Do you remember your first RPG purchase?

[Buzzqw]

D&D Red Box. 1987 (Italy)
Next year bought Expert set. Then in 1990 go to ADnD 1e Player Handbook and two years later ADnD 2e Player Handbook... and never stopped buying rpg book..

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I used to go to the NDG store between 1985 and 1988. It was called Hobby World and was more of a train, WWII modeller and RC store. It had a TSR stand with books and modules.

Since I received the D&D Basic box set for Christmas, my first purchase was the D&D Expert rules booklet, as it was sold individually. Each of us pitched in a buck to buy it.

I went to Loyola HS down the street from it (and later Concordia). I even worked there a little on Friday evenings and some Saturdays as the owners were observent enough to not work during those hours. Possible I was there behind the counter on those days in 1985 and 86 (my last year I did downtown), but it might have been in 1982 when I was finishing HS. My memory is a little cloudy.

 

[The Soloist]

I went to Loyola HS down the street from it (and later Concordia). I even worked there a little on Friday evenings and some Saturdays as the owners were observent enough to not work during those hours. Possible I was there behind the counter on those days in 1985 and 86 (my last year I did downtown), but it might have been in 1982 when I was finishing HS. My memory is a little cloudy.

Cool. I did film studies at Concordia during those years. Love Cinema Five repertoire theatre. I lived at the Concordia residence on Sherbrooke near the Loyola campus and worked in a small coffee shop called Caféine next door to the residence.

 

[Ringtail]

I suspect my story will be significantly younger than the most of you, but it was sometime during my last two years of high school (2013-2014). My best friend had been regaling me with tales of D&D and how you could do anything.

Rushed to my FLGS (Coliseum of Comics) to buy the 4th Edition Starter Set, but they said it was out of print because they were working on a new edition. I asked when that would come out, the guy didn't know. Impatient I ended up buying the entire core 4th Edition set instead (or I should say my mom did, thanks mom!)

By the time 5e came out we had since acquired the rest of 4e's PHBs, plus three supplementary books. We played every game wrong. We didn't know the rules. We had the worst house rules imaginable (a 3 page fumble chart, the worst online homebrew you ever saw, etc) and I often ran adventures from every edition without any "conversion" because we had no idea what we were doing.

 

[dbm]

The first RPG-ish things I would have bought are the original Fighting Fantasy books. They were my gateway into the hobby. I learned about D&D from a friend at school whose older siblings played; I would have been 11 at the time (1983). So my first RPG-proper was Red Box D&D; whether I bought it or my parents bought it for me I cannot remember.

I used to go to the NDG store between 1985 and 1988. It was called Hobby World and was more of a train, WWII modeller and RC store. It had a TSR stand with books and modules.

The shop I originally bought my D&D sets from was the same kind of store, but here in the UK. Model kits, model railways and similar. Maybe ‘hobby stores’ were the natural entry point into the market place back then, rather than toy stores?

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Cool. I did film studies at Concordia during those years. Love Cinema Five repertoire theatre. I lived at the Concordia residence on Sherbrooke near the Loyola campus and worked in a small coffee shop called Caféine next door to the residence.

I grew up in Brossard and lived there until I moved to the USA in my mid-20's. I was an accounting major, so unless we bumped into each other at Hobby World or you happened to take Creative Writing downtown in fall 1986, we probably did not meet then. I bought lots of RPG things at Hobby World over the years and when worked there I remmebr model trains and models in general did not have the volume of customers that RPG products did.

 

[GrimCo]

VtM revised and set of vampire dices (green, red numbers and ankh for 1). It was late summer of 2003, just started first grade of HS. I picked, mom payed. First rpg purchase with my own money was Storyteller's Handbook and Guide to the Sabbat few months later. Over 20 years later, still have them (books and dices), still in good condition.

 

[MrTemplar]

I received the original white box for Christmas and then bought the Greyhawk supplement, some Ral Partha minis, and this big stapled fanzine called Alarums and Excursions.

 

[BlackFire1967]

Though I had played for a couple of years I was very poor and couldn't afford to buy any RPG stuff. ( I did create some of my own games and even made some cardboard d8's!)
Then in 1982 I had some birthday money and went to the local gamestore to buy something.
I purchased Starstone by Northern Sages. Can't remember why. Luckily it was great and has become a classic and I now have multiple copies and have run it many times under several systems.

How about you?

My parents gave me a copy of the Holmes basic set with the B1 module for Christmas in 1978.

 

[Staffan]

It depends on what you count. The first RPG-related things I bought were either The Kingdoms of Terror (Lone Wolf gamebook 6, but it was the first one in the Magna-Kai series!) or Sinkadus (house magazine of the biggest Swedish RPG company) issue 5. The first RPG books I owned were Drakar och Demoner and Sagan om Ringen Rollspelet (Swedish translation of Middle-Earth Role-Playing), which I got for Christmas in, I believe, 1985. The first proper RPG product I actually bought with my own money was probably Drakar och Demoner Expert, the advanced rules for Drakar och Demoner.