How did you get your start

[Sir Elton]

So what memories do you have about when you started gaming? How did you get your start? Let's hear about it.

He-Man drove me to Fantasy gaming! My favorite all time episodes of He-Man was penned by a Dungeons and Dragons veteran. "The Taking of Castle Greyskull," "The Dragon's Gift," "Granamyr Returns," and the "House of Shokoti" episodes were my favorites.

Around the same time, I was reading the promotional comics for Dungeons and Dragons and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. The promotional mini-comics had two memorable characters: a conan type fighter and a spellcaster.

About the same time my maternal grandmother "bequeathed" me The World's Last Mysteries, my paternal (step) grandmother gave me the Dungeons and Dragons Mentzer Red Box, and it exploded from there. I also happened to be a big Star Wars fan.

I'm at the top of my game now as a Gamemaster, even though my game is overloaded with NPCs at the moment (I still haven't been able to use to the Yaun-ti after I introduced them!)
Using Atlantis as a game world is a real treat; though. It's a place that makes a great setting for fantasy gaming. Or in my case, Sword and Science.

Having become a nudist also allowed me to fully come out of my shell (I really think Modesty as used these days is a seven letter cuss word for shyness, part of the establishment uses it to keep everyone's clothes on; then the other part of the establishment exploits it while comdemning nudity at the same time [i.e. have you ever noticed that a movie containing sexual situations is usually rated PG-13 and sometimes R; but a movie containing non-sexual nudity is often rated X or NC-17?]). I'm a really sociable guy now compared to when I started Dungeons and Dragons. As a nudist D&Der, I can explore a scantily clad society without shame or titilation.

I also write, and I'm working on a thing for Dreamscarred Press. I have contributed to the Setting Search, and unlike Keith, I didn't believe that I'd win and I also held back. In the process, I'm writing a setting bible (another thing) and I'm not holding back this time. The bible is primarily going to be used for published adventures for d20 Modern and d20 Fantasy (and consequently, BESM d20), and not a published setting. I'm sick and tired of the feat and prestige class bloat and I want to work purely in adventures with a distinctive setting.

Atlantis is also a niche setting.

 

[Blind Azathoth]

Well, I'll tell you, but I must warn you first: this is a tale of unpleasantness. It doesn't have a happy ending. It's a gritty tale of addiction in the slums of suburbia.

It started when I was seventeen. I had a friend who I had thought was a nice guy, but one day, after school, he approached me and asked me if I'd ever heard of "Dungeons & Dragons." I told him I have, but had never played—"I know what that kind of thing does to you," I told him. He just laughed, and stared at me strangely, and said in a quiet voice, "You have no idea, man. You want to try some?"

I recoiled, pushed him away, and insisted I did not. I was a good kid—I didn't want to get mixed up in that kind of stuff. We grew distant then, as he became increasingly obsessed; he spent all of his time and money playing or buying new supplements or hunting for new DMs from whom he could get his fix. He was sick, and I could see it, but I couldn't help him...he didn't want to be helped.

Worse still, I could see him working on our other mutual friends. I tried to stop him, tried to dissuade them, but it was too late; I hadn't reached them in time, and after just a few experiences with it, they were hooked.

All of my friends grew more insistent; they believed I was a coward for not trying, that I was some brainwashed ignorant. They urged me to try it before I shunned it. Still I resisted—but when I turned eighteen, they made their decision for me. After going out to eat on my birthday, they took me back to one of their houses, and in their basement, they produced the instruments that ruined my life: the 3.5 core books and a set of dice they had bought for me.

They stopped me from leaving, forced me to sit down in a chair with them; they gave me a character sheet, which I looked upon with disgust, but they forced me to take it; they threatened and cajoled and mocked me until I crumbled. I wept as I rolled my first die and my friends looked on with a maniacal gleam in their eyes.

As my pre-generated Halfling barbarian, Milo Tealeaf, attacked for the first time—as I rolled a twenty-sided die to decide whether or not I hit an orc in the face with an axe for the very first time—I felt a sudden rush, a feeling of anticipation greater than any I have ever known. And as it slowly rolled to a stop, I held my breath—everything seemed to go in slow motion—the die was moving slower, slower—rolling to a stop—ah—there!—

A twenty. I let out my held breath in a gasp of pleasure. I felt like I was on fire and baby did it hurt so good.

It was at that moment, in the basement of a friend's house while they looked on with glee, that I started gaming, and I've never stopped. I have sunk deeper and deeper into this dependence on role-playing, and have begun buying supplements and adventures and even running my own game, providing others with satisfaction of the same hunger I have, and that too is its own kind of exhilaration.

Pelor save me, I am an addict.

 

[sckeener]

I got my start because of my mother. She thought it would be a good way for me to bond with the older kids on the swim team. Plenty of time to play D&D while waiting for your next event. The reason she continued to support me and my interest in D&D was for the vocabulary. When I started using words like Charisma and Constitution, she knew D&D was a good influence. Plus it made me very interested in mythology.

My Dad hated my interest in D&D, but then he hates fantasy.

I have many fond memories of those (along with Wizardry).

Ah Wizardry...the game I spent many an hour hacking. That game gave me my first exposure to the hex editor. Back in those days after I finished a game, I'd then take it all apart to see how it ticked. I use to have a spreadsheet so I could up any stat, make them any race or class, and give them any weapon. I kept one character pure from the original winning group.

It was fun...there were so many classes and weapons that I never saw in the game outside of hacking the system.

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

I would have to say that the initial first steps towards playing D&D and other RPG games started in the 4th grade when I read A Wrinkle In Time by Madelein L'Engle. Then it was the original Choose Your Own Adventure books until in 6th grade (about 1981) I noticed these kids that would go behind the portables at lunch and play some game that involved a cardboard screen with cool pictures on it and cool dice. That summer break between 6th and 7th grade I found out from a neighbor kid up the street that it was Dungeons & Dragons and he ran the first game I ever played in. I think he ran Castle Amber. I remember getting attacked by the invisible stalker in the dungeon and experience for the first time the fear of having my character die.

The kid was a flake, so the adventure didn't last more than a couple of hours. I went and found the basic boxed set after that and got some friends and my brother to play the module that came with it - Keep on the Borderlands. I soon graduated up to the Expert Set and tried a short stint at running module X1: Isle of Dread. Then it was on to 1E AD&D, a hiatus of a few years, back to AD&D, a short time playing 2nd Edition, and then 3rd edition to present.

And now I'm actually writing the adventures that I hope bring the same wonder to younger gamers that the old ones brought to me.

Good times!

 

[kensanata]

Somewhere in the early eighties we were living in Portugal I was reading all the Fantasy novels a friend of the family had. And one day my mom asked me to come along because this friend had brought a game called "Das Schwarze Auge" from Germany. (Das Schwarze Auge is the biggest German RPG, written by the German translator of D&D.) We played it for a few adventures. Back in Switzerland, a Canadian joined our class in highschool and mentioned Dungeons & Dragons. And I knew what he was talking about! A friend and I dreamed up lots of crazy adventures that took our characters up to level 12, and then I left for Thailand. After about 15 years, we've recently started playing again because EN World regular Greywulf started posting on my blog, I followed the links, and ended up reading about his M20 project...

 

[blargney the second]

My brother had the red box and some other books, and I inherited them. When my mom got on the BADDwagon she locked up my books in a briefcase.

And that's how I learned to pick locks.
-blarg

 

[Korgoth]

I started, iirc, in 1981, so I was 8. A friend had the Moldvay Basic set which he showed us when we all got together at his place. We had no idea what we were doing. I'm not sure if we were actually playing in part of B2 or not. I was hooked, though! I was always a bookish kid... the kind who angled to skip recess so he could read. I was totally into Greek Mythology. And this game had Minotaurs!

So I talked my grampa into getting me a Moldvay Basic set of my own. I still love the Erol Otus box art... my favorite all-time piece of D&D art. It actually took me a while to figure out how to play it "right"... but that made absolutely no difference. Total fun.

Basically it was an uncontrolled rocket-powered invincible nukular supertank for the mischievous chimp of a boy's imagination. I love it still.

 

[kenobi65]

And when Bard’s Tale III finally came out in 1987, I remember opening that box and leaping head first into a three day straight summer whirlwind playing session fueled by an endless stream of coffee
{snip}
Being a typical 12 year old
{snip}

Am I the only one who finds the idea of a 12-year-old on a 3-day coffee binge just a little unnerving?

 

[Galethorn]

Around the end of 3rd grade, my dad read The Hobbit to me. Not long after, he read Lord of the Rings. This would have been in '95.

By 7th grade, I'd reread them several times. I'd played a lot of computer games by that point, but nothing with swords and sorcery. For my 12th birthday, I got Everquest, and enjoyed it so much I nearly failed 7th grade. After about nine months, I decided to quit after my best friend, Tim, was barred from playing for doing even worse than I had in school that year. We discovered Baldur's Gate soon after, and we were hooked. It was only a matter of time before I ordered the quasi-2e boxed set (the one with a picture of a dragon on the cover, which included an adventure involving a dragon stealing the holy symbol from the roof of a church), and roped my parents into playing with Tim and I.

That was in '99.

We had fun, but didn't really do much after slogging through the pre-packaged adventure. Days turned to months, months turned to years, and I didn't play D&D again until I managed to convince my friends to let me DM a 3.0 game in '02. It was awful, but we still had fun. I soon gave up DMing when I found a friend-of-a-friend a few grades ahead of us that was willing to DM a Forgotten Realms game. It was awesome.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

In 1980 one of my friends and I went to the local hobby store to look at models to build. Four boys were sitting around a card table in the store playing this game called Dungeon and Dragons. We watched for a while and they talked to us about how to play the game. From the player of a fighter with two hit points named "Sir Run-A-Lot" (who upon his death was succeded by a one hit point fighter named "Sir Die-A-Lot"), I received sage advice such as, "Its not about knowing the rules or how good your character stats are, rather it is about having dice, character sheets and other accessories that make you look good."

Shortly afterwards I got my own copy of the Basic Set and the rest is history.

Oh, Galethorn's post reminded me, we had read The Hobbit in class earlier that year and loved it so a game with orcs, dwarves and elves really appealed to us.