Do you remember your first RPG purchase?

[Scars Unseen]

I got started with some version of Basic and then got gifted a copy of the 2E PHB, DMG and MC, but the first thing I purchased was the 2E Ravenloft box set. This was, unfortunately, after I had moved away from the friends I got started with, so it would be another 3 years after that purchase that I would be able to run anything for it (the place I had moved to was very rural, very stuck in the Satanic Panic mindset when it came to such things).

 

[damiller]

It was either Star Wars WEG 1st edition core book

or

MERP

I go with MERP because I bought it on a Church Ski Trip. It was the most religious thing I experienced that weekend. Well that and wasting all my money on Gauntlet after nearly plummeting off a cliff.

I thank God to this day for that trip.

 

[Black Dougal]

 

[Evaniel]

While I learned to play RPGs on a lent copy of the Mentzer red box set, my first actual purchase was probably the original set of the Marvel Superheroes RPG.

That paper route money back in '88 funded what became a lifelong obsession.

 

[Tonguez]

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.

Oh the irony, lucky she never heard you invoking the names of Nurgle and Slaanesh

 

[aramis erak]

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.

My mother was worried as well, until my 8th grade year (fall 82)... see, one of the guys got me Q1... so we played it that afternoon. Mom thought she was hidden on the stairs, but she heard us fighting demons and exploring, and was suddenly less uptight about it.

She still doesn't see the appeal, but does realize that my social needs include gaming still.