D&D General How Did You Learn to Play?

[Imaculata]

First Hero Quest, then a sort of homebrew D&D light, which me and my friends called Elemental Quest (we even made clay miniatures for all the monsters), and eventually 2nd edition with friends. My friends had a lot of the books and knew all the rules, so that's how I got into the hobby. We were fortunate to have a couple of really good DM's in the group.

 

[Richards]

First Hero Quest, then a sort of homebrew D&D light, which me and my friends called Elemental Quest (we even made clay miniatures for all the monsters), and eventually 2nd edition with friends. My friends had a lot of the books and knew all the rules, so that's how I got into the hobby. We were fortunate to have a couple of really good DM's in the group.

That's pretty close to my kids' own "origin story" as well. I used Hero Quest as a "gateway drug" to introduce my boys - then 8 and 10 - to the basic concepts of RPGs (dwarves are tough, elves are good at magic, it's better to stick together as a group, etc.) and then, once we had gone through all of the scenarios that came with the Hero Quest box and two expansion packs (and built a few homebrewed scenarios myself using Monsters in my Pocket figures as new enemies), I taught them how to play AD&D 2nd edition, which was the current edition at the time.

The 8-year-old is now 34 and runs his own a weekly 3.5 campaign (or did, until COVID-19 put us on hiatus) in which I am a player as well as being a player in my own 3.5 campaign.

Johnathan

 

[jasper]

From playing with high school buddies and then dming for them. Note my high school buddies most of them were toxic beep holes.

 

[AngryTiger]

I was 7 years old when friend found his brother's old shadowrun books, and we learned how to play by reading them and running games for each other. Neither of us knew how to play, or had anyone teach us, we taught ourselves. We got into D&D few years later.

 

[MNblockhead]

Bought the basic box in, IIRC, 6th grade at either a Toys R Us or B Daltons. I don't remember much other than seeing it on the shelf and coloring in the numbers on the cheap blue dice with a white crayon. Mostly I read through the books and made a bunch of characters. Eventually, started playing with a friend and our gaming group continued to grow throughout Jr. High and High School. We learned by reading, trial and error, making stuff up, arguing about it, and thinking we could do better and home-brewing the hell out of it or making our own games.

After getting back into the game with 5e after not having played any TTRP since the early 90s, I found it more painful and anxiety creating than a remember it being when I was a kid. I think it is like language. Kids have the super power of learning from osmosis and trial and error. At least adults have the super power of making kids who can help us their us keep the game a game and not get hung-up on the hundreds of pages of "rules."

 

[Northern Phoenix]

I played some already-old 3.5 at university (as 5e was in its infancy, mind) as a player for a few years, then really got into 5e through actual play podcasts, after which i've DMed 5e ever since.

 

[Mallus]

A high school friend whose Dad -- who also taught us US History and various maths at our school -- introduced us to D&D (AD&D, specifically). Later his dad ran a few campaign for us, even inviting us to play in the Big Leagues, ie with his adult group of mostly 30-something STEM professionals.

 

[billd91]

I first heard about it in 5th grade from a classmate, Tyler, whose older brothers played it. Then the next year, my friend Rob got a copy of the Holmes box. We poured over it on the bus rides to and from school. He had learned about it via the local Boy Scouts. That summer (1981), he ran me through my first adventure and I was hooked but we didn't have much time to play. The next summer (1982), I was drafted into DMing because yet another friend, Mike, got the first red box D&D. I DMed out of his copy, learning as I went.

At that point, we still thought the Moldvay red box fed into AD&D so I saved up some money and bought the AD&D Players Handbook at an outing to the nearest mall that had Waldenbooks. It was months later before I was able to get my hands on the DMG, so whenever I got to the mall, I read the DMG and took from the combat tables to use as our characters leveled up past the info in Basic.

Sadly, my friend Rob unexpectedly passed away just a few of weeks ago. I have him to thank for a life of RPG fun.

 

[Ancalagon]

I met some kids in high school, who started with Advanced Fighting Fantasy but we quickly moved to D&D 2e. I couldn't afford books, and never really owned my own set until D&D 3.5 came out.

We learned by playing. 3e was much easier to understand than 2e.

... do we know each other? lol

I started the same way. I only switched to 3e after moving for university though.

 

[Stormonu]

Got the Holmes blue book set for Christmas and promptly lost it, leaving me with only the module B2 - Keep on the Borderlands, and a handful of miniatures. My brother and I muddled through our own made-up rules, and at school we narrated our adventures without dice (they were illegal at school due to concerns about gambling) until I got hold of the Moldvay red box a couple years later. Once I got the red box, I started diving into the actual rules - which eventually led me to getting the AD&D books and studying them even further.