Do you remember your first RPG purchase?

[Kannik]

Very much remember. It was Top Secret. Ran it for my friends, who then ran it in turn. Been playing RPGs ever since.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

My first RPG purchase with my own money was the Pathfinder Core Rulebook (1st edition). The group with I played D&D 3.5 before disbanded and only the DM had books, so I had to get my own books. Owning the rulebook was also what plunged me to the forever DM seat.

 

[ColinChapman]

Red Box Basic, as did so many of us. Though it wasn't my first fantasy gaming product; that honour goes to Warhammer 1st edition (with the hammer-wielding Chaos Warrior on the cover).

 

[Voadam]

The first one I have a memory of buying with my own money

I distinctly remember preordering it through a comic mail-in sale advertisement. There may have been earlier purchases but not that I remember.

I had been playing for years though, starting with 1e when I was eight. The first product I owned was the then brand new Moldvay Basic set my parents got me.

Funny enough my mom was worried about what she heard of D&D but after I and my dyslexic younger brother played 1e with some friends and she saw the two of us poring over the PH we had borrowed from one of them she was all in because it was something he would voluntarily read. From then on every birthday and Christmas my parents would get us more D&D books (it turns out primarily to entice my brother to keep reading and stay in a hobby that kept him reading and knowing that he would read stuff of mine that interested him) and our 1e and Endless Quest book collection grew with occasional branches into Palladium and such.

 

[General_Tangent]

I’d got the White Box for Xmas, so not really a purchase.
A bit later, with birthday and paper round money, I went to the original Games Workshop in Shepherds Bush Road and bought Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements.

I used to visit the first shop on 1 Dalling Road, Hammersmith in London, a fair bit back in the day.

I always remember that glass display case in the window slowly rotating showing off the painted miniatures.

 

[General_Tangent]

My first ever purchase was the orange spine 1st edition AD&D players handbook from Games World in Hammersmith. I paid £11.50 for it way back in 1989.

 

[Bae'zel]

Clear as day. I found Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 1st edition, in a little shop that specialized in Warhammer games. The place is long gone, but I remember also buying old school plastic Skaven Clanrats there.

My mom was fully into the Satanic Panic mindset regarding D&D, but I assured her that WFRP wasn’t anything like that.

I remember the thrill of buying it at the store with birthday money. I also remember flipping through it at the cash, and saw the spooky images in the Magic section (specifically on Daemonology and Necromancy), and felt a rush of both fear and excitement.

That was a momentous day for me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Shadowrun 3rd Edition (3.01D the German version was called, IIRC). I barely have memories of the circumstances of when and where I got it, but I knew Shadowrun from the novels and learned that some other teenagers in my high school were playing it. I joined them together with a few other friends, and then one of them found another group, a bit older players in a neighboring town, and from there I also got into D&D. Still, Shadowrun is my first love, so to speak.

 

[dbm]

My mom was fully into the Satanic Panic mindset regarding D&D, but I assured her that WFRP wasn’t anything like that.

I love those kind of irrational missteps. WFRP is, of course, much darker than D&D. The best one I have come across is someone whose parents wouldn’t allow D&D but Call of Cthulhu was fine…

 

[kronovan]

AD&D1e Player's Handbook, in paperback, plus some dice, fall 1979. The paperback wore out in a couple of years, but I still have most of the dice.

The exact same in the same year, although I bought the hardcover of the PHB. My son still has it and has added to it with an original DMG and some OSRIC books.

My 2nd purchase was the Greyhawk Gazetteer in 1980 complete with Darlene's splendid map, which I still have mounted and hanging in the back of my storage. That my son may not have - love it too much and hang it in my main room at least once a year.