Do You Remember Your First Game?

[Teflon Billy]

I had seen an expose on TV about how D&D made heavy metal-listening teens into Satan worshippers and thought to myself "I have got to get in on this".

My friend Joel's brother Mark was apparently a D&D player, and Joel had "filled in" for missing players a few times (as younger brothers are won't to do). He convinced MArk to run a game for us so we could learn how to play, but when the day came, Mark stood us up.

All of the stuff was there though, so we decided to give it a shot.

Joel was the DM (using his brother's homemade dungeon "Bugbear Castle" as the adventure), and I made up two fighters and a wizard.

My Fighters (Alexius and Harcourt, whom Joel continually referred to as "Alew-ishus and Warcart", due to my atrocious handwriting) wee each walking arsenals. With no idea of how AC worked, I just purchased whatever caught my eye off of the equipment lists. This meant that while they each had, I think , Chainmail, they also boasted a Heavy Crossbow, a Light Crossbow, a Longsword, a Mace, a Battle Axe, a Spear, 2-3 javelins, 5-6 daggers etc.

All because of Joel's warning about a never-used "parrying rule" that destroyed weapons.

The wizrd character had a Sleep spell (natch) and carried basically one of every other item on the lists: 10' pole, 10 iron spikes, 50' of rope, Lantern, blah blah blah.

I lost an average of one guy per room we entered, but every time we rested, Joel would roll for wandering monsters. My first game ever was my first experience with 'DM Fudging", and he constantly rolled until it was elves or dwarves, then continually rolled til they were friendly

In retrospect it was a terrible game, but we mostly liked the miniatures an the dice, so the game itself was kind of secondary.

We played nightly for about 3 years once we got a better grasp on what was going on

In later years Joel turned to highschool sports, while I lived out my dream of being a heavy-metal thug. We didn't talk a great deal after that and never played again.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

My second or third game had me DM'ing my cousins in 1980 when I was nine. One of my cousins had a crossbow that shot "quarrels". We didn't understand how a crossbow could fire anything other than an arrow, but we looked up "quarrel" in some dictionary for kids and sure enough a "quarrel" turned out to be an "argument". Combats got very confusing after that.

I notice that nowadays crossbow ammunition is refferred to as "bolts".

 

[WayneLigon]

First Game

So I hear these people in the back room of the hobby shop where I've come to purchase 'Chitin'; saw an ad bout it in Analog and it sounded interesting so I called all over town looking for it.

This was.. '77? Or '78. Memory fails me. I don't think the first Monster Manual was out yet, but I'm not sure.

Anyway this looks like fun so I sit down with the group and they need a new person. I roll like I'm told and since I get a great Intelligence, I'm told I should be a magic user. One spell: Magic Missile.

No-one suggests a name. This should have been a clue.

The party is travelling overland across vast plains. We meet a caravan. Everyone else seems very nervous for reasons I can't imagine but we eventually bed down for the night along with the caravan merchants. Who soon throw off their disguises and reveal themselves as Mind Flayers. Ten minutes of screaming, fire tossing, burning wagons, squealing horses and yells of 'Run!' later, my poor nameless wizard is pounced by a Mind Flayer and has his brains sucked out of him like they were fine patte. Dead. Twenty-five minutes into the game, dead. No wonder they didn't suggest a name.

Of course I was back there next week...

 

[FungiMuncher]

I first learned about D&D in a Games Magazine article in the late seventies, when I was 14-15. Took me about a nine months of scouring every store in town to finally find a single boxed set with the red dragon picture.

In my first game, I was the DM. I was the only DM for my friends for several years. Things I remember from those early years:

Using dice and scraps of paper for the figures.

Creating whacked out dungeons over stocked with monsters who'd never sensibly coexist with each other (trolls and red dragons?!).

The efforts trying to find the first edition PHB and DMG. Then finally finding a hobby store with any one having a clue as to what I was talking about, and were willing to actually order items, and then the excrutiating wait for the MM to arrive.

Tormenting my players with a couple Wands of Wonder; one player recieved multiple Shrink effects, and was six inches tall!

The hallway of endless consecutive pit traps.

Waiting the entire night for the mostly non-violent argument between the lawful neutral dwarf and the chaotic neutral elf to end.

Finally getting a clue about adventure design, and creating a land in the plane of Limbo which was inspired by the Yellow Submarine movie, treatened by invading vegetable humanoids!

FM

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I can't quite remember what my first D&D game is, but the first one I really remember was the day Silas Cormon, Paladin of Lathander, killed a very young white dragon all by himself in 2e Shadowdale in the FR.

Silas eventually became Silas Wyrmslayer, and died many game and realtime years later at the top of Dragon Mountain.

 

[pogre]

Blackmoor

Accidentally bought the Blackmoor supplement first and even at my tender age I realized "something" was missing. That Winter Mom bought my brother and I the original three book set and a new module "S1 Tomb of Horrors". I killed him about four times and we decided we still did not have it right. We did not realize that was truly the purpose of the module!

That next Summer the Blue Box with "B1 In Search of the Unknown" came out and I finally understood the game enough to play. We became wildly addicted after playing the adventure in the back of the basic D&D book - the Tower of Zanatros - or something like that. I think Arneson's Basic edition was the only way kids like us could figure out how to play without help from adults.

 

[Storm Raven]

Creating whacked out dungeons over stocked with monsters who'd never sensibly coexist with each other (trolls and red dragons?!).

Add Fire Giants and you pretty much have described G3.

Finally getting a clue about adventure design, and creating a land in the plane of Limbo which was inspired by the Yellow Submarine movie, treatened by invading vegetable humanoids!FM

Isn't this pretty much what S3 was about?

 

[EOL]

I can't remember if this was my very first time or not, but as I recall rather than starting me at 1st level the DM started me at 4th, and the first thing I encounted was a grey ooze sitting on the stairs we were suppossed to go up. I had this picture in my mind of a big grey pancake, so I took out my ten foot pole and tried to get under it and flip it off the stairs. Boy was I surprised when my pole evaporated. At that point I'm reasonably sure I decided I no longer had any desire to go up the stairs...

 

[Orco42]

My first game was about 7 years ago. It was a darksun game and I played a Psion/Perserver. My main tactic was to use Telekenesis to lift one baddie and then drop him on his friend. We also had an elf cleric, a half giant gladiator and a mul gladiator.

In game one we found 3 iron coat hangers and jumped up and down with joy.

In game two we, a 3rd or 4th level party, killed a 9th level defiler.

There was no game 3. The DM had to quit so I was forced into DMing after only 2 sessions. As I look back on the first games I ran I see they were really bad (Super Monty Haul) but we had so much fun. Just recently I bought all of my original DM's D&D stuff and in one of the books was the character sheets for then entire party. I had blotted out the name of my first character until that point. It was some mispelling of Drizzit (I know... I suck).

Of I have lost touch with 2 of the 3 other players, but perhaps I will see them one day and we can play one more time.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

How many people here recall their first D&D games?

I was exploring the Google Usenet archives when I stumbled across one of my very very old posts. This was my response to a thread on ‘first characters’. The grammar is very crude, but I did correct most of my spelling, however.



Those were the days… I’ve had many games off and on over the years, good and bad, but none of them have captured the childish fun of those first few years.

Sam

Wow - what an unbelievable memory you had to be able to recall this in such deatil from 1978...

My first D&D experience was about the same time, 1978 or so, but we only had the boxed set to use. I was about 9, and went to the local comic book store to meet an older friend there and tell him it was time for dinner ( my mom was visiting his mom across town - this was his turf ).

I saw my friend sitting at a table surrounded by several other teenagers and an older guy ( Gee- he must have been in his THIRTIES! ) calling out to each other these rediculous actions, and rolling lotsa dice followed by cheers or moans. After lurking for a while, I was asked by the "old" guy if I wanted to play -

I was given a charachter ( I think I played a fighter, but I'm not sure ) . Our party ran accross a mounted thug who was described as having a large pendant or amulet hanging from his neck. I spent every attack trying to hit it, thinking this must be the right thing to do. I missed every time. And then I died. I was in love.

After a reprimand and cold dinner, I remember longingly looking through the three books he had at home, and my friend running me through the charachter generation process and even a short encounter or two...

I never played with him again . Hell - I don't even remember his name ( Chris? ), but I will always be greatful...