How did you start?

[Mark]

In 1974, my friend and I had been part of a wargames club for a little while (we had even played a number of games of Chainmail) when one Saturday a fella was running the new D&D game. He was running it with two of his own characters as he DMed but he was allowing others to make characters and join his main two as henchmen. We watched for a while and tried it out. Before long we had gotten a copy of our own. Fun!


*edit* I voted "Played related wargame" since we had previously played Chainmail but I think I could have just as easily voted "Through a club/organization " or "Friend" since both were also factors.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

It was a simple progression for me. It started with Choose-your-own-adventure books, the the Fighting Fantasy Game books followed by the Basic Red Box, followed by the AD&D books. The books were from a school book club but all the D&D stuff was from a game store that has long since gone. We then had a group at school who played.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Nadaka]

When I was a kid, me and my siblings would always play makebelieve. Later my brother was into gaming, He helped me create a character that had a magic ring that could turn me into a T-Rex. I have no idea what gaming system it was in. Yet again later I ended up moving in with my brother and played some WW and 2nd edition with him. From there I built my own systems for a few years until I found 3e and d20 modern.

 

[Stalker0]

I started my first year in college. A new friend of mine told me he was running a game. I had heard all of the sterotypes and seriously thought it was all cults and rituals, so I declined to play. He told just to come and watch. I was pretty nervous about it.

Well when I get there they tell I can't just watch I have to play. Well, a few hours in I was hooked

 

[Merkuri]

I had read about it in a couple places and saw a couple D&D "kits" on sale in a local toy store. I was a little too old for toys at the time, but I still enjoyed the board games. There was a D&D boxed set (I don't know exactly what edition it was, but it was long before 3e and didn't have "Advanced" written on it, I think it was BD&D) was in the board games section and I decided to try it out. It had a huge game board with a dungeon layout, some plastic and pewter minis, and a whole boatload of cardboard minis representing monsters and doors (you would place the doors where you wanted on the dungeon board to represent the actual layout of your dungeon). I also picked up a smaller box (that did have "Advanced" written on it, I think that was AD&D 2e) that included an abbreviated player's handbook and some pre-made characters. I may be getting the two kits mixed up because I picked them up at the same time and learned them around the same time. I usually was the DM and my sister played one or more characters. I was a horrible DM, but we still had fun. I didn't pick up the actual books until a few months later when my sister and I discovered a mutual friend knew how to play and lent us his books to look at.

 

[Pierced]

My best friend at the time asked for dungeon the board game and got D&D basic instead. I just love how parents listen. anyways started playin with him his sister and some friends.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Hi-

You forgot to add "Started playing in the military".


Scott

 

[derelictjay]

I guess I could say computer related games, they were the old gold box games put out by SSI. But truth, I'd seen advertisements in old comic books, and I paged through a few in the local Half Price Books, long before those games came out. Another influence, wierdly enough, was a strict woman in my church showing a film on things for children with "satanic" influence, there was D&D of course, they also included the He-Man toy line in the film, and I knew those weren't satanic (partially because I owned some of them), and it really piqued my curiousity as to what really was in the books.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I learned about D&D in junior high from a friend. I borrowed a book - the Monster Manual, which, at the time, was the first and only hardback RPG book available. I was hooked. I found a copy of the blue cover "Holmes" edition, with art by Dave Sutherland, at a Waldenbooks. I soon had to have the AD&D books as they appeared, and the group I gamed with - all guys I knew in junior high - only briefly played the "basic" game before we started playing AD&D.

It went years before I ever saw a game shop. There just weren't any around. Most of my purchases of game books were at bookstores. My best source for much of the 1980s was an independently-run bookstore that had a nice selection of game material tucked away in the back of the place.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I was introduced by friends. Eventually they showed me Toronto's various FLGSs. I bought my first books myself from an FLGS, but I bought the 3.5 core rules from Amazon.