Many things attributed to my eventual discovery and succumbing to the magic of D&D and role-playing in general. First, I had a love of medieval history and knights and whatnot from an early age. My first jaunt into the field of games might be considered the original Wizardry (from 1981), which my dad had and could run on our 386 machine. In middle school (7th grade, 1993 exactly) I had some friends that played and introduced me to the game (I'd already gotten into pulp fantasy like Dragonlance and FR at that point). We played briefly during lunch hours and recesses, but it was hard to keep things going. My first ever character was a dwarven fighter with a triceratops mount (yes, I was also a huge dinosaur nerd). After that died, I didn't play really until high school, when I got my two best friends into it as well. Bought my PHB and ran from there (this was the 2E reprint era, with the nice black covered books and colored art...much improved on the blue motif, IMO). Went on to take up Battletech, Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, as well as the occasional jaunt into Call of Cthulhu.