D&D General How Did You Learn to Play?

[Shiroiken]

I started being interested in fantasy rpgs from the D&D cartoon and nintendo RPGs like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. A friend borrowed the 1E PHB, and we read it cover to cover (even the spells). My brother started playing in high school, but he wouldn't let me join. Instead I took a couple of my friends and made my own game based on what I remembered from the PHB. My brother's DM found out, checked it over, and was impressed. He immediately invited me into his game.

Back then, the rules were almost completely in the DMG, so players just knew how to build characters and understand a few concepts. To learn to play pretty much required joining an existing group, and being a DM needed someone to teach you. It became an apprenticeship situation, where someone teaches you, so you look for potential players and DMs to teach them. The basic game did a much better job of teaching DMs, but it was still better to learn from another.

 

[Ezequielramone]

I was a teenager and loved computer RPGs (mostly hack and slash by the time). By fortune I crossed path with Neverwinter Nights and could not believe I was not able to understand how stat, class, feats, etc, worked so I read it was based on D&D. Since that time I downloaded the books many times and read them till I found a forum in my country about RPG, bought some dice, the Pathfinder Core Rulebook (it was 2011 so, It was THE GAME) and started the Kingmaker campaign as a player. Felt in love in the first session, just could not believe what was going on. It became a really important part of my life. I played aD&D, 3e, 4,e, Pahtfinder, 5e, Low fantasy gaming, Urban Shadows, Wordfall, L5R, Dragon Age RPG, and many more I can recall. I consider myself a 5e DM now.

 

[MarkB]

I played D&D at a school club for a few sessions, but couldn't say that I really learned the system very well. After that, I didn't play again until I was in my late 20s.

The way I actually learned the system was quite unusual. I had bought and avidly played Baldur's Gate I and II on PC, and Bioware were developing their next D&D game, Neverwinter Nights, and they had an online community on their forums with whom they were actively consulting during the game's design, in which I was an eager participant.

The problem was, much of the discussion revolved around the move from the 2e ruleset used in the Baldur's Gate game to the 3e ruleset for Neverwinter Nights - and I had trouble participating because I only knew 2e from the videogames, and didn't know 3e at all. So I actually bought the 3e rulebooks purely and specifically in order to participate in the discussions, and I read them avidly, specifically with an eye to the technicalities of the rules, because that was what was being adapted into the videogame.

I was a complete loner at the time, so it actually took several months before I made the decision that "hey, I've got the books, maybe I should actually try and find somewhere to play this thing." So I signed up with a local gaming club, joined up, and started playing. I'm afraid I was a terrible rules lawyer at first, because I went into it with a nigh-encyclopedic knowledge of the rules combined with zero experience of actual play or table etiquette. I did get better over time, and I still play and GM in the same club nearly 20 years later.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

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.

 

[Richards]

My two cousins (who lived far enough away we only saw them two or three times a year) taught AD&D 1st Edition to me and my two younger brothers by running us through a homemade dungeon using pregenerated characters. That Christmas, I got the DMG, my next-oldest brother got the PHB, and my youngest brother got the MM - and we were off!

Johnathan

 

[Monayuris]

My mother bought me the Red Box (BECMI) when I was 9. I taught myself how to play and started playing with the rest of the kids in the schoolyard.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

My mom's friend, who was a fantasy novel nerd and my brother and my babysitter, I think, bought my brother and I the 1982 Red Box with the Elmore cover art. Same Christmas that we also got Crossbows and Catapaults.

 

[Umbran]

When I was young (single digits of age), my eldest brother introduced us to Tunnels and Trolls. Then, some years later, he came back from college for X-mas with the DMG and PHB for us, and taught us how to play.

 

[Ace]

We were really young and had Holmes D&D which was like 48 pages long . We read it and basically just guessed, After a couple of three sessions we figured out how the rules were supposed to work and never looked back. Since we already had done "let's pretend" games as kids it was a natural fit.

 

[Zardnaar]

Red box and RC. Played a fighter.