Your First Gaming Book?

[KB9JMQ]

1980 Red Box Set. I was 14.
Took it home and was DMing for my brother 11 and sister 5 within the hour.
Still have that box. Used to have all those character sheets also until a couple of years ago I decide to put them on a computer and tossed the sheets. Then of course the pc died.

 

[Alcamtar]

1981, I was 14 years old, picked up the D&D Red Box (Moldvay) Basic set in a department store. I had no idea what it was but it just looked cool. I picked up the Cook Expert Set soon after, and played these exclusively until 1984 when I picked up the AD&D orange-spine books.

Mike

 

[eryndel]

Moldvay (I believe) Basic Set in Christmas of '81, I had just turned 7.

 

[Arkham]

Call of Cthulhu, 3rd edition (IIRC) in '91-'92ish.
I was 17 at the time.

 

[kerakus]

I first read and understood the Red Basic box set (without the crayons) in 1988 or 87, loaned from my step-brother who noticed how I was devouring the Dragonlance Chronicles in lieu of silly things like homework and such. Soon there-after my step-brother got me the red box for birthday or christmas or somesuch, along with the FR solo book Knight of the Living Dead, and the AD&D solo adventure with the red ink and the "magic viewer"...never could figure out how to play that last one.

Q

 

[D+1]

16. But the survey doesn't quite make that answer make sense. I happened to be that old when the game first came out! If I'd have been a lot younger when those books first came out I'd have still understood them. It wasn't that I HAD to be that old to understand them - I just WAS.

 

[Greatwyrm]

While running a small, junior high loan sharking operation (no, I'm not kidding) I accepted a Dragon Magazine as collateral. I read it cover to cover, more than once, and decided I had to play that game. I've been hooked ever since.

 

[DMAC]

Somewhere around 7th grade my friend's brother used to run Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness for us and I picked up a copy so that I could learn the rules and build characters on my own for fun. I loved the element of chance involved in the random animal generator tables, not knowing what you were going to be.

A couple of years later I started reading the Dragonlance novels and picked up the Dragonlance Chronicles hardcover and 2nd Edition DMG and PHB. My collection has been growing out of control ever since...

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I think age ten.

The first "RPG" experience I had was with the "choose your own path" solo adventure books.

The first real RPG experience I had was with the Red Box. Nothing too complicated in there for a 10-year old.

AR

 

[Samothdm]

I was 12, it was the early 80s, and the first "book" that was my own to read all the way through was the Boxed Set with the Erol Otus cover (I think called the "Purple Box"?).

However, if memory serves, I think that the first book I actually looked through was a friend's copy of the 1E Player's Handbook.