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D&D: You never forget your first..

Krug

Newshound
From the book Dungeons and Dreamers:
http://www.dungeonsanddreamers.com/chapter1-1.html

It sounded a little like the books he’d read earlier in the year, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. After several minutes had passed, Richard leaned down, tapped the leader on the shoulder, and asked him what they were doing.

“It’s Dungeons & Dragons,” the boy responded, not looking up. “It’s a role-playing game.” That didn’t help much. Richard had never heard of the game, and he didn’t know what role-playing was outside of his occasional role in the local theater. He stuck around for a little longer, listening to the game unfold, while the Dungeon Master that was the leader’s title—wove the tale.

Other students drifted over, too, and before long the original group had to stop and explain in more detail. Richard quickly joined a game, and others did as well. By the second night, the little lobby was filled with several gaming groups, all telling each other stories of dragons and skeletons and orcs. Girls were as eager as the guys to play, and they threw themselves into playing their characters with just as much bravado.

The role-playing helped them talk to each other in ways that shy high school kids might have had trouble doing otherwise. It was a little silly at first, pretending to be a dwarf or elf or magician, and “British” Garriott exchanged embarrassed grins with other players more than once, but once the stories started flowing it all seemed to make sense.

After the initial social awkwardness of strangers faded, other barriers fell. Among the first to go were the rules imposed by the gender-segregated halls. The college-aged chaperone tasked with keeping boys and girls apart moved one of the female students into his room, and the other girls and boys quickly paired up.

One enterprising student figured out a way to jimmy the locks, keeping them out of the closed half of the dormitory, and soon the theoretically off-limit rooms had become hideaways or clubhouses for couples and gaming groups. Richard and his summer girlfriend laid claim to a particularly choice room with a door labeled “The Crypt ” in dripping, blood-red letters, with a full-room mural depicting a swamp creature about to abduct an oblivious half-naked woman.


I remember when my brother bought back the game and we played over a dining room table with the neighbours. My mom wondered what the heck was this game.. and the rest is history. ;)
 

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The first time I played, my best freind and I used graph paper and imagination only. We thought that was how DnD was played. We were totally unaware there were actually rules for Dungeons and Dragons.
When we actually bought the books a year or so later we had to debate for a while which was more fun.
*sigh* fond memories.
 
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In my first game the DM had never read a single 3e rulebook, even though that's what we were playing. We chose him to DM since he claimed to have played before.

I played a half-orc barbarian with 20 strength, my sister played something annoying. We had no clue why we were in the dungeon, but we fought a couple of gnomes (not MM gnomes. Small things that we stepped on to kill) a Purple Worm (we were first level, but we didn't have the MM so he just gave everything HP and an attack.) and in the last room he gave us the boss of the dungeon- a normal hobgoblin.

We earned about 25 XP in that adventure, but when we got started for the next one the DM told us that we would be playing 2nd level since it was the 2nd adventure, and that's just how things were done.

I went on to continue playing with that DM, even after I realized he was full of crap (which didn't take long) because he was the only game in town. We went on to have many dungeons and adventures, the most memorable being a 4th level adventure we had after the GM got the Monster Manual. I played a 4th level druid, his brother played a Pegasus, and he played a sentient Shield Guardian. He didn't understand the HD rules, so we still doubled our HP every level.

The thing that made this most memorable, was the fact that part of the dungeon was basically a row of rooms, each filled with a fully grown dragon.

It was after that that I decided that maybe being DM would be a nice change of pace...
 

Hmm.. I was an elf. Yeah, back when that was all you were, an elf. We were on some island, getting keys for some reason. Eventually, the islanders realized what we were doing and a mob started chasing us. By then we had all the keys, and tried to run away. For some reason, I ran slower then my companions, even though one was a dwarf. The mob caught me, and killed me. My courageous companions ran on. They got to the edge of the island. Finally the DM revealed that I was running slowly because I was carrying our collapsable boat. They got killed too.

Man I hated that dude who DMed us. And he hated me too. But I didn't know any other DMs. I quickly found a couple, and became much happier.
 

Labor Day Weekend, 1976.

Just before I left for a Boy Scout Jamboree (ugh) the UPS guy showed up at my door bearing a package from Brookhurst Hobbies -- my new game that was described as "a new kind of wargame, but you play it with pencil & paper instead of miniatures. Written by one of the guys who wrote Chainmail"

That weekend, while other people were talking about CB radios and lashings, I was trying to describe hit dice, character classes, and ochre jellies.

As luck would have it, I already had dice (Very Low Impact bought at a science museum -- "Look! Dice based on the shapes of the Platonic Solids!").

Three days later I set up my first dungeon and forced two buddies to play.

They loved it.

I've been gaming ever since :D
 

Way, back, 12 years ago, I was invited to play a strange game called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons by a on-and-off again friend named Kaz who's mom was a DM. Happily, and obliviously, I went along. Learning the 1e AD&D character creation rules in a sort of crash-course of gaming, I made a character: Lancelot the human wizard. I can't say it was my pinnacle of creativity, but what the heck. We started out playing U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and I was simply hooked ever after. I didn't end up playing through the entire module with them, nor did I even stay in the campaign.

A year later, a new friend of mine and an old friend decided we'd like to play this D&D thing. Unfortunately, being 11 made it hard to afford to buy books, so we made all our rules up and used lego men as our "miniatures". This went well enough, but there's only so many campaigns you can play where your principal opponent is a flying shark that bites off heads. Another year later my friend and I were discussing one of our games on the bus to school when a bully who previously was picking on us perked up and started talking about D&D with us as well! In the end, he leant us his old Red Box and we were in business.

I think later that year (I'm fuzzy on exactly when now), my grandparents bought me the 2nd edition books for Christmas, and that was that. Happily gaming ever since. :)
 

after months and months of saving, my brothers and i had finally saved up enough money to puchase a sega genesis (this was a buck or two a week allowance each for the three of us, until we had saved enough to buy the 130 dollar system). Then we realized that we needed more than one game, and our mom had said that she would buy us a game as long as she got to choose. She chose "Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun" because it looked educational (my mom btw is a fantasy nut so i am wondering how that planned out). We gave it a try for a little bit, couldn't figure it out very well how to play at first but eventually got the hang of it. So anyway, after a while we are loving this game that is based on basic D&D and a few months later we stumble into our Mall's Waldenbooks and see this strange boxed set of the original D&D. We talk it over with my mom, and she buys us the new D&D set, and later that night we break the bad boy out. I remember a few things, mainly: i played a dwarf named sammy, which my mom killed when i tried to slay a large snake; my mom dmed for a long time, instead of reading at night to us, she took us through that introductory adventure; when rolling up characters, my brother declared that he wanted to be a fighter and promptly rolled a 3 for strength; i think i may have cheated and added a 1 next to the 7 that i had for strength; my lil brother played the worst(best?) magic user ever, since he was about maybe six or seven at the time and couldn't really spell Maguk Missal very well... Whatever it was it was a blast, and the rest is history.
 

One summer my cousin Mike ran me through the old module B1. I remember putting a chip of rock in my mouth and gaining lots of ability score points. I didn't really get what was going on (I was 10), but when I got back to school a couple of the guys had this cool blue box with a wizard and a fighter opening up a room with a dragon on a huge pile of treasure. They didn't even have dice back then, you got these crummy laminated chits. After that, I was hooked.

Oh, but I always did want to play a fighter/wizard and I was totally bummed that I couldn't do it until the "Advanced" hardback books came out. They were the coolest thing EVAR!
 

We were on a camping trip with relatives, and my uncle got out his latest issue of Games magazine and said "here, you're always making up stories and drawings and whatnot, you might be interested in this." It was an article about this strange new thing called "roleplaying". So my parents got me the blue-on-white set (the one you remember, BiggusGeekus) and we played a little, but my parents never really got the hang of it. Fortunately some friends at school did understand the rules, and a few years later I managed to wheedle my parents into getting the AD&D books (one at a time, for birthday-Christmas-birthday).
Don't remember my first character, but my favorite from those days was Snakey, the lizardwoman mage. (She had a brother, Sneaky, a thief, but he died early.) Rarely had to load up with food, just ate slain opponents. :D
 

I remember being invited to this guy Steven's house. He had helped me with a Stasis deck of Magic: The Gathering cards, so I instantly thought he was cool. He invited me for a game of AD&D. I had been interested in AD&D since I played Baldur's Gate at my friend Chris's house. He also tried to get me into some of the books he got, although I only read the one for thieves.
I remember the session with Steven. We sat in the living room with his friend (I can't remember his name). Star Trek: The Next Generation was on in the background. Steven showed me these miniatures of dragons, fighters, dwarves, etc. His friend was playing around with a box of Planescape stuff, like putting a fold-out on as a hat and such.
I was a thief who was visiting this metropolis. I had a Cloak of Elvenkind and I thought (and still think) it was the best magic item ever. Some guy had tried to pick pocket me, but I cut his hand off into my money pouch. I had to run from the police, and I ran and hid (with the help of my Cloak) in an alley. That's as far as we got in one day, and we ate pizza before I had to leave.
I never heard from Steven after that. I see his friend in my FLGS every now and then. He buys a lot of AD&D stuff from the discount shelf.

Ah, memories...
 

Into the Woods

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