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Another Thread, Old or Young Gamers, made me think about the adventure that turned me into a gamer for life. Then, in the Anyone Survive Tomb of Horrors??? Thread, Ultradan mentioned that that was the one adventure that stole his soul for D&D.
I'm sure Threads in the past have covered this but I'm relatively new to these messageboards -- and since we are losing Dungeon and Dragon it may be time to start one up again. So, what adventure or campaign was your first, or the one that made you a true gamer?
For me, sure I loved looking at the covers of the 1E books, and all the monsters in the MM. The pic of Asmodeus has always been my favorite --even in black and white His eyes are so disturbingly scary -- followed by the full page picture of the Kobolds.
But the adventure I played through that changed me forever was Dark Tower. I will never again find an adventure that terrified me the way that one did. Fine, the reason I was so scared was because I was so young, and because my brother the DM altered things to make it more "dark" but nonetheless, the feeling of being truely afraid before turning every corner or before opening every door will last forever.
-W. E. Ray
I loved the game from the very beginning (back in '77 or '78 - I'm not actually sure which, offhand), but I really have to agree with you about the Dark Tower (by Judge's Guild). That was an awesome experience. It was my wizard along with a dwarven fighter/cleric and an elven fighter/mage . . . We found the Heart of Law right away - the dwarf got it, I think. We were grossly outmatched (my wizard was about 9th lvl & had the most exp's). When my wizard got the Soul of Chaos, I barely escaped my compatriots with my character's life - but was then hopelessly lost! In the end I was able to follow my comrades (invisibly) to the final battle with the lich & the chosen Son of Set. I watched my former comrades fall gloriously - the dwarf more than once, thanks to the Heart of Law - before the incredible powers of the evil pair! When it was over, I killed both badly wounded evil creatures with a x1.5 Fireball (and a great roll)! The other 2 players just glared at me balefully . . . and I admit I couldn't help being smugly pleased with myself. However, being evil now, and therefore greedy, I attempted to marry the Heart of Law to myself along with the Soul of Chaos . . . the DM rolled randomly to determine which power would claim victory for my wizard's body & soul - the resulting explosion killed my character & destroyed *everything* nearby, including magic items. Fortunately, the Heart of Law won and my wizard was ressurected . . . priceless.
A few years ago, before 3.5 came out, Judge'S Guild made a comeback, and I bought it & ran their 3rd edition version of the Dark Tower (I had purchased the original years ago at a Con) and ran it for and "old school" run. We had a blast! That dungeon was decades ahead of it's time. It's really got a nice plot to it! My players got into a knock-down drag-out with the combined forces of the town (or what was left of them) *and* the evil wizard that lasted 5 gaming session! ;^D Literally 30 hours of combat! They ran for their lives from the 3rd level to the fourth, from room to room, but each step was only out of the frying pan, but into the fire! You shoulda heard 'em roar like vikings when they finally achieved victory! I was in tears. It was hysterical! One of the best old-school dungeons ever!
- FM
So, what adventure or campaign was your first, or the one that made you a true gamer?
I think my very first adventure was actually this weird version of the game that I played when I was maybe eight? Maybe a little later.
Anyway, it was only played with a six sider, and my friend ran me through a "dungeon" that was basically a hand drawn maze on notebook paper. And combat was just a yes/no "do you hit the orc?" "do you kill the orc?" sort of thing. I thought nothing of it at the time, but it's clearly odd in retrospect -- like a kid who learned about D&D third hand from his older brother, who was translating it through mugwump (ancient ascii-graphics based computer rpg, yes, I'm that old), or something. Even in my very first ever game, I was playing with alternate rules. Surely this had resounding repercussions, for the rest of my gaming life.
Then I think I started playing real D&D in jr. high, but I'll be damned if anything really sticks out from all that, except maybe when I saved up a lot of cash and bought the original Ravenloft module and ran it. Badly. It was my first time behind a screen. I still have a copy of that on my shelves.
But my gaming really took off in high school and after. The campaign/adventure that sticks out in my mind most from that time was our "Companions of the Crescent Moon" campaign in the Forgotten Realms, and our eventual undertaking of the Desert of Desolation campaign. That campaign was started under 1e rules, and was eventually run under 2e rules. I played a bow-ranger (a frequent character choice), and some of my strongest and fondest gaming memories come from that period. It solidified the fact that I will be gaming late into my life, and will pass the hobby on to my kids, and my friend's kids, and anybody else's kids I can turn on to the fun.
I've now purchased a pdf of the Desert of Desolation, and want to convert it to 3.5 and spring it on my players at some point.
My first brush with D&D was while I was heavily into Magic:The Gathering in fourth grade. A friend at the time ran me and a few people through an impromptu notebook paper game of "D&D"; with yes/no answers, branching paths and random nonsense. I liked it a lot and then my sixth grade teacher told me about the REAL game and I went out and bought the 2nd Edition AD&D starter set with the Macho Man Randy Savage as "Bonecrusher the Ogre" cd for accompanyment. The first adventure I ran was in that starter set, revolving around rescuing a kidnapped elf and finding the Orb of Dragonkind kept in a secret vault. My friends weren't as enthused by the game as I was, but from then on something just clicked with me about it.
My brother started picking things up and reading them when we were very young, he couldn't get anyone to play with him so he bribed me one night(I think he offered to do my dishes)and DM'd Chataeu D'amberville for me, I loved every second of it. It has been over 25 years, and my brother and I still enjoy playing together.
Edit: Now I feel old too.
My first brush with D&D was while I was heavily into Magic: The Gathering in fourth grade...I feel very old...
Just pass me some Geritol while I hobble over on my walker to join you and Lady Lena in the Old Folks Corner.
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I remember playing part of Keep on the Borderlands with a couple grade school friend during a sleep over around 1979? or 80?. I went out that next week and bought the oddly purplish basic rules box set with the horribly drawn dragon on it and a wizard coming down the stairs. I read everything cover to cover and was hooked. A while later my group was hopelessly lost on the Isle of Dread and getting slowly picked apart by dinosaurs and a ruthless DM. We never reached the central plateau. I ran the Isle immediately after with the same group and we had the best time.....EVER! That is the best adventure, for nostalgia reasons, in my head.
FH
Add me to that list headed to the old folks home.
When I was 8 ('82) my babysitters, Nick and Ron, taught me the game. By the time I was 9, I was DMing. Since then I have been a player a few times, but have always preferred the role of DM. "I create worlds!"
We didn't really use modules when I began, but later on some of my favorites where:
The Village of Hommlet
The Lost Caverns of Tsojocanth
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
Against the Giants (must have played this 5-10 times and one of my favorite character names ever is on the back cover--Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter :)
Ah, the memories. Sweet nostalgia. :)
I started at the age of 11 playing in a "homebrew". My first character was a cleric named Lizadrain (I didn't get to name him) who had one spell and a strength of 6. In my first adventure the DM ran our group of 1st level players up against an "eye monster". Guess what it was? I didn't know any better, and since I was a poor combatant I went up to it and cast my only spell...light...and blinded it long enough for the rest of the party to kill it. I was hooked.
21 years later I'm still playing, though there was a 10 year lull in there from the end of high school until just after I got married. I have to credit my wife and her sister with getting me back into gaming several years ago. My wife's sister had been a gamer for a few years and my wife was interested in trying it out too. We've been gaming in a few groups since then, and right now I'm DMing for them and my sister-in-law's boyfriend. Maybe they'll meet Lizadrain. He has been a part of every world I've created as a DM. :)
Oh, and I still have all my first edition stuff...lots of modules (yeah that's what they were called back then), etc. and a copy of Dungeon #1. :)
B1: Keep on the Borderlands. Earliest adventure I remember playing in.
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I've already said that Dark Tower is my ALL time favorite adventure and it always will be, but...
I'll never forget the moment in Ghost Tower of Inverness when we finally found the Soul Gem. I mean, something like that now would not surprise us, or even catch us off guard -- we've seen it all and are so jaded. No trap or twist seems novel anymore. But when that thing -- OUR HARD EARNED TREASURE -- started attacking us like some beholder, it was great. I wish I could be a brand new gamer sometimes.
-W. E. Ray
PS. Keep 'em coming; I love reading these memories.
Keep on the Borderlands, in particular the Caves of Chaos. Mystery of the Snow Pearls also fixates in my mind as well.
The Keep on the Borderlands was my first taste of D&D, but it was Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth that REALLY sucked me in. The cryptic backstory of Iggwilv, all those cool new monsters and some of the best treasure ever made this the perfect dungeon crawl. This is where I started to see just how huge the game of D&D can be.
The Temple of Elemental Evil. Those slug-fests down in the Greater Temple will stay with me until Alzheimer's rots my brain.
Ha! Remember the violet fungi curtain? Back in those days the violet fungi was a death sentance, which is exactly what happened to one of my players who got too close...
The Temple of Elemental Evil. Those slug-fests down in the Greater Temple will stay with me until Alzheimer's rots my brain.Ha! Remember the violet fungi curtain? Back in those days the violet fungi was a death sentance, which is exactly what happened to one of my players who got too close...
Yeah, TOEE was the one that really grabbed me too. I remember one of the guys in our party was killed by a Cloak of Poison (or was it Petrification?) that was on a statue. You put it on and you instantly have to make a save or die. He died. I still remember him yelling "who the f**k would make a Cloak of Poison and then just put it on a statue!?"
Ah the old days - It didn't always make sense but it was always fun.
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I don't have an adventure that sticks out, since my first group ran a lot of home brews, and not much published material.
But I was really hooked when I snuck in my older brother's room and boosted his Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. I read the whole book cover to cover, a lot... And doing so in study hall at school one day is how I found my first group.
I still drag that book down from the top shelf when I need a few good ideas.
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I was older than most when I started playing. I was well into college. The first adventure that I remember playing in was Skarda's Mirror. It was a lot of fun and I remember that I got to keep the mirror in the end.
I think I still have that character sheet somewhere. I don't know if I would remember much about 1st edition AD&D. Of course if I went back to find it again, it would probably crumble to dust. (Man, do I feel old -- save a spot for me in that old folks home and we'll show these young whippersnappers how to play...)
The Avatar Trilogy. I was 14 or 15 and I just watched an episode of Taggart (Glasgow cop show) which included a role play game story.
I was talking to a friend and his family had played D&D so he offered to run something. He had no books so went out and bought second edition when it was quite new and the forgotten realms setting to cut down on prep (old grey box version).
It was fantastic and I've been hooked ever since. My avatar name is from that first character. I am still good friends with my first DM twenty odd years later and he is now in my game group as I have more time to prepair.
Currently I'm enjoying watching some new players experience the game for the first time with Shackled city.
Elcian
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My first exposure to D&D was at a Boy Scout camp back in 1981. I didn't play but what they were doing looked like it was pretty cool. One of the guys from my troop (Brad) played and kind of explained what they were doing. Not too long after that, I picked up the Tom Moldvay Basic set and created my first character. (He as a Basic D&D elf. I think his name was Torc.) Brad and I went to the same church so I mentioned to him that I had picked up the basic set and that was enough to get me invited to a game. The module that we played was "Keep on the Borderlands" which to this day remains one of my favorite adventures of all time.
As a note. Although that was a round 26 years ago, I still play with Brad in my bi-monthly Ptolus game.
I make most of my adventures; such was the case with my first experience playing real D&D. A friend got me into Baldur's Gate and NWN, and I decided to find out that this "pen and paper" thing was all about. Our grouo had no older, experienced players to teach us. We've had to learn everything as we go.
I ran an extremely basic adventure, but everyone loved it. There was a town threatened by some gnolls and an evil cleric (or maybe a wizard?). The party was recruited, went to the cave, and the fun began. The two things I remember most from that very first encounter are one of my friends absolutely falling in love with ranged combat as he shot at gnolls on a cliff, and my other friend, a paladin, grabbing on to a rope ladder as the gnolls pulled it up. Somehow, they didn't notice the extra weight (read: I didn't realize they would), he gets pulled up and attacks the gnolls, who dies and drops the rope, sending the paladin falling 20 feet to the ground. :)
They crafted a trap, placing a trip wire in front of the cave. Then they yelled in or something and got the orcs to run out and fall over it, where they decapitated and generally mauled them. They went inside, and found a Mysterious Symbol on the ground, which no one fell for and they had the NPC rogue go see if it was a trap. It was, he set it off, and nearly died of the gas.
Then there was the door and the BBEG on the other side, with some zombies. I had previously determined that the NPC rogue had a paralyzing fear of the undead, so he didn't do anything that fight and was severely critized by the party afterwards.
And that was it! The town was saved, the bad guys defeated, and their treasure looted. Later, I would run my first dungeon, which I made completely on the random charts in the 3.0 DMG (the result was... interesting... to say the least), but that's another story.
Just curious- have they made a revamp of ToEE? I know they have several old modules in PDF form now, and I think I might like to take a look at this if they have it.
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Just curious- have they made a revamp of ToEE? I know they have several old modules in PDF form now, and I think I might like to take a look at this if they have it.
They made a Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in 3.0 which is a large book with over 200 encounters and something like 35 maps. It is like it's own campaign. Beautifully done but you would need to do some conversion to 3.5 (which shouldn't be too hard)
It is an Uber-adventure so it will be expensive to pick up.FH
I was 10 years old (in 1979) and some teenagers ran a group of us through an AD&D adventure at my church - it was an event organized by my church that ran through the summer, I think. The dungeon was one they populated themselves using the Dungeon Geomorph Tiles - printed in blue ink, the squares could be turned any-which-way and would connect up.
My first character was a dwarf wizard (they didn't argue with us kids about stuff like that). I had one spell, Sleep, plus some darts as my one weapon proficiency. I died fairly early on, and they gave me a dwarf fighter as a replacement character. I was a complete coward. Eventually we reached the final encounter of the campaign at the end of the summer, a red dragon with a big pile of treasure. We all went trooping into the cave with no particular idea what we were doing. The dragon breathed on us, and I was one of two characters to survive. I went and hid in the hallway, and the other guy killed the dragon all by himself, and I think he died at the end of the fight. Then I got an award for Best Survivor (everyone else died more times than me).
I remember how excited I was when I saw the pack of geomorph tiles later and realized I recognized the layouts as that original adventure.
They made a Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in 3.0 which is a large book with over 200 encounters and something like 35 maps. It is like it's own campaign. Beautifully done but you would need to do some conversion to 3.5 (which shouldn't be too hard)
It is an Uber-adventure so it will be expensive to pick up.FH
Yeah, I'm running a group through that right now... it's a beast of a module. But a good one.
I started playing when I was 13, back in '77. (Yeah, I'm one of the Geritol group as well.) The very first module I ever played in was the one in the back of the blue basic DnD book. I had a ranger that was killed by a giant ant. I had no idea what initiative or armor class was but I had just finished LotR and I was sooooooo in love w/ the genre that the game couldn't possibly have missed hooking me.
The best memories I have was the whole "Against the Giants" series that ended w/ a knock down drag out battle w/ Lolth herself... I mean the vernerable Drow were first introduced in that series of modules. How could you go wrong with them taking center stage?
But taking a very close second was for sure "The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth". Like a few posters before me, this was one of the defining modules of the game.
I loved the art, the treasures, the new monsters, the story...heck, that thing was a work of art in and of itself. Fantastic module. Anyone know if it's been converted somewhere? I would LOVE to introduce some of the "newbies" I've been playing with to that module.
Ah the memories. "Thick as fireflies on a summer evening..."
Here's to the coolest game ever invented. May it live in our imaginations forever!
My brother started picking things up and reading them when we were very young, he couldn't get anyone to play with him so he bribed me one night(I think he offered to do my dishes)and DM'd Chataeu D'amberville for me, I loved every second of it. It has been over 25 years, and my brother and I still enjoy playing together.
Edit: Now I feel old too.
You played Chataeu D'amberville. You are old. that one was wierd and creepy. i always remember the ghost dinner set up.
the first adventure for me was Keep on the Borderlands. But if there is one favorite old school adventure it would be White Plume Mountain. I must have played and DMed that adventure more than a dozen times.
Just pass me some Geritol while I hobble over on my walker to join you and Lady Lena in the Old Folks Corner.My first brush with D&D was while I was heavily into Magic: The Gathering in fourth grade...I feel very old...
Don't forget my oxygen tent and portable defribilator.
As to old modules and such, if you can get Palace of the Vampire Queen or Thunderhold, they were pretty fun. Note, though; they were for original 1e not the later boxed editions. That may make it even too old for what you're doing. You might be able to adapt them, though.
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I had already been playing for a few years when I received the original Ravenloft adventure from my best friend for my eighth birthday. I might have eventually lost interest in D&D and found different hobbies if not for that adventure. Even with all the hoopla that came after, nothing Ravenloft-related can even begin to compare to that module. Even the recent hardcover lacks something that the original had, although I can't quite put my finger on what. And so, at the age of eight, I6 captured my imagination forever.
the first adventure for me was Keep on the Borderlands. But if there is one favorite old school adventure it would be White Plume Mountain. I must have played and DMed that adventure more than a dozen times.
Both lots of fun.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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My first D&D experience was a single-player game run by an older kid at my after-school program when I was in 3rd grade (for the fogies out there, that would be 1993). I played a dual-classed human fighter/mage because I really wanted to be a spellcaster but I didn't want to get killed all the time. I can't remember any of the details of the game (I don't think it was any module in particular due to the fact that the kid ran the game with nothing more than a notebook and dice) but I remember sitting in the corner of the room, far away from everyone else, and just playing out these amazing and fantastic scenarios while the other troglodytes watched Disney movies and played Old Maid.
The kid had photocopies of the relevant pages of the Player's Handbook and Monstrous Manual that he kept in a three-ring binder but he never brought any actual books to school. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure they might have been confiscated if he did. Such was the attitude of the time, sadly.
My first brush with D&D was while I was heavily into Magic:The Gathering in fourth grade.
I never got into Magic, mostly cause it was way to expensive for my parents to be talked into buying the cards. It's funny though, becuase people just assume I like/play it becuase I play D&D. Silly rabbits.
My first 'adventure' was DMed by my father. I don't remember the character or what happened but I liked it! I think I made him give me a pretty horse...which sounds like me. Anyway, we used to just play around with it all the time without ever really going through a module. I honestly don't remember who my first pen and paper character was, though I'm thinkin her name was Trista and she was a halfling...something. He didn't have anyone to play with, and my brother and I were there. I used to play a lot of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, which is kinda like playing by yourself in a super railroaded module, so I guess those were truly the 'first' campaigns I ever completed theorectically, since I would start over all the time and make new characters. G*$!@*n, I'm such a kid. :P I guess my first 'grown up' game was a few years ago, DMed by my friend Rich, where I was a gnome cleric of Ehlonna who would cut the crusts of sandwiches for the boys. She's currently raising kobold babies and trying to introduce them into the town as 'respectable children'.
I do remember reading 1E rule books and mods for fun. One of my favorites was the Deities and Demigods with the Cthulu/Melnibonen pantheons. I liked the pictures and the stories behind each deity.
Keep on the Borderlands
DMed by my mom when I was 10 or 11, in 1980 or 81, and I've gamed ever since.
One of the two first level characters I rolled that weekend even survived (including the 1st edition Tomb of Horrors); he was a dwarf named Wormbog, a name I got from my favorite children's book.
DMed by my mom
Now that's just cool right there. :D
By reading the posts of the ''old timers'' I feel like I missed the golden age of D&D. I started playing 4 years ago this summer after dropping our Star Wars game (the old 6 sided dice version of it).
Saddly, I must confess that I have not yet played a truly memorable adventure/quest, but my DM created or used some pretty interesting vilains: Zawar Orliss, Dracota and the enigmatic Lord of Dust (we never had the chance to discover who or what it really was).
We are currently playing Red Hand of Doom, I hope that this will be the ONE.
My first brush with D&D was while I was heavily into Magic:The Gathering in fourth grade.I never got into Magic, mostly cause it was way to expensive for my parents to be talked into buying the cards. It's funny though, becuase people just assume I like/play it becuase I play D&D. Silly rabbits.
everybody thought I played Magic as well. I always thought Magic was a strange hybrid of D&D and the old card game War. But, what do I know? The producers of Magic end up buying the D&D franchise, who would of thunk it.
The other game is World of Warcraft. People (non-gamers) don't understand why I still play pen and paper D&D and not Wow. Silly Wabbits, D&D is for hyper-imaginative gamers.
My first 'adventure' was DMed by my father. I don't remember the character or what happened but I liked it! I think I made him give me a pretty horse...which sounds like me.
My father thought D&D was strange and bizzarre like his egg head son. Although I was a bit of an athelete in highschool (I was a closet D&D dork back then), so sports was something we had in common.
I do remember reading 1E rule books and mods for fun. One of my favorites was the Deities and Demigods with the Cthulu/Melnibonen pantheons. I liked the pictures and the stories behind each deity.
that one is rare. They reprinted the 1st edition deities and demigods without the Cthulu/ Melnibonen stuff cut out of it, because of copyright laws. Do you still have those. they are probably worth some bucks on e-bay as collector items?
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My first D&D experience was a total party kill. The adventure was self made and didn't last longer than five minutes.
Why was I "infected" by D&D?
I read the original Dragonlance novels. And before I had read lots of sagas and Grimm's tales. When I glimpsed 2nd edition PH the illustrations looked quite fammiliar (2nd edition style was much closer to saga illustrations). And I thought: Cool! A game for playing these stories!
Greetings,
Günther
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Another kid in my class introduced me to AD&D (2E) when I was about 11 or 12, and I was hooked from the first adventure.
I don't think it was a published module, but the DM used a city map which I think in retrospect might have been the 3D Greyhawk city map I've since heard about - only he made the city an underground one in a giant cavern.
I played an elf wizard named Anarian Swiftfoot (who eventually made it to 12th level through a number of different campaigns, before being captured by Azalin in Ravenloft). We also had a dwarf fighter and a gnome rogue (and no cleric that I can recall). The fighter contracted lycanthropy fighting a wererat in the city arena, and the BBEG of the adventure was a wizard who could polymorph into a dragon.
I started DMing about two years later, when our original DM moved to another city - taking his D&D books with him! For the better part of a year our group survived on photocopied pages from the PHB and borrowed 1st Ed Monster Manual and Fiend Folio, until we scraped together enough money, and found new players, to be able to afford the books ourselves.
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My first adventure was Keep on the Borderlands - who could ever forget the Caves of Chaos.
My favorite early adventure was The Lost City (B4). I loved the recent addition to it in Dungeon.
My favorite early adventure that I was the DM was Castle Amber. I have not played that one in years.
The adventure I have run the most. Castle Ravenloft (but I loved Feast of Goblyns even more).
Peace all...
Like ShamusMcFool, I started playing in '78, when an American friend of mine returned from the school holidays with the old blue boxed set. No-one else knew about D&D, so I had to play the whole party while he DMed! We soon graduated to AD&D, with me switching to DMing and enlisting as many other players as I could. I haven't actually run many PCs myself since.
I remember buying the mono-coloured G (for Giants!) series as it came out, reading them on the train or bus home, and being impressed with the successive escalation right through the D (Drow!) series to Q1. In terms of adventures I've run, the classic campaign began with the U (Saltmarsh) series and included many of the UK modules, with the highlight probably being the original Desert of Desolation series (I3-5). In later years, I switched mostly to using adventures from Dungeon magazine, and still do...
First D&D module that I ever played was when I was about 10 or 11 (2002 or 2003...lol....I'm a young'un:)
Anyways, we played The Secret of Bone Hill (the first one in the low level section).
I then went through a 1 year rut and then I got back into 3.5E. I'm DMing my own campaign and on of my friends is DMing Red Hand of Doom.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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My first experience was with the Greyhawk Blue Box (the one with the guy riding a griffon on the front.) I think we adventured around Karystine's castle for a time, using that as a base of operations. My earliest memory of anything remotely resembling a cogent campaign was when we ended up around Eyebite Castle (the basis of my handle) and we fought against the wizard Shiner there in several (mis)adventures.
Good times. This would have been late 89, early 90, at the tender age of 10 years old. I remember the Greyhawk Wars Red boxed set as well.
I don't think I've ever seen stats on "Shiner." For nostalgia, anyone know anything about the guy? Remember him at all?
(I have a feeling he didn't necessarily wield godlike powers like he did when I was a kid.)