Do you remember your first RPG purchase?

[TheAlkaizer]

It's a vivid memory!

After being introduced to D&D 3rd edition around 2001 or 2002, I asked my dad to buy me the Player's Handbook. It took a couple of weeks, but we eventually went to a local game store. He was shocked when he realized I was asking him for such a large book, and one that cost almost 60$. Also, he's not really knowledgeable of everything geeky, so just stepping in a store like this was a strange experience for him.

We went to the park after, and I think I spent two hours going through the book with him, explaining him how it worked and why it was awesome.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Picture it, Upstate New York, 1986. I remember going to the mall with my dad to get the classic red box. We walked through Montgomery Ward, which always smelled like tire rubber, and went to either Kay Bee Toys or Waldenbooks for it.

From such a small beginning, a lifetime of fun (okay, and some frustration!). From time to time I still run through that first opening walkthrough adventure.

 

[Arilyn]

My first game I purchased was the boxed Chivalry & Sorcery set. It was the first game I GMed too. Not the easiest rules set to begin with but it excited me at the time which is worth a lot!

 

[Blue]

My first was Red Box D&D, bought from a little boutique D&D store called Game Masters in the basement of a local mall. It really felt like it was originally a large basement area that they put in a single set of escalators and subdivided into stores to have more room. Called it "The Village Mall". Anyway, all of the stores were really tiny, and they had a shared space for events that all of them paid towards and could reserve. It was mostly in use by the Christian Reading Room whom had decorated it and were likely unhappy about us playing D&D there on weekends as it was during the "Satanic Panic".

Later when I got into AD&D our local Toys R Us carried the books, and cheaper. As a teen with a paper route I would buy the hardcover books there because I had no money - shades of amazon - but I still went to Game Masters for everything else.

In a strange turn, Game Masters later moved up to the main mall, then to an outside store, at some point were sold, moved to another store, were sold again, and were later bought yet another time - by a friend of mine who used to game with me down in that basement. He even found part of the original Game Masters sign in the storage room. He moved it again, and eventually amazon drove it out of business.

 

[Zaukrie]

Some combination of the original pamphlet style books, probably Men and Magic and Monsters and Treasures.....Wish I still had them.

 

[crazy_cat]

AD&D 1e PHB - from the (long closed down now) Games & Puzzles shop on Green Street in Cambridge. Probably late 1980 or early 81. I still have the book - and I miss the shop.

 

[Gilladian]

Mom took me and my brother to a hobby shop in XENIA, I think, to buy what turned out to be Basic d&d, with the wax dice. Would have been in ‘77? Anyway, we pored over the blue geomorph maps and encounter tables and instructions on LEVELING up for hours! My cleric was immediately stung to death by giant bees.

 

[RangerWickett]

Picked up in Comics Kingdom in Beaumont, TX, probably in 1989. I was 7.

 

[J.Quondam]

B7? Rahasia, I think. (That was either first or second, the other one in question being B5 Horror on the Hill).
I bought it at the little FLGS (now extinct) in my former little hometown (not extinct). I was a couple dollars short, but the proprietor let me go ahead and take it on the promise I pay the difference next visit. And I did, the following week, as soon as i got my allowance.

 

[eyeheartawk]

View attachment 142691
Picked up in Comics Kingdom in Beaumont, TX, probably in 1989. I was 7.

No elves!