How did you get started playing??

[Dungannon]

Back in 81-82 the older brother of a couple of friends of mine got tired of us running around the house playing legos & army & stuff (I was 10-11) so he decided to get us to play a sit-down game. We weren't too into board games, so he brought out this game called Aftermath. It was really cool, let us use are imagination a freely as we wanted, and kept us occupied for hours at a time.

After that, my stepbrother got me the boxed set D&D (84, i think) and we started playing that on a semiregular basis until I met some guys my freshman year of high school (85) who were also into D&D and started playing on a regular basis.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I took the "Other Route"

Pretty much all of these posts can be summed up as "I met someone else who was playing the game, and here I am". For me, it was different. I was living in rural Saskatchewan with "Farmer Vision" for TV. CBC and CTV just did not have enough going on to hold my intrest 90% of the time. And as a result, I was a voracious reader. A friend was visiting me and he had a Dragonlance novel, Dragons of Spring Dawning. I asked him if I could read it. He said sure. That led to me getting heavily into those books. I eventually made the connection between Dragonlance and AD&D due to some of the Advertisements in some marvel comics. So I purchased the 2nd edition PHB. This was sometime between 8th and 9th grade.

The result is that I am one of the few people I know who started "Cold". I learned the rules from the PHB and figured it all out on my own. I also found out that the poor bastard who buys the books is the one who ends up being the DM. I got off to a VERY rough start, but things have leveled out since then.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Siridar]

It all started in my 6th grade math class...

I was in the 6th grade (13 years ago) and I needed a boost in my grades and my teacher had given out an extra credit assignment. Design a game based on math! So I set out on a quest to improve my grades and avoid getting yelled at by the parents. I decided to do a game based on Dungeons and Dragons. Now, keep in mind the ONLY exposure I had to D&D at this time was the cartoon. I set out and made myself a boardgame. And boy did I do a half-a$$ed job. When one of my friends found out what I was up to he decided to join me in my quest to improve my grades and introduced me to this little red box with a fighter and dragon on the cover...



...if anyone is curious I got the extra credit, made my parents happy, and avoided a good stern talking to.

 

[Americancyco]

I was in 4th grade (1982) and my best friends older brothers started playing D&D. I got to hear about all these really cool stories of adventure they went on and the idea of everyone playing a game as a team was really cool to me. Shortly there after I went to Sears (beats the Toys R Us) and my grandparents bought me the red basic box set.

I've picked up different games over the years with the new D20 system being my favorite, but the old Marvel RPG is a close second.

So there you have it 21 years later and I'm still playing.

 

[Americancyco]

Mazes & Monsters last year just before my wedding my wife's store got a ship ment of discounted videos from Canada. Among them...Mazes & Monsters so needless to say I had to buy it.

Bird's can't talk!

 

[francisca]

Well, my cousin played wargames and the original D&D (the 3 little booklets). It looked really cool, but I was deemed too young by my cousin.

A few years later, in 7th grade, I saw some friends playing a mish-mash of the Moldvay Basic set and 1st ed AD&D. At the same time, my literature teacher was talking about D&D in class. I was hooked and started playing with my pals during lunch and before and after school sometimes.

I still didn't have any books, so I crocked up my own rules using d6s from the family yahtzee set and made my Dad play with me. I think he got the hint, because I got the Moldvay set pretty quickly after that. I then made up my first adventures (which I mentioned in another thread) and started in earnest. Out of the blue a few months later, my Dad came home with the 1st edition Gamma World boxed set.

A few years after that, I saved enough money to buy the 1E MM, PHB, DMG, DM Screen, and some character sheets (the original AD&D gold ones) all in one shot at Toys R Us. My Dad thought I was bit nuts, but cautioned me to take good care of them, as they may be collectors items some day.

 

[Ziona]

MAZES & MONSTERS, BABY!!!

That T.V. Movie made the game look SOOOO cool, we just had to get our hands on it!

Tom Hanks, star of Cast Away, Saving Private Ryan and Mazes & Monsters... LOL (Xaltar & I actually own this movie!)

I remember watching the D&D cartoon early Saturday mornings with my brother, who also had the eerie castle that was lime green and looked like a serpent's head. My brother is 7 years my elder, but he never played.

It wasn't until I met Xaltar, (my husband), that I was introduced to the game. He played Rifts in High School, and when he went to college, he started playing D&D. He came home on Thanksgiving break and introduced his friend and I to AD&D. That Christmas, when he came home for break again, we played D&D all night, every night. (Xaltar would DM for two of us). My first character was a halfling thief, Goldy Darkcoat.

That April when my 18th birthday came, Xaltar sent me a box full of female minis and some paintbrushes. (We live in RI & at the time, he went to school in MO).

So, I've been playing for about 7 years now, and he started about 6 mos. before me. Since then, we've tried Star Wars, Dragonlance (homebrew), Rifts, etc. My favorite remains D&D, though, particularly Forgotten Realms.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

The D&D cartoon got me interested way before i got to play the game, i wish i still had all my old D&D toys.

 

[Uruush]

Started with Metagaming's Melee and Wizard, along with the associated solo modules in 1979 when I was 11. I didn't have friends who roleplayed at first, but I could take a character through the Death Test, Death Test 2, Grail Quest, etc Microquests, solo, over and over again. Melee and Wizard were $2.95 each, which was easy on a poor 11 year-old's budget in a world of double digit inflation. Played Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip and later, GURPS for years, mostly in Harn. Ran a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign in college for three years, then took a 10 year hiatus from roleplaying games, (women, work, & Magic), until just over a year ago when I played D&D for the first time with the 3rd edition. Having a good time...

 

[Deadguy]

I think that the point that I really wanted to start role-playing was back in 1981 or 1982 (I'm not entirely sure now - I just know I've been role-playing for over 20 years). I was injured and was sitting out the obligatory rugby game at school. But the PE teacher determined that even the injured had to go out and spectate. So there I was, standing around the muddy field, chatting with another guy, Mike, who I didn't really know well.

We got chatting about hobbies and he mentioned this thing called Dungeons and Dragons. He tried to explain how the game worked, and I remember pumping hhim for details about spells and the like! Poor guy must've felt like he was being interrogated.

Anyway, I realised I wanted in on this D&D. The problem was that I lived miles away from Mike - we both of us had to travel some distance to school. But there was one guy, a little younger than me who lived just down the road. What's more, he got a lot more pocket money than I did. So when I mentioned the game to him, lo and behold the following Saturday there was the attarctive box set.

We created characters straight away, and he began his DMing career with Keep on the Borderlands. Since there was only me and him, of course we played very fast and loose with the rules. I remember getting through a lot of oil, and my Halfling had amazing thiefly powers to peer into a room and never be seen.

Wow this really brings back memories! I haven't thought about this in YEARS!! Thanks for reminding me Baraendur.