D&D General First official D&D game product you owned?

[JEB]

UPDATE: If you got the 1991/1994 Basic set and had previously voted for the 1977/1981/1983 version, please change your vote! Those are now separate from the 1977/1981/1983 versions.

Curious about the first official D&D game product everyone here owned. (It can be a gift or a purchase, as long as it was yours to keep. ) What was it? How did you get it? What did you like most about it? (Or did you hate it?) Do you still have it? Please let us all know!

Laying down some ground rules:

• I included an example of each category (in parentheses), but just to make it clearer:
  • A "general supplement" is something that expands on the rules for that edition without being explicitly tied to one setting.
  • A "setting-specific supplement" is a product that introduces or expands on a specific campaign setting, and is explicitly tied to that setting.
  • A "general adventure" is an adventure that isn't explicitly tied to one setting (which doesn't mean it isn't linked in some way to a setting; it just isn't labeled as a "Dragonlance" adventure or the like).
  • A "setting-specific adventure" is an adventure that is explicitly tied to one setting.
• 5e adventures weren't split into general vs. setting-specific because they're basically all setting-specific.
• If a product fits into more than one category, pick the category that seems to fit best from the way the product was marketed (and please let us know that you weren't sure in your comments).
• If you got more than one product in different categories at the same time, pick the one that made the strongest impression (but please let us know about the others).
• While this isn't technically a (+) thread (I wanted to leave it open for folks to bash their first product if they really wanted to), please be respectful towards everyone else's opinions, and please don't trash people for liking a thing you don't.

EDIT: Late notes:

• The 2e core rules include the two original looseleaf Monstrous Compendiums as well as the Monstrous Manual (but not the various looseleaf MC Appendices).
• "D&D BECMI set (Expert/Companion/Master/Immortals)" only includes the expansions after the Basic set, not the "red box" itself.
• I originally included the 1991 and 1994 revisions of the D&D Basic set in with the 1977/1981/1983 versions, but I have been persuaded to separate those out as their own answer (at the end of the list).

 

[JEB]

I'll start: the first two products I got were the 1e Player's Handbook, and the 1e Fiend Folio, from a yard sale in my neighborhood. The former I largely set aside, but the second made a big impression with all its bizarre and fascinating monsters. I spent the summer making up my own Fiend Folio-inspired monsters... but for whatever reason, never pursued D&D further at the time.

Several years later, I noticed a classmate paging through the 2e Monstrous Manual, and asked to borrow it. Soon I was hooked all over again. I eventually managed to get my own copy, and saved up to get other D&D monster books one by one, before finally getting the other 2e core rulebooks when they were revised in 1995. (That my local bookstore had them on discount certainly helped; otherwise I might have passed on them again.) That year I ran my first AD&D 2e session for my little brother and a friend...

 

[Li Shenron]

3.0 PHB

 

[Ulfgeir]

AD&D 1e PHB.

 

[Dioltach]

The Mentzer Expert Set. I already had the original Basic set of the first edition of The Dark Eye (in Dutch, translated from German), and I thought it was just a translation of D&D. It referred to "expansion rules", so one day when I was visiting my grandparents in England I saw the Expert Set and figured that was the expansion. When I realised my mistake I went back to the shop and bought the Basic Set.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I started off with the AD&D PHB and MM, a set of purple polyhe dice, and 2 minis- a n elf fighter in chainmail with spear and a human fighter wit a 2Hd sword. Didn’t buy the DMG for at least a year after that.

 

[Lyxen]

Dungeon & Dragons - Holmes Basic: offered to me by my US family during a linguistic vacation there in 1978. Brought it back to France to play with my high school friends, and that's how we started.

After that, it's a bit more confused, I'm pretty sure the first supplement I managed to get my hands on in France was The Keep on the Borderlands, but I'm not sure when exactly. By then I had started to get everything I could get my hands on, so I'm not sure when I got the Moldway Basic, the Mentzer Basic and the first AD&D PH and in which order. Ended up playing AD&D with some people and BECMI with others.

 

[The Hierophant]

Moldvay Basic set for me.

 

[reelo]

I don't rember if it was either "Dymrak Dread" or the Grey Box. Probably the former.

 

[John R Davis]

I normally have a good memory for these sorts of questions, but in this case I have no clue, I had been rpging for several years before I played any DND. It might be X4 module but a pure guess