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?