At what age did you start gaming?

[ElvishBard]

I started playing Pen and Paper RPG's around 14, but I was playing RPG's on the computer way before that. My dad keeps telling me about some sword and sorcery game I played on a console with him when I was six lol. I am 17 right now, and I plan on gaming for as long as i can.

 

[dead]

I started at age 11 with the basic set with the red dragon on the cover and B1 in the box. My friend used to DM. We never knew you were supposed to play just one PC. I had a whole party of 10 characters!

Mike

Back in the old days a player would have many PCs under his wing. I think that's because the game was more combat-oriented (like a wargame) and not so much focused on roleplaying and character development.

 

[dead]

Crothian may have a point, I'm pretty sure that if I were a guy, I would have been one of the ones playing Magic in the back of high school biology class.

Actually, you make an interesting point. In my experience, all the girl gamers that I know started gaming no younger than about 20-years of age.

I wonder if this a trend in the RPG community?

 

[shilsen]

Thus far it seems I started latest among those taking the poll (all alone in the 25-30 category), and that's mainly due to circumstances. D&D has never been marketed in India (AFAIK), so I never encountered it, but I'd read about it and thought the idea of a game played almost purely in the imagination was incredible.

When I came to the US to study at the age of 24, I bought the three core books, read them cover to cover, and taught myself the rules. A year later, I found out that one of my students was in a D&D group and he asked me to join, and I never looked back.

As for what "society" thinks, by that age I had worked out years ago that life is too short to waste time and energy thinking about society's opinions, so I ignored it.

 

[aceofgames]

When I was a freshman in high school, a friend took me to the local gameday. I got hooked. Now a few years later, I DM my own homebrew campaign. Weird thing though, I've never played a single RPG on a computer or video game console. Never had the time to blow hours on it.

 

[replicant2]

10 years old, fifth grade, 1983. Basic D&D with the Erol Otus box, sorceress and fighter battling a green dragon. Came with rulebook, dice, wax crayon, and a copy of B2 Keep on the Borderlands.

Ah, the memories. And the Moldvay edition is still arguably the finest incarnation of the game.

 

[Lord Foul]

I started when I was about eight.

I was staying over at a friends house. My friend and I were spying on his older brother and his friends playing a game (D&D). We were fascinated. The next morning we asked his brother to teach us the game.He didn't seem too thrilled but said ok. We rolled up our characters, bought armor and weapons, and got ready to play. The first encounter we had was aginst two wolves. We killed them (this was a little over a day out of town). Then he told us to subtract one days worth of rations from our sheets. Since we didn't have any rations we decided to eat the wolves. To make a long story short, the wolves were diseased and we died.

That took a total of 30 mins. His brother laughed and left. As soon as I got home I made my father go out and buy me the box set (the red one IIRC).
I've been playing ever since and I'm now 35.

(After I buy my arms and armor I will not buy anything until I buy rations.)

 

[Hypersmurf]

My parents gamed on a Friday or Saturday night, and they took us with them. (My sister, pre-crawling, was once stood on by a DM, but that's irrelevant.)

We'd usually sit around and listen, or read a book, or whatever, until we got tired, then crash behind a couch or something. (The games usually went until about 1am.) I credit those early experiences of sleeping in brightly-lit rooms with people talking and laughing with my knack for being able to nap anywhere today

By the time I was five, I was well-familiar with the three 1E Core books... I had the casting time and duration of pretty much every spell in the PHB memorised, along with the standard equipment tables (though we never used weapon type vs AC adjustments, so I didn't learn those ). My parents' group would frequently ask me, rather than bother looking something up.

When I was 6, my mother ran me through a cut-down, solo-modified Palace of the Silver Princess.

And after that, I joined their group.

I look back, and think "How could a bunch of late-twenties gamers have tolerated a six-year old in the group?" One of my players, a couple of years ago, had his twelve-year-old son join our group, and it just about drove me nuts.

But I'm assured that at six, I was a better player than this 12yo, and that it wasn't really a case of 'tolerating' me.

I'm not sure I believe them... but nevertheless, I'm forever indebted to them all for even considering the idea in the first place

-Hyp.

 

[MDSnowman]

I was eight years old and it was Christmas... my uncle bought me the D&D rules cylopedia, The Poor Wizard's Almanac and a bunch of minis that he'd painted.

To this day that is still my favorite uncle ever (I only have 8 of them )

Of course it wasn't till I spent the better part of a year decoding his copy of the AD&D player's handbook that I got really into the game. It was from there that I got into Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape.

I remember that day when I discovered that they actually dicontinuied settings... it wasn't pretty :\

 

[Platinum Dragon]

I started when I was in 7th grade back in '82. Been hooked since, Now my family of 5 3 of us game. raising my kids to enjoy the same pleasures as myself.