First D&D/RPG Experience

[Pyoor]

I couple recent threads got me thinking about this and I would like to hear what was your first RPG experience was and how old were you.

My first experience was playing an impromptu game while bored at a 4-H meeting. I was about 7 or 8 and an older kid who was probably 12 said we were going to play a game. He was the DM and tried to recall a module by memory. There were no dice, no pencils and no stats. It was just a bunch of elementary school kids pretending to explore a dungeon, defeating monsters and finding treasure. It helped that we had a big 4-H building to wander around in with lots of empty rooms.

The most vivid moment for me was when I pulled out a wand (not knowing anything about magic wands or that magic was even a possibility) from a sack we found and it caused an ice storm to kill a dragon.

I was hooked from there.

 

[Grimstaff]

I was thinking about this too:

Beyond the Black Gate: Nerd!

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Well, if you don't count playing Cops and Robbers or sitting under a picnic table pretending it is the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon while friends run by making TIE fighter noises, then it was when I was 10.

A friend and I biked to the local hobby store to buy new model airplane kits to build. In the store were four big kids (8th graders) sitting around a card table with paper pencils and funky dice. We watched them play a game for an hour or so where we learned; that orcs burned in pools of oil could be taken as rations that tasted like oily chicken, that when you had a pathetic character, it helped to have cool accessories to play with, and the only thing more sad than a 2 HP fighter named "Sir Runalot" was his younger brother sent to avenge his death - a 1 HP fighter named "Sir Diealot." I was hooked and when my friend got the Basic Set for his birthday followed by my own a month after that, there was no turning back from my path to geekdom.

 

[Dice4Hire]

A friend introduced me to the game when I was about 9 or so years old. I had heard that the gaming club at my elementary school (and a catholic one to boot) played the game among others, and I was interested. Our first adventure is hard to remember, but I remember thinking it odd there was a castle there, as I assumed that it was us people going into a dungeon and magically being transformed into another owrld or something. So how could there be a castle underground?

Still, I liked it, and kept playing throughout the next years, except for a two year pause when I came to Japan. After two years, I brought my gaming stuff here and have not looked back since.

 

[howandwhy99]

My first D&D experience was at age 12 when I bought the AD&D Unearthed Arcana for $5 from a kid during the middle of 7th grade science class. It was probably the worst introduction to a game I could think of as I had no idea what it was. Then the book was taken from me and thrown away because of the "evils" inside.

Gaming didn't start happening until about a year later with some friends. That was BD&D for a very short time and then the grand, new 2nd ed. AD&D came out and we thought we were playing the real thing.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I was 11, and a good friend of mine was visiting. I had first become friends with this guy when I was four years old, and he had moved away when I was seven, so I was pretty excited when he came and stayed at my place for a week. So he showed up and we were looking for things to do when he noticed that I had this red box D&D laying around in my closet. We convinced my mother to take us down to the book store where he purchased "The Lost City" module. I created a character and he added a number of stock NPCs to the party, and I think we played for about three days straight. After that, he went back to Arizona and I found players locally, and I've been involved with the game for the past quarter century.

As a side note, I'm still good friends with the guy and we get to see each other more often since he lives in Seattle now, though he stopped playing D&D quite a few years ago.

 

[Chrono22]

The first time I encountered it: when i was 8 or 10, and watching ET. I couldn't figure out what the heck they were doing, so I asked my father. He was a 1e player when he was a teen, so he told me "D&D". I didn't know what they meant, so I kept watching and forgot what was discussed.

The first time I played- a couple of friends roped me into a game. I played a half-elf ranger with a blimp. He liked to explore, was good at shooting, and collected exotic valuables and treasures for trade and sale.

 

[samursus]

I was about 10 or so and one of the volunteers at the local Boys and Girls Club got a few of us into a game. I am not sure what rules he was running but I got to play a Wizard I creatively named Gandalf and a Polymorph Cloak that allowed me to turn into pretty much anything. I didn't realize how powerful such an item was until way later. After our game died I went and got the Blue Box Basic set, rounded up my brothers and their friends to play, I have been hooked ever since.

 

[Umbran]

The first time I played what you'd recognize as a tabletop RPG - I don't honestly know exactly how old I was - I was 10 years old or less. My eldest brother (who was in high school at the time) decided to bring Tunnels and Trolls into the house to play with his younger siblings.

A few years later (when I was in 7th grade), he brought the AD&D 1e core books back with him for X-mas break, along with U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and he introduced us to D&D.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I was probably 13-14 when some friends invited me to join a game without telling me much about what it was. I thought it was bizarre and creepy based on what little I'd heard of the game and didn't tell my parents what I was up to on Saturday mornings for a while. It was a year or two before I got my own books, learned the game, and started DMing. Haven't looked back.