How did you get into D&D?

[Greatwyrm]

Originally posted by Greatwyrm
I was a junior high loan shark. One kid offered me a copy of Dragon Magazine as collateral.
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For some reason, I find that incredibly funny. So did the kid ever get his Dragon Magazine back out of hock? Or did he default on the loan, starting your massive Dragon Magazine collection?

I now have a large collection of Dragon Magazines. What does that tell you?

 

[Agback]

How I got into D&D

G'day

Well, I was already a huge SF and fantasy fan. And there was this article "Evenings Beyond the Fields We Know" by John M Ford in the July 1979 issue of 'Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'.

The following year I was at a new school (Sydney Grammar), and a couple of my new friends had had D&D books brought home by relatives who had visited the USA. I seem to recall that Ian Grojnowski had a DMG and that Michael Barr-David had a PHB, but it might have been the other way around. Anyway, Ian invited me to join the campaign he was running. It had every single problem that you get with inexperienced GM and players, but I never looked back.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Davelozzi]

Re: Tension breaker, had to be done

My very first experience with D&D was being told I couldn't play, actually...

Me too. Two of my older brothers played (very briefly) with a couple of guys in the neighborhood but wouldn't let me play. Finally, my younger brother, a friend and I convinced his older brother to DM an adventure for us. He didn't really want to do it so just to get us out of his hair he ran our 1st level characters through the Tomb of Horrors. Of course we lasted all of 15 seconds before TPK.

A few years later another friend got the red box (Elmore) basic set for Christmas or a birthday or something. He tried to DM for us a bunch of times but everything always fell apart. Finally, I convinced him to lend me his box and let me take over as DM. After that, I never looked back.

 

[GrayIguana]

How I entered the world of D&D

I grew up in a very small town, and I was a big reader of mythology. One day I spotted the old MM in the bookstore. I got it in about 1983 or 84 when I was about 12 years old. I later got the boxed sets and it took me about 2 years to figure out the rules. Then I had to convince some friends to play it with me. I remember "Where is the board? What do you mean there isn't a board? I have to imagine what?"

That turned into playing several nights a week. My parents approved because they knew where we were at and that we weren't out getting into trouble. I think this was actually a tough stand for them as we lived in a small town and playing D&D at the time was rather misunderstood. Yet, the group grew and I still play with some of them today.

I also still play with friends from college, and we plan on playing until we are too old to roll dice.

 

[Inez Hull]

First Choose Your Own Adventure books, then onto the D&D Choose Your Own Adventure books (remember them?) then onto Fighting Fantasy and then OD&D.

Also, in my weaker years I was attracted to the occult and a game like D&D fueled my imagination and made me feel special, whilst drawing me deeper and deeper into the bowls of El Diablo.

 

[Kilmore]

When I was a sprout I used to ride my Huffy Bandit with a whiffleball bat as my sword and a trashcan lid as my shield, and I would go out and whack imaginary dragons. Then I found out there was a SYSTEM for it...

 

[Templetroll]

I was in the Navy, 23 years old, on a decomissioning crew. This was intensely boring as we had to sit and watch workers cut out parts of the ship and make certain no fires started. At night we stood watch on an empty ship to make certain it didn't break free and start to float away.

I was looking through a toy store for a wargame of some sort and found a small white box that had three tan booklets in it. I had a good time reading it, working on a dungeon etc but didn't actually get to play until about nine months later, after I got out of the service.

I found a student published magazine in a used bookstore that focused on sci-fi. That issue had an article on D&D and the author included his phone number if anyone was interested in trying the game. I was the only call he got. I ended up meeting some college students who were willing to teach a serious newbie about the game. I was told I had to roll up a dwarf since they

had a dwarf penciled into the marching order.

!!

This was bemusing and amusing to me but I ended up with a great character and a lot of years with fun people gaming as much as possible. I also met my wife at a game and now my daughter has joined our gaming group which includes the son of another player. The next generation of gaming is doing well in our area!

 

[Zander]

About 20 years ago when I was still at school, a friend of mine called Paul told me that there was this really fun game he'd been playing for a few months. He didn't tell me anything about it, only that I would enjoy it. So I went with him to the base of one of the stairwells where a friend of ours, Vincent, was waiting with a crude map of a road. There were no character record sheets, miniatures or even dice. The conversation went something like this:

Vincent (pointing at a spot on the map): "There are four men on the road here. Where are you?"

Me: "I don't know. Where can I be?"

Vincent: "Somewhere along the road."

Me: "Where's Paul?"

Paul: "I'm not there yet."

Me (pointing near where Vincent had pointed): "I'm here(?)"

Vincent: "The four men attack you."

Me (not too pleased): "Why do you get four men and I only get one?"

Paul: "He can create as many as he wants and they can be as powerful as he wants too."

Me: "And I can't?"

Paul: "No. That's the way it works."

Me (angrily): "This is a stupid game. How can I possibly win if he can create as many men as he wants and make them as powerful as he wants and I can't?"

Just then break ended so we had to pack up. I thought it was an absurd game, just about the least fun I could imagine.

Paul realised that he hadn't approached this in the right way, so over the next few weeks he introduced me to the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. They're supposed to be solo adventures, but we played them together. I think we started with Warlock of Firetop Mountain or Forest of Doom. Eventually, Paul explained that in the game he played with Vincent, Vincent's role was similar to the authors of the gamebooks but Paul had many more options. It was then that I understood and soon started playing Basic D&D (red box?) on a regular basis with another group of friends.

Some time after that I convinced my mother to buy me the AD&D PHB, DMG and MM. She was quite reluctant thinking that it was a lot to spend on something I would soon get bored of - was she wrong about that!

I still have the copies of the Fighting Fantasy books that I started gaming with (I got them signed by the authors at UK GenCon just over a month ago) and my first AD&D books. And I'm still in contact with Paul even though he now lives thousands of miles away.