Did your very first character die or level up?

[Thornir Alekeg]

1979 - Basic D&D - an Elf named Thor.

Leveled several times until I played him in a pick-up game with a DM who took exception to the name. He had the Norse god show up during the adventure and kill my PC. DM was a jerk who insisted on tearing up character sheets of PCs he'd killed so they could not reappear in any other games. Hey, we were 10 or 11 years old.

 

[slwoyach]

Damaen, 1st edition human fighter created in 1987. I actually dragged him through several gaming groups and even updating him to 2nd edition (becoming a myrmidon), last playing him in the early 90s. He made it to 9th level before retiring. Man, now I want to break him out again and update him for the Conan RPG.

Now that I think about it he almost died before even reaching his first dungeon. I was 10 and didn't think anything of pulling a two-handed sword for a bar brawl. Of course I killed someone and we had to flee town. An assassin hired by the family of the murdered (yes I guess it was murder) ambushed him in an alley with a poisoned dagger and I barely made it back to the inn where the rest of the party was hanging out.

 

[billd91]

Mixed. My first experience playing was the Holmes Basic set and, since I was the only player, my DM had me whip up a party of 6. One leveled up and I believe the other 5 all died.

 

[Wik]

Started with a 1st/2nd combo, running through the solo dungeon with my dad. My character, "Nelf", did wind up gaining a level. Mostly because if the dice were going against me, my dad would probably have fudged things since "the DM would have, if he were here". I got a lot of magical loot, too, thanks to "creative re-rolling". Who knew so many orcs and kobolds had such fine stuff?

I remember a few years later, getting Dming advice from my dad - and it's really the only piece of gaming advice from him I use. It goes something like this:

At the start of the campaign, you gotta do a few things in that first session. 1) Make sure the party levels up. 2) Make sure any player that's never played before doesn't die, and gets a magic item. 3) Kill a PC.

Here were the reasons why:

1) Levelling up the party gets the group invested in the campaign, and attached to their characters. It also discourages that guy who always makes a new character - if you're already levelled up, you're less likely to make a new PC.

2) Having a character killed in your first session is likely if you run the game by the rules, but very discouraging (It tends to make players feel like they're "bad" at the game). By giving them a magic item, you tend to "hook" them. My dad always said you should give a +1 weapon as that first item, but I believe a wondrous item with minor powers works better (give the item a "trick").

3) By my dad's reasoning, if you kill a PC at the start of the game, the group knows you'll do it... and they'll play accordingly. By my reasoning, if you do it at the start, they won't realize you're fudging things later on. And you have no connection to a starting character - provided you've played before, it's not really much of a loss (you can get away with not doing this one if it's a group you're familiar with).

 

[David Howery]

my first character was a 1E ranger (just barely had the stats for it), rolled up for a group going through module A1 (slave lords), so we 'cheated' and made him 4th level instead of 1st (no magic though, just normal gear). The doppleganger got him about halfway through. The rest of the party retreated and regrouped (which basically meant I rolled up a new character), and my second character, a basic fighter, joined up. In the final encounter, an enemy cleric held the entire group, except my fighter, who made his save (the only positive thing he did the whole game). Of course, he got slowed moments later, and the slave lords stood back and watched their pet orcs chop him up. Not a propitious start for my D&D career...

 

[amysrevenge]

lol

1989

Human Duelist, level 6 (the rest of the players had characters of level 14+).

Died in about 5 minutes.

Turns out to have been an informal initiation - I was allowed to make a beefed up character like the others right away.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

1983. 1st level BECMI fighter of an unremembered name.
Killed by gold dinner plates.
Start over.
Killed by gold dinner plates.
Start over.
Killed by gold dinner plates.
Start over.
Killed by gold dinner plates.

Screw you, Bargle! You can keep your stinking gold dinner plates!

 

[Wombat]

It was OD&D. The character was Elhul of Dharzhu. My brother was GMing (I had been running the game for about 6 months at that point and he had gotten cheesed off at me for killing one of his characters).

So, I died. Within the first hour of play.

So I created another character Elhul II of Dharzhu.

By the end of the night, I was up to Elhul V of Dharzhu ... or why I still remember the name after all of these years

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

My first character was a Holmes Basic Elf. He fell to the poisonous bite of a giant spider on the 1st level of the dungeon during my first adventure (a chute deposited the entire party into the web, and my poor Elf was the first one down -- another PC avoided becoming stuck by landing on top of him). Happily, he was later avenged. It was very satisfying killing that spider and recovering the bones of fallen comrades.

 

[deganawida]

2E, died first game. Was my first time playing real D&D (not D&D flavored free-form storytelling with no rules). The group let me role up a character. The DM introduced me to the group by describing me chained up against a wall, totally helpless. The group then took turns shooting my character until he died. I wasn't given an option to do anything. DM said something like, "We told you we'd let you play, but we never said you'd play long." and then walked off.

Not the best introduction to D&D. Still, I love D&D, and have kept at it (with a different group!) through 3.0, 3.5, and now 4E.