Do you remember your first RPG purchase?

[Myrdin Potter]

Holmes Basic boxed set in 1981 or 1982. I think at a hobby store on Ste-Catherine’s street near the forum but could have been at the closer to my HS hobby store on Sherbrooke in NDG (Montreal locations). The set had dice.

 

[aramis erak]

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?

Given that, about the same time I started playing (summer 1981), Moldvay basic came out, and apparently demand outstripped boxes, some were shipped as just the book, in shrinkwrap. I was about $1 shy of the boxed set, but could afford the book, and a pack of "mud dice." a couple weeks later, I bought the booklet of 5 to the inch hexpaper... which I was still using sheets of in 1999 or so, when the remainder got put in a box, and I had to give up my office for a child's bedroom...

Haven't needed it since, really. Software took over the role. And Armory's hex sheets in about 10cm hexes... or printed hexagons, from my PDF of SLAG! or Starfight. (Hmm... where's that PDF... I need some sheets...)

 

[DammitVictor]

Always. Thri-Kreen of Athas. I held onto that for a decade, and over half-a-dozen cross-country housemoves, before I traded it for a copy of the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana.

One of several books I'm patiently hoping to eventually be brought back via POD.

 

[Bluenose]

Would Chainmail count? 'm pretty sure I had thought before any of the D&D products, although this is going back to 1976. The first I picked up explicitly for RPG was probably Tunnels and Trolls - there didn't seem much point buying rules someone else already had, and we were also aware that a new version of D&D was being developed (later AD&D in 1977).

 

[eyeheartawk]

Given that, about the same time I started playing (summer 1981), Moldvay basic came out, and apparently demand outstripped boxes, some were shipped as just the book, in shrinkwrap. I was about $1 shy of the boxed set, but could afford the book, and a pack of "mud dice." a couple weeks later, I bought the booklet of 5 to the inch hexpaper... which I was still using sheets of in 1999 or so, when the remainder got put in a box, and I had to give up my office for a child's bedroom...

Haven't needed it since, really. Software took over the role. And Armory's hex sheets in about 10cm hexes... or printed hexagons, from my PDF of SLAG! or Starfight. (Hmm... where's that PDF... I need some sheets...)

Could have been worse. They shipped a printing of Holmes Basic with paper chits instead of dice. Third printing, maybe?

 

[GuyBoy]

Not exactly RPG, but closely related to it ( in a D&D related to Chainmail/Swords and Spells kind of way) was this book called Emerald Tablet. It was a set of mass combat rules, long before Warhammer, and I remember running a few battles with it at the school club.
The abiding memory is of a summoning and magic system based on Medieval Demonology. It was great, but didn’t weather the Satanic Panic too well!
Anyone remember it?

 

[Doc_Klueless]

1981. Dibble's Hobbies here in San Antonio (Still a GREAT store!). Dungeons and Dragons Basic Box Set.

 

[Blue Orange]

Red Box D&D, roughly 1992. Compleat Strategist (Compleat Strategist Board Game Store in NYC Tabletop Games Card Games), New York City, at a branch that no longer exists (the first location does though, a block from the Empire State). Before that I had played the CRPG Champions of Krynn.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I was given my first D&D books, (AD&D 2E), so my first purchase, if I remember correctly was the Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix II. Mostly (or completely, it's been a while) unique monsters, and I don't think I ever used any of them in game, but back then I bought products as much for reading enjoyment as actual game utility.