age 13) My best friend comes back from the hobby store at the Modesto Mall with the old basic boxed set, polyhedral dice, and a pad of "character record sheets." We proceed to roll up about four characters each, and I run them through a dungeon he has prepared. I don't even remember how the dungeon turned out, but for the next several years I was a D&D geek--I quickly graduated to DMing myself for a group of high-school friends, using the 1st ed. AD&D books, which I think I had mostly memorized at one point. We mostly spent a lot of time hacking up orcs and getting fried by ancient red dragons, as I recall. I remember trying to play the "Slavers" series and having the campaign totally torpedoed by a friend of mine who was being a roleplaying jerk, a dwarf who poleaxed one of the other characters as he was leading the way up a ladder. Didn't know how to deal with these issues at the time, so that campaign quickly became un-fun. Moving out to the country and needing a ride to town to play kind of put a cramp in my style--I think I ended up thinking about D&D far more than I ever played it for several years. Obviously some seeds were planted, though.
I started with no knowledge of the game or classes, so I played a drow monk who rode a heavy war horse and fought with a long spear. I think my DM pitied me.
I remember it as 1984, I was in a Waldenbooks and was looking around the "game" section. I was always bookwormish so I was looking for that "something" I got my mother to buy me the Monster Manual thinking it was a encyclopedia of fantastic critters and fell head first into the land of RPGs, It was about 2 years of reading pick-your-path adventure books before I cobbled together my first group of players in a very monty haulish campaign where we took adventure assignments directly from dieties, (at level 4)
Noneltheless fun was had, and I'm still geeking out today, rabidly waitng 3 hours to go on an adventure I've played before at least 5 times in my gaming career, and DMed at least twice as much
so I played a drow monk who rode a heavy war horse and fought with a long spear.
Hmmm.....there's a prestige class in there...it doesn't sound too bad of a concept to me, actually.
It was the late 1970s ... an article in a Parade magazine about a "new college fad" caught my eye. Soon afterward I was in a New York bookstore and purchased the boxed set with the red dragon cover. Hours of awe followed.
I called up my friend and together we "self-DMed" and ran ourselves through B1 (In Search of the Unknown) with randomly rolled creatures.
My first PC was a fighter and my first battle was with (drumroll) a giant ant. *One* giant ant, which I believed at the time to be comparable in size to the giant ants in the movie THEM.
Not long thereafter a local Kay Bee Toys was selling modules ... D1 (Decsent Into the Depths of the Earth) and S1 (Tomb of Horrors) if I recall. My friend DMed and a friend & I entered the infamous Tomb of Horrors ... with 1st-level characters. We read the other module and didn't understand half of it. We still didn't have anything beyond the basic set, and I remember excitedly rattling off the names of Asberdies' spells ("Get this, Power Word KILL!"); those were truly the days of wonder.
I started with no knowledge of the game or classes, so I played a drow monk who rode a heavy war horse and fought with a long spear. I think my DM pitied me.
but when what year was this? I know your a Viking so please dont tell us in tree rings or such :)
Well, so far looks like I am the only one to admit to the dixie cup thing :) hehe I remember from that first game trying to explain to my best friend; brother of our gm; how he was killed by a stirge and us trying to describe this creature as a birdlike mosquito the size of a chicken; he was like; I am in plate mail dammit (it was banded mail) and I was killed by a chicken? This game is stupid! and well, he never played again; but makes it a point to stop in a heckle us all the time and has been doing so for the last 20 some odd years. hehe I remember running from the aforementioned carrior crawler and the dread of giant ants which we also thought were a lot larger; and loudly posturing dwarven superiority by saving from giant centipede poison; I really live to see this new love in the game from new players as this game opens up to them; thanks for all the great response; I look forward to continually reading this tread.
It was the autumn of 1978. My brother came home from Boy Scouts, talking about the game he and his friends were playing, "Dungeons & Dragons". He was a magic-user (which he pronounced 'mad accuser' for some reason).
Being a fan of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I was enthralled.
Then, one friday night, Curt brought home the rule books (the 'white box' edition), and I rolled up a druid.
My character explored level after level of various pyramids, castles, and crypts, supported behind the scenes by the nearest town's cleric. The cleric always seemed to be able to resurrect me (and called me 'bub'), which was a good thing. I was quite inventive in finding ways to get myself killed in those days.
I recall almost all the secret doors were operated by inserting a finger into a hole next to the door, which ended with the finger being cut off. Another favourite was the 10'x10' room whose door locked behind you before the walls started moving toward you. The dreaded squisho-compacto rooms were a regular feature in every dungeon. Must have been the same architect.
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I was 14 years old, back in 1985.
I was visiting a friend of mine and found this little red box on his shelve.
I took it down and was instantly hooked by the picture of this huge dragon. I can't remember having seen anything like this before.
When my friend came back into his room, I had been halfway through the first book and he started DMing me through this little adventure with the carrion crawler under the fallen doors to the ruin.
Inside I fought bats which came flown out of the fireside in a room and much more. I can't remember what I played, but I think it was an elf.
From this day on, D&D became a huge part of my life!
When I told another friend "at home" about my experiences with my DMing-friend, down in thos ruins, he suddenly asked:"Hey, a carrion crawler?! How does it look like? Does it life in our woods as well and can you show me this ruin someday?" He didn't realize that it was all about a game, but I just said:"Sure!" and grinned all day long. He became the first player of my first group...
Ahh, memories... Thanx for this thread!!!
1986. Louis Armstrong Middle School. First real experience with the game. I was 10. Arthur Damocles Human Fighter. A&D&D.
Never played basic.Owned the orignal Deities and Demigods before I ever played if memory serves me right.
Sorry for this abbreviated version, fought ALOT back then also played alot of Football, in other words a whole lot of blows to the head between now and then.
I was in public school, grade 4 or 5 I think... My best friend Steve got the red basic set for his birthday and talked me into playing. I was an Elf i remember that, but I've forgotten his name. Steve ran me through Keep on the Borderlands and I remember having alot of fun. I ran away from the minatour. Even lived to fight another day.
Later we talked our friend Craig into playing in our group. I remember him saying that he would give up any share of treasure if the party kept him alive. I think Craig was a Cleric.
Anybody else remember coloring in their dice with a crayon that came with the red set? Bad blue/purple dice.
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Summer of 1981, just before I started the 7th grade. I had just purchased the red box basic set and I was playing with my friend Brad, his cousin, his older sister, his older brother, and some of their friends. Brad was DMing the Keep on the Borderlands and my first PC Torc (a basic D&D elf because I was on a Tolkien kick and I thought elves were the best characters because they could cast spells AND wear armor.) barely survived his first battle with the orcs in the Caves of Chaos. (He later died in "Search for the Unknown" but oh well.)
For some reason, I remember that there was the Kurt Douglas movie "Scalawag" playing on the TV downstairs as well.
That is my first D&D memory
1979, I was a senior in High school. I had loved miniatures since I was in like 3rd grade and got hooked on Airfix HO scale army guys. The gaming store in Davenport Iowa was called "The Thinker's Emporium" and Iw ent there mainly to buy magic illusions as I was a performing magician who actually got PAID for shows ! I saw they had these metal miniatures from a company called Ral Partha. I snagged a few Lord of The Rings miniatures (Some Orcs and the hobbit set)
Over the next few weeks I bought and painted more (Using Testors enamels and a HUGE brush because that was all we had- I still have those minis now to remind me of how badly I painted back then)
As I was buying another 6 bucks worth (Did I mention how cheap minis were back then?) the owner said "Man you guys must really be into D&D!"
We looked puzzled and he explained the concept of the game to us and we bought it sight unseen. My friend was driving so I tore open the plastic and pulled out the first book. I flipped it open to the monster section and read aloud the description of “gelatinous cube”. We almost died laughing at the thought of being eaten by giant jello!
The dice were hideous and we could not for the life of us figure out the yellow d4 which had only ghosts of numbers imprinted on it, and whose edges were uneven. We rolled the d8 and divided by 2….
We were in ready to play though. A few weeks later I had recruited the few kids who were fantasy readers in my tiny Midwest high school to come and play. I was DM, Ted was Elric the Half Elven, well…an elf. There was Edina with Elbereth Gilthoniel the elf, and Bill with Zoltar the Wizard.
There they stood outside the first introductory module as I read the flavor text about how this dungeon had been built many years ago by a wizard and a fighter, and had been sealed up since they vanished and now they were ready to enter……
As the doors opened I rolled for a random encounter….Berserkers. As they defeated them the questions began. If this was sealed up, where did the berserkers come from? I had not actually read the module to the end, so I was flipping through trying to see.
Several random encounters later, with goblins, human bandits, and a few orcs the questions as to where they came from, how they ate, slept, got water, and even where the bathrooms were had me terribly confused as the DM. Then they found a stuck door. On the other side was a werewolf. As they bashed the door I imagined the werewolf waiting to pounce. When it opened I described the werewolf slavering etc and the elf asked “Is she friendly?”
I said “She is a werewolf!”
But the rules say you are supposed to roll to see how they react. Sure enough here was a chart. I rolled and got “Friendly”. So now the werewolf is begging them not to kill her, and I am scrambling for a reason…”because I am not a true werewolf, an evil sorcerer named Malthus turned me this way, only if he is slain can I return to my natural form, a beautiful elf maiden.”
So now the party had a werewolf named Lila Swiftbow with them. Soon they encountered ANOTHER friendly monster in Bort the wereboar who I figured had the same story. Now the party vows to find Malthus and make him pay! They are thinking this is in the module but I am making it up on the spot!
In the lower level (Where the wizard points out they should all be dead for lack of ventilation and how are those wall torches still burning by the way?) they found a magickal talking sword named Max (Or blue max since he glowed blue) I decided Max had been a peaceful cleric and had been transformed by Malthus into a sentient sword as the ultimate punishment. Max had an old Jewish man accent and screamed when he fought and begged everybody to quit fighting and try to talk things out. The party broke into gales of laughter as I screamed “OYVEY! Not to be shticking me in that filthy orc! Do you have any idea where he has been? Quit with the swinging me around, OW! this armor is hard! Don’t use me on that statue- are you M’shuggna??”
When the pre packaged module was done I decided to design my own dungeon with more clues as to Malthus whereabouts. Turns out he was an acolyte of the Cult of Cthulhu. I put in water sources, sleeping quarters, ventilation, dining rooms all the things the players had complained were missing in the other pre-fab dungeon crawl. Lila and Bort and Max became fast friends with the trio as they tracked Malthus through the Lord-of-the-Rings meets Elric meets Conan meets H.P. Lovecraft world.
We had all night sessions until the summer after graduation we all split different ways. Gaming was and is an important part of my life. Almost all my best friends I have met through gaming. I still have those first figures, the torn, cheeto and coke stained character sheets, and even a few of the hideously malformed dice to remind me of the exhilaration that came in that little flat box.
Les Seabolt. Westminster CO
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** You know the funny thing about this post is how much crap I'm going to get from my group on Thursday's. **
My first recollection is as a 12 year old playing with a friend who had purchased the Expert set (no basic set for us) and enticed me to play with his brother, and one of my brothers as we came ashore on the Isle of Dread (EX 1 I believe). I was a Elf and we washed ashore on a small island that was full of monsters ... I think he has a monster on every 10' section of the island. He became something of a Monty Haul DM and had allowed my younger brother (a Fighter) to use a grappling hook and rope to effect as a ranged weapon ... so somehow we weren't rushed by this horde of goblins, apes and other monsters and cleared the island. Even with that horrible start, I was hooked. Within a year there were a group of 7 or 8 of us playing marathon sessions from the 1st Edition over the summers (and on some schoolyear weekends) to such great adventures as the Giant series, the Ghost Tower of Inverness, the Tomb of Horrors (personally lost 3 characters in there), many of our own home brews and more that I'm sure I've forgotten. I found a niche in our groups with Rangers and Clerics, and remember a friend who had to play a ninja early on.
I still have some of those dice, have upgraded to 3.5 and moved to a new part of the country. I hear crap from a couple of younger players (by this I mean a couple years at most) about being "old" because their recollections only go back to 2nd edition ... but my favorite memories are still of adventuring with my childhood friends
"Did I ever tell you about when I was a ..." Says the old gamer with a glazed look on his eyes ...
My dad taught my brother and I how to play many years ago. 1982 or 83, I think... I would have been about 6, my brother 8. We had the blue book (first ed., not first printing but not far off) and we used little pieces of paper maybe 4in by 6in as character sheets. We started the same adventure maybe three or four times (can't remember which adventure though) and never quite remembered it so we kept wandering into the same traps.
Oh the memories... In 1986 I had picked up the Robotech RPG becuase I dug Robotech and the pictures were cool--I tried to figure out how that book was a game, but I was completely baffled by the whole thing. Later that year I started high school, I mentioned the game to a guy I had recently became friends with and he loaned my the players book from the red boxed set. That thing was great, after reading it through once, and playing that little tutorial adventure I got it.
Not long after I started playing with that guy and his younger brother after school. Even though we never even bothered with modules, plots, or for some unknown reason initiative, and I'm pretty sure we got THAC0 all wrong, those were some of the best days of gaming ever. We figured out Robotech and other Palladium stuff (we played a ton of TMNT) and left the red (and blue, and green, and black) boxed sets behind for 1E AD&D, and not long after 2E--I really don't remember where I got all the money to buy all these books.
Eventually a couple of more people started joining us sometimes, and while I haven't seen my old buddy or his brother in years, the other two guys formed the nucleus of the group I still play with.
Well, I see a lot of new avatars on posts; anyone want to add their story?
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Reading through this thread again reminds me of the very first time I heard about AD&D. A friend was telling me about how his older brother had been playing a game where you can do "anything" that you want to and fight rats and other vermin. This concept was so new and fresh to my young mind that I couldn't understand how a game allowed you to do all of these crazy things. Of course, I also thought that all of this "really" happened like another poster mentioned above. I have to admit that there hasn't been anything else to come along and trick my mind like the concept of AD&D did. Keep the stories coming! This thread is great.
6th grade. Bunch of misfit kids sitting in the shadows of one of the buildings rolling dice. One of them sat behind a paper screen while the others wrote and erased stuff on papers they each had. I wondered, "What's that all about?" Then I actually asked someone if they knew what those kids were always doing at lunch and was told they were playing Dungeons & Dragons.
I had heard that it was some evil occult thing and you should stay away from it. So, naturally I wanted to know more and even try it out ;)
That summer I found out that this younger kid living accross from my cousin was into it so I asked him if he would show us how to play. He was a very bad teacher, constantly complaining about being the DM and wanting one of me or my friends (I got some other curious friends into it, too) to be the DM, even though the other 3 of us had no idea how to play.
I got the Basic set later that year and have been playing ever since.
Five years old pouring over the equiptment list (which seemed indescribably huge and amazing to me at the time) pondering what kind of animal to buy (wanted a hawk trained to scout out areas for me) and wondering how on earth anyone could read a d20 result since so many of the numbers appeared to be facing up...
I was working in a Toy Store in the mall in college back in 1980. A basic set showed up in the weekly shipment. What was this? Was it a game? Where should we put it in the store? We shrugged and stuck it over with the board games.
Customers began to ask about it, curious about the art on the cover. So the boss finally said, "Jerry take this home, read the rules and figure this out. Just enough so we can tell the customers what kind of game this is."
I took it home, opened it, began to read and by p. 10 was hooked, and somehow intuitively knew that this was the game that I had always yearned for.
I brought a friend over and we played one on one. Been addicted ever since.
2001- I don't remember how I got it, but I had a little purple d20 and my fiance (then just boyfriend) was using a name generator to make a first name for my pretty elf girl.
He was so exicted... I was very very confused. He handed me a piece of paper with numbers, my response a few days later was a drawing of the girl with the remarks, "This is my charater." as at the time I couldn't take the stats and get an image of anything.
I also remember my parents telling me I couldn't play because it was a cult and I'd get sucked in. Now the boy that "drug" me into the cult my parents are insisting is the greatest person ever... can't they make up their minds?
Summer 1992 I dont remember how i first found out about D&D but i know once my friend and i decided we were going to play, nothing was going to stop us. Not being old enough to drive (I was 11 he was 12) and our parents not interested in giving us a ride to the mall, we hopped on our bikes and rode across town to buy our first boxed set. It was the one with the dragon and fighter swinging a huge axe on the front. I remember reading the book the first time, and knew right away that I wanted to be the Dungeon Master. Just think, all those monsters and the power to run the world at my fingertips:). Any way, after reading the demo section with "Axle's funny dice" we began the adventure with my friend as a thief my little brother as our fighter and me controlling the minions of the mighty wizard Zanzer Tem.
This is a great thread i hope to see it continue, I love reading these posts, it makes me want to leave work and go round up my dice.
And in case your wondering they did survive the adventure and save the day.
I remember seeing the old basic box set with dragon, knight and fair maiden in a sears catalog, late seventies and thought is was cool. It was what I picked for my christmas present that year. I would try to find anybody to play with me, cousins, uncles aunties, sister and friends. I DM'd keep on the Borederlands: caves of chaos, propably half a dozen times.
It wasn't until the early eighties and I was in eigth grade that a uncle visiting from a nearby college that I really learned how to play the game (and did not have to dm). That and the adventuring world was much larger thatn the caves of chaos.
Thanks Uncle Rand(om)
...we hopped on our bikes and rode across town to buy our first boxed set.
That brings back memories. The closest gaming store was across town. My friends and I would ride our bikes to get the latest and coolest D&D shwag, stare at the cool painted miniatures on display, and sneak a peek at the playboys on the shelf next to the adult comic books.
ahh the out of game gaming memories
Well, so far looks like I am the only one to admit to the dixie cup thing :)
Nope, we did the "chits" too. Instead of dixie cups, we used the plastic bubble things you get in the $.25 machines. Easy to keep track of them that way.
1979 - friend of mine and his older brother introduced me to this "cool dueling game". We made characters using the "Magic User and Fighter" covered box set and fought each other. 6 Monts later, I bought my own Red box set and it has not ended yet.
January 12, 1983. At the age of 12 I took a lone 1st level elf fighter and went through part of B1 In Search of the Unknown. I ran from most things I saw including some troglodytes and hobgoblins I think. I survived and I still have that characters today. I retired him at 11th or 12th level and the character sheet is an heirloom to me.
1982, i was 7 and my friend got the basic red box for his 9th birthday. my character was handed to me as he rolled up one of each calss for the group. he was a thief called Keldar T Sly. i cnat remember which modules we played first, as my first memeories come from Isle of Dread. i remember escaping on a raft from loads of lizardmen down a set of river rapiids and remember after we completed the adventure we decided to go dinosaur hunting for XP and the fighter was swallowed by a T-rex which he killed by using a horn of blasting in its stomach. cnat remember what happened to Keldar but i know i had 3 characters in basic, the other 2 being clerics. the greatest of these was fleetwood dragonslayer who i took all the way from 1st to 36th lvl and ended his career in vengeance of alphaks as the keeper of the green realm after being reincarnated into a halfling after distracting a room full of wizards for the rest of the party. then we moved AD&D...
1980..saw this funny book called Monster Manual in the local toy store.
About 6 months later I bought the 1980 red basic box (with the serpent thing attacking from a pool on the cover) and was entralled with it, especially the brief example of an adventure featuring a human female fighter called Morgan Ironwolf, an elf and a thief named Black Dougal...
I was 10 or 11, back in about 75 or 76, when my older brother told me about DND. He'd learned in Boy Scouts. We didn't have a copy of the rules, so he wrote them down from what he remembered.
I rolled up a couple characters who died very quickly. My first real memory is of a cleric who wandered around in a dungeon and heard an intense buzzing noise. I searched and searched for the cause of it. Finally found a secret door and opened it, only to be stung to death by a hive of giant bees.
Later I created my all-time favorite character, a dwarf named Gilladian. He had a six intelligence and a 4 wisdom. He had a mule companion called Mule-go-bang who kicked down doors for him, since he couldn't find traps on his own.
I remember a couple years later when we moved to Texas, my dad told us "there's a game shop in town." We were so thrilled! We spent hours every saturday at the Bunker.
i started sometime in the summer of 1981 back when elf was a class.my first game my dm david cant remember his last name.gave me a 3rd level elf to play.there was a group of 10 of us there.he even had minitures for are characters.i lasted about 15 min in the game because we all split into groups my group ran into a roc guarding a cave.a shot an arrow hit it,and thats when it took notice of me and proceeded to tear my body to pieces.i stayed an watched the rest of the game and didnt feel so bad when 6 other people had died as well.my fisrt actual mod i played was one that had 2 or the adventures that ran together. i cant remember the name of it but at the end you face loth herself and two other baddies.i at least made it to the end where i met my horrible doom.been addicted ever since.
Wow! This thread is great. I've been playing for over 25 years. I started with the red box set around 82, my first adventure was Keep on the Borderlands followed by Palace of the Silver Princess then We moved on the Cult of the reptile God and kept on going. I've played or DMed nearly every old school adventure their was. I never had to pick chits out of a cup except once when I forgot my dice, for a reunion game.
This is pretty specific...
June 17, 1983. It was a friday.
It was a "play board games afternoon" in the last few days of school before the summer. I brought a chess game and thought I was having fun until I heard four other students playing something in the back of the classroom. They were playing something I've never heard of before.
I waltz in for a closer look. And there it was... The map of the Tomb of Horrors. More specifically, my eyes caught a glimps of the skeleton lying on the ground in the chapel.
"What the heck is this?" I said, not knowing that my life was about to change forever.
Ultradan
Summer, 1979;
My brother shows me a cool new box set he picked up at the hobby store (the main source of game materials before the advent of comic stores, Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc.)
It was a novel, more realistic game than Tunnels & Trolls (which was being tested out at around the same time and eventually fell by the wayside). More fun that board games that were fixed in scope, like Divine Right...it eventually took up an even share of our time against the wargame simulations (Third Reich, Squad Leader, et al.).
My character was a 1st lev. Fighter, straight up.
The Caves of Chaos...ahh...
M