D&D General What got you to try D&D?

[DarkCrisis]

A long time ago a friend of mine insisted I read this novel called “Dragonlance”. I resisted but being on a long car trip with nothing else to do (Gameboy could only get you so far), I read it.

And I’ve loved the fantasy genre ever since.

I read the DL trilogy and started another series about a Dark Elf Ranger. Which lead me to Baldurs Gate and to EverQuest.

2nd ed was in its end game when I finally decided to “try the real thing” but 2E is some of my fondest memories. I went to a local game store and they were nice enough to teach me.

My first ever character was a duel wielding human fighter (previously a fisherman). His one wish in life was to marry a mermaid…. Instead he died to a Death Knight on the final assault of the Big Bads castle..

 

[jmartkdr2]

My older brothers played. Apparently I was nosy enough for them to let my try.

 

[Stormonu]

I saw it on a piece on the (NBC?) Nightly News, and asked for the game for Christmas (Holmes edition). Oddly enough, I think the piece was about James Dallas Egbert III ...

 

[billd91]

I had heard of it on the bus from a friend when I was in 5th grade - his older brothers played it, but then I largely forgot about it (my friend moved away). The following year, another friend got the Holmes edition for Xmas and we just poured over it on the bus to and from school. That summer, he DMed me through my first adventure. I was the sole player that day and had rolled up 6 characters - one survived.

 

[Oofta]

Going into the way-back-machine (cue wavy visuals and music), I've always enjoyed reading. Sci-fi and fantasy novels were my favorites with lots of Tolkien, Lieber, Burroughs, etc. Then one day a friend came back from college and told his brother and me about this new game he had started playing.

Soon we were delving into dungeons, rotating DMing and spending way too many hours on the weekends playing the game. I still have my old dice set somewhere and a handful of character sheets from back then. The D20s at the time had numbers 0-9 repeated twice, so you had to color in half the numbers to indicate 11-20.

The rest, as they say, is history.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Read about it in a computer or electronic magazine in the late seventies. The article was in a programming column and was explaining the concepts behind MUD text adventures.
I thought that sounded cool and checked out in later years when the opportunity arose.

 

[Deset Gled]

When I was a kid, my parents bought me a Red Box as a present (Xmas? Birthday? I'm not really sure). I liked fantasy stuff at the time, and they did too, so it seemed like a good idea even though they didn't know much about D&D. But before they could give it to me, I, along with some other family members, got into the Adventures in Odyssey radio show. For those that aren't familiar, it's a religious media franchise. It features a very satanic-panic episode about D&D. My parents were worried I would be afraid of playing D&D because of the show, so they kept the Red Box hidden for awhile.

My parents were patient and eventually gave the Red Box to me a few years later. I tried it a little with a couple friends, but by that time sci-fi was much more "cool" with my clique. The fact that the Red Box was no longer the "current" edition probably didn't help. So I switched to WEG Star Wars pretty quickly and didn't come back to D&D for some time.

 

[ichabod]

My older brother played The Fantasy Trip, and would sometimes play things like Melee, OGRE, and The Creature that Ate Sheboygan with me. I played some one shots of B/X and AD&D in middle school, but didn't get into a campaign until high school when some friends needed someone to play in their Dragonlance game.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

When I was a precocious and annoying kid, I would go over to the house of a good friend.

While I was there, my friend's much older brother would be having his friends over to play a game that looked absolutely amazing. Later, I would learn that it was OD&D. At the time, I just knew it was the coolest thing that I had ever seen.

So I literally made myself an annoying pest until they let us play.

For my troubles, I was given a cleric.

 

[TwoSix]

Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds back on my Commodore 64, circa 1988-89. That made me familiar enough with D&D tropes to make picking up a shiny 2e PHB in Waldenbooks a no-brainer in 1990.