The Joy of Discovery (Share stories of your or others first RPG experiences)

[Sniktch]

I had originally posted this on Randomling's House, but then I figured that the users at ENWorld might enjoy this too:

I feel the need to share this story with all of you; I hope it takes some of you back to your first experiences with D&D

My wife's family reunion was this past weekend. After it ended, we headed to her grandmother's - a hotel/bar near the top of a mountain in small town PA. A fair number of other relatives were staying there, including three cousins ages 12-14, one of whom had just gotten a set of 3.5 rulebooks for his birthday. So the other two were bugging him to play, and I asked if they wanted me to DM for them.

Does it ever get better than the first time the DM begins describing a scene to you, and everything is mysterious, and dangerous, and unknown?

A short time later, three intrepid neophytes, a paladin, a druid, and a rogue, set out from their home village into the wide world around them. The first obstacle I put in their path was a small chasm, only five feet wide but of indeterminate depths.

First the three young warriors determined five feet by making one of them lie down and looking at how tall she was, guessing whether they could jump over her or not. The rogue decided he could and sailed across the gap. The druid got back up off the ground and followed him, scoring even higher on her jump check. The paladin was worried that his breastplate was too heavy for him to jump. They examined their packs for rope but they'd all been too excited to get under way and no one had remembered to bring any along.

So the druid and the rogue went into the woods and started hacking a nice sized branch off of a tree to extend to their friend across the gap. While this is going on the paladin has a flash of inspiration. He takes off his breastplate and throws it across the gap, then takes a running jump and lands beside it. His friends return lugging the branch to find him on the other side already, smiling and strapping his armor back on.

"What, we cut this branch down for nothing?" the thief complains, but then they continued down the road.

That evening they wander into a small village, and the villagers tell them that every night a demon beast has been coming into the fields and eating their crops. They offer a reward if the beast can be defeated. So the three settle down to hide in the field and wait for the beast to show itself.

As darkness settles across the land, the druid notices something large moving out of the woods and into the field. She shows me her sheet and points to a spell, faerie fire, and asks what it does again. I tell her its used to illuminate things to make them easier to see or attack in battle. She says, "OK" and then whistles to attract her friends' attention. A round later after the thing attacks she asks about the spell again, and this time she decides to cast it The demon beast is revealed - a huge centipede! (note: I was very much ad-libbing. I had no books in front of me, so the centipede ended up with a 13 AC, 25 HP, and a bite attack with +4 to hit. Since I failed to hit a single time in the ensuing battle, this worked out just fine )

After a short battle the druid rolls a natural 20 with her scimitar, confirms the threat, and ended the threat to the village. The overjoyed villagers reward our heroes with a sack of corn, and the location of a mysterious cave in the woods nearby. Journeying to the cave, our heroes are confronted with a series of riddles - solving a riddle opens the next area, guessing wrong sets off a minor trap. Over the next hour of play time, they defeated the 5 riddles I challenged them with, only guessing wrong once (a riddle with an answer of wedding ring. The kids found this one the toughest, as none of them was old enough to really consider marriage as a solution at first).

After guessing the final riddle, they are rewarded with a gold ring with a polished red stone set into it. None of them has a clue what it might be, so the paladin puts it on and they exit the cave, continuing towards a temple that was rumoured to be nearby.

They exit the woods after a day, and after another day they find themselves entering the foothills of a mountain chain. I could tell they wanted another fight, so I placed a 'fire spirit' in their path (basically a fire mephit with me guessing the stats again). In the first round of combat it throws a blast of fire that badly injures the druid and thief. However, the paladin stands unscathed, the only change is that the stone on his new ring is glowing brightly. Here the kids got very excited about discovering the magical properties of their treasure and much cheering ensued.

When the excitement abated the druid tended the wounds of herself and her companion while the paladin stood bravely and faced the mephit. Deprived of its fire attacks, the beast goes down after a difficult battle.

It was getting close to 2 AM at this point and I ended the game, awarding them experience for their journey thus far. It comes up to 800 each, but I smile and tell them they each got 1005 instead. Another large cheer as they consult the chart and see that this takes them up to level 2 (I didn't tell them they had levelled up, just that they had earned 1005 xp ). After helping them figure out the changes for their new level, we went to bed.

The next day when more cousins arrived I could hear a constant twitter and buzz as they huddled around the GameCube - "Uncle is a very good DM" - that kind of thing. I just had to smile and sit back, closing my eyes and remembering the first time a young Rat Bastard drew his sword and entered a dark cave, and how wondrous everything seemed back then.

So I want a newbie group now. Gaming with my group is certainly fun, a good chance to hang out and catch up on the week's news, hear the latest jokes and gossip, and smite some enemies in the process, but it lacks that magical quality and sense of discovery that we had starting out, so many years ago. Running a game for three brand new players really energized my love of the game, and I look forward to doing it again.

So what was your first experience with D&D like? Feel free to use this thread to share your first RPG experiences, or any stories about introducing new players to our hobby

 

[threshel]

That was simply nostalgic. I'm still smiling.



Long ago, and not so far away, I received the Vaunted Red Box Set and within: B1 - The Keep on the Borderlands. After being run through it by a friend, and finding the experience instantly addictive, I conspired to bring my younger brother into the fold. I cajoled, begged, pleaded, and generally bugged him to make a character. All of this type of attention must have been a novel thing for my brother, who typically was the one doing the bugging. Eventually, he relented. A mighty hero was rolled up, and into the Keep he went.
You can see where this is going, right? I mean, I had only played the game once, I was 12, he was 7. So not knowing anything about DMing, or what it means to have *more* than one player, he walked boldly in and was faced with his first decision: left, or right?
He chose left, and was immediately confronted with his first Orc. The kind that looked like pig-headed men, with none of this fur and great-axe business. He drew, it snarled, and we rolled initiative. The Orc won. It didn't use a weapon, it simply balled up its fist and struck. I rolled max damage, 4 I think, and we checked it against my brother's PC's hit points.
He had 4. One dead PC. He had literally been in the Keep for 5 minutes. My brother didn't look as if he was enjoying it very much.
OK, I said, lets try this again. I figured the lose-init-get-hit-for-max-damage combo wouldn't happen again, and I said as much. With some hope, he said OK.
Again, our hero enters the Keep, again he chooses Left, again he faces the Orc. He drew, it snarled, and we rolled initiative. The Orc won. It hit, and I rolled damage: max damage, 4 points. Dead PC.
My brother has never played since. I've been a RBDM *ever* since. Only now I know about things like making a game fun, and fudging dice (although I never, ever fudge dice ).
Some people remember their first character. I don't. I remember my first DMing experience, such as it was.

J

 

[Sniktch]

That's great, Threshel - reminds me of my first time DMing. I'm afraid my poor mother has never played an RPG since.

We were playing Basic Set, Red Box, Keep on the Borderlands. I was 7 or 8. She made a fighter named Aardvark according to the rules, rolled for HP, and got a '2'. I tried in vain to convince her to re-roll, but she insisted that she didn't want to cheat and thus poor Aardvark, with all of 2 hp, ventured alone to the Caves of Chaos. Needless to say, within 10 minutes Aardvark was dead, and my mother never tried to play again.

Luckily, I got better.

Anyone else have a story they'd like to share with us? I really look forward to reading about others' early experiences with the hobby

 

[threshel]

Awesome, Sniktch. I wonder how common that experience was? How many of us tried to lure someone in, and failed in exactly that manner? Not that I'm looking for an answer, really. I was just struck by the similarity of the experiences, and the realization that it probably happened to more of us than I thought.

Anyone else? C'mon, don't be shy.

J

 

[Mortepierre]

Anyone else? C'mon, don't be shy.

Aaaah, memories …

I was 12. I had joined a RPG club and, by sheer luck (or so I believed at the time), there was an open spot at the local AD&D (1E) table.

I joined the team, excited at my first game, having received the PHB as a birthday gift not a month before.

Turns out the team was going through a (heavily modified) Temple of Elemental Evil module and the players all had characters in the 6-7 lvl range.

Since they were missing spellcasters, the DM asked me what I would like to play and – being a true newbie – I answered “elven wizard!” (how stereotypical can you get, eh?)

Enters my 5th lvl elven wizard, trying to find a group at the local inn.

The other players (all aged 15+) size him up and decide to teach him who’s in charge.

The dwarf snarls and spits at me. The paladin insists on using his Detect Evil to make sure I am not an evil spirit. The cleric (of St-Cuthbert) says that unless I convert on the spot, he wouldn’t heal me. And the monk says that given rings are about the only magic item he can use, any we find are his unless I want to end up with a broken neck.

Imagine how cheered I was by that welcome …

Nevertheless, I decide to suck it up to be allowed to join.

We leave the inn, travel in the wilderness and (don’t ask me how or why) end up at the entrance to an old tomb. The others say it’s my chance to prove my worth and bid me enter first. Since I wanted to be accepted, I went in.

Long story short, I end up facing a mummy. Despite a good beginning (Burning Hands does work rather well on these..), I am defeated and gets to hear the monk ponder how much he’ll get from my stuff once they defeat the (now weakened) monster.

Needless to say, I left the table and that group with a sour taste in my mouth.

That’s when another guy at the club told me not to feel bad. Those guys simply didn’t want any more players joining their group. However, the club’s rules forced them to allow people to try their hand at the game if they wanted to. They simply acted like jerks to discourage those people from staying.

I also learnt that other members wanted to play AD&D but none of them felt like DMing and they had all been scared off by their experience with the “nightmare group”.

In a fit of anger, I said “well, then we’ll form our OWN group!” and volunteered to DM it.

I have been a DM ever since. A very bad one at first (heck, I didn’t even own the DMG at the time) but, hopefully, I got better in the 20 odd years since then.

In a sense, I suppose I should be thankful for that group from hell. Without them, I might never have tried my hand at DMing…

 

[threshel]

Hey, sometimes you learn first how not to do things.