How Did You Start Playing?

[Thornir Alekeg]

Back in my day we didn't have these fancy game stores kids do now. No, we had Hobby Shops. A friend and I went to our local hobby shop to look at model planes and saw four kids sitting at a small table playing this game called D&D. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

[gizmo33]

My father bought the Holmes basic boxed set on impulse from a surplus store in town. I came across it, read the booklet, and talked my friends into playing the game.

 

[Midknightsun]

My older sister got me the Red Box for my 12th birthday after seeing it at KB Toystore a few months before. Strangely enough, I'd been making up my own (very primitive) RPGs since I was about 8 or 9. So . . . I pretty much introduced myself to it. Switched to 1st edition in about 88 and joined a local group, of which I was the youngest member. Bought my first PHB and DMG from Waldenbooks.

 

[Dykstrav]

I think I have an unusual entrance into gaming.

When I was eight, my mother took me to the public library to get books over the summer break from school (I didn't like television much, especially not the cartoons of the mid-eighties). On one such trip, I found a mysterious tome entitled Player's Handbook. Well cool, a big idol on the cover and neat drawings inside, I checked it out.

I ended up reading that Player's Handbook cover-to-cover something like four times over the course of a week.

The rest of that summer was spent scrounging together some polyhedral dice and begging my parents for the three core books. Alas, they were pretty much cheap-assed and they balked at the idea of spending fifty dollars on books (which they assumed I'd get bored with in about a week and never touch again). Fortunately for me, the books were always at the library and no one but me ever checked them out. I couldn't get anyone else my age to understand how cool this game would be if I ever got anyone to play it, so I spent alot of time rolling up characters and drawing dungeons on graph paper.

Finally, when I was eleven, I was able to convince some people to play with me. I don't think the other kids really got it since I told them it was a "game," but I didn't have any minis or anything like that. Fortunately, I was able to fall in with a gaming group of twenty-somethings that realized that I was a smarter-than-the-average-bear type and they let me play with them. Best campaign ever!

 

[Stormborn]

The first game book I ever bought was impulse. I had long been interested in RPGs through console gaming and what I would read about them in comics but never bought one because no one I knew played. Late in life (29) i bought the Aberrant game book which has been mishelved in the graphic novels at a local book store. I read it but never played any RPG until a few years later when a friend who used to play DnD bought 3rd ed and asked if I would like to try it.

I was hooked.

 

[Terraism]

I'm possibly ashamed to admit it, but I clawed my way over to the local hobby shop to pick up a few booster packs for Magic a bit over twelve years ago, and they had some older gamers playing D&D. I was very interested, and it took some fast talking to persuade my mother to let me pick up the store's copy of the Dragon Strike board game (because, you know, D&D itself was satanic. But that was okay.) And thus I'm one of perhaps ten people to've came to D&D through Dragonstrike. Works for me.

 

[sckeener]

My mother told me that kids on the swim team played it, so I bought Deities and Demigods. It was my first book and it is the one with Moorcock and Lovecraft. I loved it.

It was probably 3 years later though that I started playing it right....

 

[jdrakeh]

None of the above. I was introduced to Basic D&D (the Holmes boxed set) by my 1st Grade teacher as part of a Gifted Education programme. Basically, we got to sit around and play D&D, various PC games (Zork, Oregon Trail, etc), and engage in other leisure activities as school work. Upon reflection, I'm 90% certain that these games were supposed to teach us advanced problem solving techniques (which I'm also 90% certain they did).

 

[kenobi65]

There is that, at least back when I started. As unfriendly as the local store could be, the stuff sold well and he kept it very well stocked. Anymore, though, with stuff so readily available from other sources, I'm not sure that aspect of the LGS is as important.

Well, I see a distinction between "a place to buy the stuff" and "a place where you can ask questions and meet other people who can tell you more."

Certainly, the internet can act as a surrogate for the latter...but we need to remind ourselves that an awful lot of players (even younger, generally-net-savvy players) do *not* visit gamer message boards.

 

[shilsen]

Heard about D&D while in India and loved the concept. Bought the books when I came to the US and taught myself to play. Found a group via a student of mine. Never looked back