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So what was your first gaming experience?
I remember going to my friends house at the corner and staying up late one summer playing 1 edition DnD. We had the little red box I picked up at a toy store one year for Christmas. Then one day we found ADnD and dragon magazine with a couple of extra classes including the Archer. I even still have my 1st ed copy with notes in the back for my first house rule, the Volcalist. a base class that could do many of the same things as a Bard. I even had names for each level.
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My older brothers group at the last minute had both guys that played fighters call and say they wasn't coming. I always liked reading fantasy anyways and the guys didn't want to cancel. So my brother came grabbed me and basically made me play with them. Secrets of Salt Marsh and I played the pregen character in back Leifstern. On the boat I ended up with the pseudo dragon. At first I was meh about the game, it was cool getting a pet though. By the end I was hooked and wanted to play again.
Basic D&D where elf was a class. Fumbling through the rules while trying to teach one or two friends. Most of the time we just free formed. It was easier than constantly looking up your 'to hit'.
Ah geesh. I think it was before the red box edition back in the 80's. My fourth grade teacher had it as one of the games in our classroom and I took it home with me to read up on it. It's the one where you can actually do as a solo adventure on your own where you played a Dwarf Fighter and essentially choose-your-own adventure. Which one was that?
2003. I'd been playing Neverwinter Nights for about four or five months after moving out from Texas to Arizona and meeting my first batch of college roommates. The one who introduced me to NWN came up one day and said "Hey, I'm starting an actual D&D game. You want in?"
Half-Drow Hexblade was my first actual PnP character, in a postapocalyptic semi-horror storyline. Got to level three I think - about six or seven sessions - before the game came to an end for reasons I can't remember.
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Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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Got the original blue/purple box with a red dragon on the cover for my birthday in 1978 from my aunt and tried it out with my dad and my sister (Adventure B1: In Search of the Unknown). It was rough going, as I had no idea what a "role playing game" was. Once I realized the map wasn't to be used as a playing board, I figured it out. I've been hooked ever since. My dad and sister, not so much...
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I had decided I wanted to get into fantasy RPGs 6 years ago as a way of expressing creativity and being free from programming limitation of video games. It just so happened that my brother's friend had the 3e box and wanted to find some people to play with, so him, my brother and I went to his basement (It was winter i think, there was a fire going). We ran through the sample adventure it came with, with me being stuck as DM (we rolled for it). It was also the introduction of a couple of running gags that have stuck with us, like the whip-o-flame (an oil covered rope lit on fire) and craft (MacGuyver). It was also the start of a gaming group that lasted until last year when said friend moved half an hour away. I knwo it's not far, but it's inconveniant and inconvenaint things tend not to last.
On the upside, It's also the time that I discovered how much I love GM-ing games. I've tried playing and I don't mind it too much, but I'm never happier then when I'm behind the screen.
Ah, nostalgia...
craft (MacGuyver)
Luckily I got to this one before I got to my soda :D
My older brother had started playing D&D with some friends of his, and decided to teach me some. He did pretty much everything for me--rolled up my character, an elf wizard, which i didn't even choose--and we started playing. It was pretty fun, though being young (probably seven or eight)the campaign ended when I couldn't wield the goblin's morningstar and threw a tantrum.
My best friend of those days picked up the Basic D&D set at a yard sale. He suggested we try it out and made up a fighter for me based off the original fighter. He extrapolated out the hp and I went on various dungeon crawls with my friend as the GM. It wasn't till high school that I met other gamers and joined what would become the core of our gaming group.
I first played D&D on lunch break from school in Madison, NJ in 3d grade. My unimaginatively named Dwarven Fighter, Joe was my first character. I played with a group of guys I'd just met, but through gaming we became fast friends.
Back then, there were three channels on the tv (four if you count a very grainy, ghosty PBS) Pac-Man was the hottest video game, D&D still came in a box, and The Empire Strikes Back was about it for special effects. It's amazing how far imagination can go towards entertaining a young kid if you let it.
I've played with many groups since then, but Jeff H, Max and Greg are at every session I play, in spirit anyway. I was lucky to have such a bright, creative and dedicated group at an early age.
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My first game was actually with a group of kids that had always antagonized me in middle school. This was in the latter days of 2nd Edition, and I heard them talking about D&D at school. My dad was a gamer for years, ever since OD&D, and so I recognized what they were talking about and asked them if I could play. Most of them said no, but their DM said yes, and by the end of that night I had a whole gaming table's-worth of new friends. We gamed together for a long time :)
My first gaming experience is a bit of a two-part story.
The first part revolves around me moving to PA with my mom and then stepfather as an 11 year old. I was active in my church then(Episcopal), and became involved with the church youth group. Within that group there was some talk about "starting up Dungeons and Dragons again", but since the suicide of a member of that same youth group a year or so ago who was really into it, everyone was quite leery of it. I had only heard very little about D&D and at that moment in my life I bought wholesale into the idea that it was all about devil worshipping and sacrificing maidens to demons and such nonsense.
I would not hear about the subject again until I moved back to NY after my mom's divorce. In High School now, I fell in with the school Science Fiction Society and learned of some peopel who were planning to either play Star Wars or Marvel Super Heroes. These fascinated me, as did the strange dice they used, so I asked about it, and we got a game going(during school time on school grounds! EAT IT people who didn't go to Murrow! HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!). I liked both games(and truly fell in love with old school MSH), but there was one guy at the table who kept talking about how much he missed his wizard. I asked him what was up, and he told me he played D&D. Now the thing about this guy was that he was a serious Jew- a group of people I never associated with devil worship- and his best friend was a pagan- people who I thought worshipped Satan just 'cuz. So I was a bit on the fence for a while with my mixed messages/preconcieved notions. Still, they had seemed to be good people(noone who worships Satan would be nice, nor would they know anything about comics and Star Wars, right?), so I went out and spent the ungodly sum of twenty american dollars on the 2.0 PHB. This lead to an ill-concieved attempt to actually play D&D with my mom..but that's a story for another time. Suffice it to say, I was hooked on gaming from that point on.
Summer of 1981, I was 10, about to turn 11. Donald, who lived across the street, was 13. My parents invited a family friend, a couple with a 13-year-old son named Ronnie, to stay for a few days, and Ronnie and Donald started talking about D&D. I was both confused and fascinated. Neither one of them could explain it to my satisfaction, but my interest had not gone unnoticed. A month or so later, I got the brand new Basic red box for my birthday.
After puzzling over the book for a few days, I followed the instructions and made up a character. A magic-user, whom I named Galen Bradwardyn, after the main character in Dragonslayer. But I still had no idea how to actually PLAY the game.
Donald came over and ran me through the Caves of Chaos. As a magic-user with 3 hp, you can guess how that went.
Donald: Pick a cave. A through K.
Me: Uh... start at A, I guess.
Donald: OK, you enter a dark cave. The tunnel goes straight ahead.
Me: I go forward.
Donald: OK, you go twenty feet in and you fall in a pit. (rolling dice) You take 4 points of damage.
Me: Is that hit points? I have 3.
Donald: OK, you fall in and die.
Me: ... OK, then what?
Donald: (thinking quickly) A giant hand comes down from the sky, picks your body up and crushes it into dust.
Me: OW!
Donald: It lets the dust fall through its fingers, and the dust lands on the ground and reforms into your body, and you get up.
I think I died at least a dozen times that day. But shortly after playing that out, I introduced the game to my friends at school, complete with resurrecting hand, and we plowed our way through the caves of chaos five or six times before anyone ever thought of getting a new module (and losing the hand).
A while after that, Donald invited me to join his AD&D game at his friend Jack's house, and helped me make up my first AD&D character, which I think was a ranger, but I can't really remember doing any cool ranger things like dual wielding or tracking. I remember playing a wide variety of characters and I have no recollection at all of any continuity in the game, but that could be just because I didn't get it at all.
I moved out of state when I was 13, and never really joined another group until college, though I did play one-on-one with my best friend in high school. When I joined a group in college, I found out how cool the game can be with a great DM, and it's probably because of him that I'm still playing today.
A quick timeline.
1965..My Dad introduces me to Wargaming at the age of 5..rules are quick and simple and make use off whatever figures we have available..later that year we get Donald Featherstones 'Wargames' from the public Library.My love of the ACW begins.
1971...Our town aqquires it's very own Wargames club..me and dad are founder members.
1972..I read the Hobbit for the first time..
1973..we start playing LoTR games at the Club using the old Minifigs range.
1974..one off our members buys a strange little game with 3 books in a box called 'Dungeons and Dragons' I'm hooked..the rest is history.
My first Character was a Cleric..can't remember his name as he only lasted until the third room in the dungeon which was inhabited by 144 orcs and a Black Dragon..
My Dad died 11 days ago..today would have been his Birthday..happy Birthday Dad
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I, too, am of the Red/Orange Basic D&D generation. I was introduced to it on the school bus on afternoon, and begged my parents to get it for me. I was in second grade (1981), and my dad was my first DM. My two older sisters were my first adventuring group, and they HATED playing, so our game sessions were always on a timer (1 hour). My first character was a fighter (human, of course, RAW).
We played the Caves of Chaos as a random choice (i.e. "pick a letter") like several other posters have mentioned.
Once we reached level 3, I was anxious to go further, so my parents bought me the Blue Expert Set, featuring the Isle of Dread. By fifth grade, the AD&D hardback books were calling my name, so I started begging for them instead.
So, nearly 30 years later, here I am. Still geeking it up. ;)
Donald: Pick a cave. A through K.
Me: Uh... start at A, I guess.
Donald: OK, you enter a dark cave. The tunnel goes straight ahead.
Me: I go forward.
Donald: OK, you go twenty feet in and you fall in a pit. (rolling dice) You take 4 points of damage.
Me: Is that hit points? I have 3.
Donald: OK, you fall in and die.
Me: ... OK, then what?
Donald: (thinking quickly) A giant hand comes down from the sky, picks your body up and crushes it into dust.
Me: OW!
Donald: It lets the dust fall through its fingers, and the dust lands on the ground and reforms into your body, and you get up.
Ahahahahahahahah!!!
Kind of a personal question, dontcha think?
My first campain, I was the DM. It was a rough learning curve, and back in 2nd Edition AD&D.
My first campain as a player, however, was the same one as Orthos. I played a "New Human" (halfling/human type mutation or hybrid) Ranger without divine powers. (The world was post-apocalyptic.) Orthos' roommates were the DM and 3rd player.
Said 3rd player decided his level 2 swashbuckler could survive a 300ft falling/rope swing trick straight into a cavern wall... because he had max ranks in tumble (5 ranks iirc). It took me cracking out my physics knowledge (yay for acceleration, velocity, position, and calculus?) and showing him how fast he would have been going when he hit the wall for him to finally stop arguing. It took 2 1/2 hours.
Which lead to the now-infamous quote between us of "Geronimooooooooooooooooo-OH SH*T!"
This is the same player who threw a dragon at our level 3 characters when he was given a chance to DM. It did not go well.
