How did you get into D&D?

[JDragon]

Had been a fan of the Cartoon when it was on.

Then a few years later (4th grade) was over at a friends house up the street, and saw a blue box (D&D Expert Rules) up on the shelf in his closet, and asked what it was.

Went out to the front room and he ran a quick dungeon for his younger brother & I, and I haven't looked back since.

With in a year or two had met a group of guys at school that played AD&D, and the quest for a new set of books began.

and it continues on for the last 16 years or so.

JDragon

 

[thundershot]

Actually, now that I game more often, I don't play computer games as much either. NWN got about a week of play before I got frustrated because it wasn't like "the real thing".



Chris

 

[Ulrick]

I first saw the game when I was 7 years old. My brother DMed for his friends in High School.

He and his friends would sit around our kitchen table and it was fascinating to listen in. Of course, he wouldn't let me play because I was "younger brother" and the books did say "ages 10 and up."

Occasionally I'd sneak into his room and look through the books (these were 1st ed) at the artwork.

Finally, I when I turned 10 he promised me he'd introduce to the game.

A little after my birthday he came home from college, I rolled up my first character: A dwarven fighter named Havoc. I don't remember his stats, but I DO remember that in the intro game he took out 2 Kobolds, 8 orcs and an ogre. And it even took awhile to figure out what these monster were because HE NEVER SAID THEIR NAMES. He only described to me what they looked like.

I was enthralled. I was hooked. I wanted to play everyday!

But alas, my brother got busy with school. He didn't have time to make adventures anymore.

So decided to become a DM and make my own!

Ulrick

 

[cybertalus]

It took me a while. I'd seen the cartoon, and had almost joined a game being run on a local BBS, but my lack of age and polyhedral dice cost me that chance (I was about 13 or 14).

I didn't think about D&D for a while until I happened upon the first trilogy of Dragonlance novels. I remember thinking that if the game was half as fun as the books that I really wanted to play it.

Then midway through my freshman year of high school a friend (in fact one of the players in the BBS game I'd missed out on) gave me a 1st Edition Player's Handbook and a set of "Dungeon Dice".

He joined me and some of my friends from school in a game the summer between my freshman and sophmore years of high school. Thirteen years on I'm still in touch with everyone from that game except for one guy. Three of the six of us are still active gamers.

And I've given more than one new gamer their first Player's Handbook.

 

[Tuerny]

Ten years ago my friend's mother bought him a big black box with a giant red dragon on its cover at Toys R'Us. It was a version of Basic D&D and we quickly adopted it as our own. I had played console rpgs and read fantasy novels before that (like Final Fantasy 2 and Dragon Warrior) but this was like nothing else I had seen. We were hooked and both of us still play today. (Though my little brother has dropped out to pursue money and power.)

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Our gaming group decided to take a break from playing Shadowrun, and most of us knew a bit about AD&D from computer games...

 

[cbatt]

My best friend's older brother had a copy of the Red box oDnD with the Elmore cover. I didn't know what it was at the time, but the picture of the fighter charging the red dragon was damn cool.

I noticed the ad for the game in the back of "Mountain of Mirrors" and Endless Quest (DnD based, choose your own adventure) book. I remembered that my friend's brother had it, so I asked if I could borrow it.

Everything went downhill from there...

 

[Larry Fitz]

Back in the early seventies I was heavily into wargaming. A lot of 50:1, 25:1 scale kind of stuff, as a lark my friend Dave and I talked to our regular gaming group (Ernie, Len, and a couple of others) about trying to play lower scale Like 6:1, in a fantasy setting, with magic spells and stuff like in Lord of The Rings. Each player would control six figures and they would have various attack capabilities with each figure, then someone, I think it was Dave, suggested that we each play ONE figure, and give him a real personality (since most of us were already doing that for most of our figures anyway). So Dave and I worked on some rules for how the characters would interact and then....

oh wait, that wasn't me, that was Gary Gygax....

Um, I saw the original Chainmail rules, really thought they were cool and started playing, I actually missed the Box sets entirely and went straight from Chainmail to AD&D, I guess Gary's story is a bit better though....

 

[johnsemlak]

My Grandma gave me the Basic D&D set (red box, with the wizard head logo). I read through it from front to back.

Convinced a friend to do some gaming, and off we went...

I actually stayed loyal to Basic/Expert for quite a while, I converted a lot of AD&D stuff of D&D. I allowed halflings with thief skills and other varients, of course.

I was out completely for most of the 90s, and was reinspired after seeing LotR.

 

[Grazzt]

Around my 12th b-day (1982) my dad and I were wandering around a local mall, and I wandered into the bookstore, saw this strange looking red box with a dragon on the cover and asked my dad to buy it for me. He did, I got it home, marveled at the cool dice and crayon in the box, read the rules, colored the dice, and had fun. I quickly learned the game, taught some friends (and my brother and sister) to play, and away we went...

Around 1984, my mom (who had gone back to school to finish her degree) noticed a couple of guys in one of her classes throwing some dice that looked vaguely familiar to the ones I had. She spoke to them, and the next thing ya know they pop over, we played a game of AD&D and I liked it even more. So, I borrowed a PHB off one of the guys, read it all in one night (no sleep), and quickly conned my parents into buying me that book. Once again, away we went... I eventually bought the MM, DMG, DDG, MM2, FF and other books and modules for 1e. (And as an aside, my 1e collection now consists of at least one copy of every book, module, accessory, etc. published for 1e AD&D )