Did your very first character die or level up?

[dougmander]

It was at a demo game during MaineCon '77. My 1st-level elf bashed down a door. Two orcs rushed out and slew him. I was hooked for life. Bummed $5 off my friend Roger so I could buy the Holmes boxed set.

 

[Quantarum]

1981 D&D basic, Jailae Shuntec human cleric, bear food on our second encounter. Recycled him for a friend's game and he made it to 9th level before the game ended. -Q.

 

[Iron Sky]

None of the above. I started with 2nd Edition AD&D and the DM moved after I played twice... so I never really got to play. Then I became full-time DM for a decade.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

My first RPG wasn't DnD, however, my first DnD character was an human cleric who made it all the way to 5th level in AD&D 2ed.

 

[Wormwood]

I joined an after-school D&D group in 5th grade. They handed me a 3rd-level wizard character sheet and explained a couple of spells to me.

Rolled some dice, killed a green slime.

I opened a chest and saw a gold coin. With the instinctive greed of a ten-year old boy (or seasoned adventurer), I grabbed it only to learn it was a "gold bug"; an insect camouflaged as a gold piece, concealing a poisoned stinger.

Failed my poison save and died on the spot.

They told me that since my character was dead I had to leave the game. I never went back, and 30 years later I still harbor bitter resentment for that twelve-year old jerk DM.

 

[Kinneus]

I was going to answer "4th edition, and he leveled up," but then I remembered I tried playing once with a friend when I was a kid. I think it was 2nd edition, or possibly early 3rd. I made something called an 'earth elementalist', which I thought sounded cool, but could only cast stone fist and everburning log. After about an hour or so of wandering around the woods fighting 'gibberlings', I had to go home for dinner. The game continued without me, and I was later informed my character was eaten by a dragon.

I tried playing again later, with just him and me. I made a druid; he put me in an urban investigation adventure. So, yeah. Never really got into D&D until 4th edition, haha.

 

[Lanefan]

There's no "both" option in the poll, but my first character - Dumystor Danara, Crown Prince - in fact died before gaining a level *and* gained levels through play. (I voted that he died, because that happened first)

He was a Crown Prince, brought in as a raw 1st level Ranger in a 1e game. The party he was in didn't bring him back (truth be told, they killed him; and he deserved it), but others did, and later he joined other parties and gained a level - all the while trying to make it back to his homeland...which was on another world. Eventually he made it home, only to resurface *years* later in another campaign where he went on to gain a few more levels before getting punted back to his homeworld once more.

Lan-"the guy is still alive, out there somewhere"-efan

 

[Dice4Hire]

I'll have to vote I have no idea.

 

[Starfox]

1979. I wasn't actually playing ONE character, but a whole party, tough the Magic-User was clearly more me than the other guys. There was just me and a friend of the same age as a DM (we were 13 at the time, and English was pretty hard). My characters advanced to 3rd level pretty quickly. One reason might have been that the concept of monster hit dice did not really penetrate: 1+1 hit dice was interpreted as an odd way of saying 2 hit points. Only much later did we notice the introduction to the monster chapter saying monster hit dice are 8-sided.

 

[unan oranis]

basic dnd, 1987. First thing that happened was I fell in a pit, dm fiat that I roll a d6 and on a 1 I break my neck.

I rolled a 4! Played a few sessions, pretty sure I went up a level.


First actual death was in 1990, 1ed. A pack of piranah-dogs. Didn't level.