How did you start?
- Thread starter Mercule
- Start date
Gargoyle
Adventurer
I bought the D&D Basic red box for $12 at a Service Merchandise in 1982. I remember reading the rules while on a fishing trip, and wanting to plan a campaign with Bargle as the main villain.
Edit: Oh, I first heard about it in school. It was a private Christian school and they preached against it. I remember thinking..."they preached against Rock n Roll and I like that so it must be worth looking at."
Edit: Oh, I first heard about it in school. It was a private Christian school and they preached against it. I remember thinking..."they preached against Rock n Roll and I like that so it must be worth looking at."
ShinHakkaider
Adventurer
Found a copy of Keep on the Boarderlands while I was visiting a friend after school. It was his older brothers copy and he (the older brother) told me that I could have it. It was pretty much beat to s**t but i was fascinated by the numbers and the "story". I bought my first D&D basic box at Forbidden Planet in NYC about 2 months later.
Scribble
First Post
Hrmm... I guess I always sort of, knew what it was from having watched the old cartoons back in the day...
One day I sort of just decided I should try D&D out.. I'm not sure why? A friend in school had the red boxed set. (The one with the female wizard and adventurers in a water filled green dragon lair...)
I read through it, and accidently also read through the Keep on The Border Lands... My freiend was annoyed I did that!
he never ended up running a game.
Later, I went to watch my sister play a tennis match, and afterwards we stopped at the mall, and she bought me a copy of the black boxed set... I gathered a few friends and we tried out Zanzer's dungeon. I was hooked.
Zanzer Tem has had a special place in my nostalgia! (And he's shown up twice as the BBEG of the campaign...)
One day I sort of just decided I should try D&D out.. I'm not sure why? A friend in school had the red boxed set. (The one with the female wizard and adventurers in a water filled green dragon lair...)
I read through it, and accidently also read through the Keep on The Border Lands... My freiend was annoyed I did that!
he never ended up running a game.
Later, I went to watch my sister play a tennis match, and afterwards we stopped at the mall, and she bought me a copy of the black boxed set... I gathered a few friends and we tried out Zanzer's dungeon. I was hooked.
Zanzer Tem has had a special place in my nostalgia!
(And he's shown up twice as the BBEG of the campaign...)
Kaodi
Legend
Way Back When...
My first contact with D&D was when a couple of one of my babysitters kids would have their friends over and they would play. I was about eight or nine. I don't think I really got to watch that much, and only got to try out one encounter. Same people also bought the old Lord of the Rings movies. Anyway, these encounters were mostly brief, but I was interested from the beginning. Without them, I probably still would have become a fantasy/sci-fi geek, but I don't know about D&D...
Anyway, a few years later, when I was twelve and had stopped going to a babysitter, the family and I were out looking at garage sales (though that wasn't exactly an activity I really liked) and I found an AD&D 1e PHB, DMG, MM, Character Sheets, Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Oasis of the White Palm and Conan Unchained packaged together for $30... needless to say, I bought it. Interestingly (at least to me), in my lifetime I also bought a 1, 3 and 5 wood for $30, and a heavy duty styrofoam snark for $30... seems to have been the magic number for garage sales.
Anyway, I got my Mom to buy me my first set of dice from Canada Games, when they still had stores, and I eventually bought the Dragonlance Knight's Sword adventure as well. Also, I managed to find two old copies of Dragon at the Goodwill (which was pretty new back then). Unfortunately, it would be years before any of this amounted to me getting to play the game. My *guess* is that sometime between the ages of 14-16 I played my first real game of D&D online, through the TSR chat site. I met a lot of good people through there, though I don't know whats happened to most of them.
So... on with the story! Sometime around May of last year, I was using the Gamers Seeking Gamers forum, and by golly, I actually found someone who was in Kingston! One thing led to another, we got together to plan characters, and we started the Age of Worms Adventure Path... There have been a number of people who have come and gone in just a few sessions, but five of us and the DM stayed with it. In a couple of months he will be leaving town, but I don't plan on letting my first gaming group die without at least trying to hold it together by becoming the DM!
Anyway... yeah, most of this hasn't really been that relevant to the core question of the thread, but I certainly enjoyed the retelling of it.
My first contact with D&D was when a couple of one of my babysitters kids would have their friends over and they would play. I was about eight or nine. I don't think I really got to watch that much, and only got to try out one encounter. Same people also bought the old Lord of the Rings movies. Anyway, these encounters were mostly brief, but I was interested from the beginning. Without them, I probably still would have become a fantasy/sci-fi geek, but I don't know about D&D...
Anyway, a few years later, when I was twelve and had stopped going to a babysitter, the family and I were out looking at garage sales (though that wasn't exactly an activity I really liked) and I found an AD&D 1e PHB, DMG, MM, Character Sheets, Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Oasis of the White Palm and Conan Unchained packaged together for $30... needless to say, I bought it. Interestingly (at least to me), in my lifetime I also bought a 1, 3 and 5 wood for $30, and a heavy duty styrofoam snark for $30... seems to have been the magic number for garage sales.
Anyway, I got my Mom to buy me my first set of dice from Canada Games, when they still had stores, and I eventually bought the Dragonlance Knight's Sword adventure as well. Also, I managed to find two old copies of Dragon at the Goodwill (which was pretty new back then). Unfortunately, it would be years before any of this amounted to me getting to play the game. My *guess* is that sometime between the ages of 14-16 I played my first real game of D&D online, through the TSR chat site. I met a lot of good people through there, though I don't know whats happened to most of them.
So... on with the story! Sometime around May of last year, I was using the Gamers Seeking Gamers forum, and by golly, I actually found someone who was in Kingston! One thing led to another, we got together to plan characters, and we started the Age of Worms Adventure Path... There have been a number of people who have come and gone in just a few sessions, but five of us and the DM stayed with it. In a couple of months he will be leaving town, but I don't plan on letting my first gaming group die without at least trying to hold it together by becoming the DM!
Anyway... yeah, most of this hasn't really been that relevant to the core question of the thread, but I certainly enjoyed the retelling of it.
Wombat
First Post
When I got started back in the early 70s, there were only wargames -- AH, SPI, and miniatures games. I lived in northern California, but bought many of my minis through a company down in Anaheim (Brookhurst Hobbies). One day in 1975 one of their catalog supplements was mailed to my house -- "New game from TSR, makers of Chainmail and Hardtack. It's called Dungeons & Dragons and is a new form of fantasy wargame, but played with pen and paper." I was fascinated enough (and liked Chainmail enough) to give it a chance.
And thus began my obsession.
You could say this was "through a related wargame" or "from another retailer" or something else -- I'll let you choose.
And thus began my obsession.
You could say this was "through a related wargame" or "from another retailer" or something else -- I'll let you choose.
Zander
Explorer
IIRC Warlock was first published in 1982 or '83 so that makes it a bit later than you imagine.Shining Dragon said:
I first got into D&D through a friend. We played the early Fighting Fantasy books together even though they were meant for solo play. I then progressed to Basic D&D.
A slightly convoluted story here, but it's also at least a more recent convoluter story. 
For a birthday in 1991, I received "Space Crusade", the Games Workshop/Milton Bradley sci-fi board game. I had apparently been eyeing it up for ages beforehand (I do remember the TV adverts for it and HeroQuest, and looking at the box pictuers in shops) so I was uber thrilled to receive it. My family were a bit confused by all the rules but they did their best to play it with me, and there's a rather cute picture of a smaller GQuail pnchign out blip tokens whilst an aunt looks bemused at the various dice therin. :>
Thes ame Aunt who got me this present later told me about the existence of Games Workshop (I have no idea how she kenw this: she's far too trendy for that sort of thing ) and I went in and bought one of the SPace Crusade expansions from there. From there I slowly got into the GW wargames, starting out with Man O War. I remember seeing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but by the time I was getting into it it was somewhat sparesly supported to say the least.
Well, knowing I was into these sorts of games tended to lead my relatives to pick up various kinds of presents for me, so I started getting all kidns of stuff: including, whyen I was around 10 or 11, D&D. I can't remember if the Dragon Quest box (which I think someone mentioned earlier: dungeon room board, loads of counters anmd mosnter stats/treasure on cards) or the BD&D Red Dragon/Zanzer Tem adventure was my first, but I had both before I went to secondary school. I rarely played them because I was an only child and didn't really have a huge amount of after-school friends: but I did own them, and would often design my own dungeons much as I had for Heroquest & Advanced Heroquest beforehand.
I picked up other RPGs whilst at secondary (Star Wars D6, Street Fighter and even 3rd edition: I have no recollection of when and how I bought the core rules, because it seem sunlikely I got all three on a spur of the moment, but maybe I just had an awful lot of money that week ;-) ) but only properly started to play them when I went to University, and found a gaming society which gave me a horde of players and GMs.
Since then I've discovered a proper FLGS (before that, eitehr normal bookstores or Forbidden Planet were my main outlets: though I do remember when I played Magic noticing that Virgin sold RPG products, I never bought any there. Changed days, eh?) Thankfully, an ever-growing collection of OOP products means I can pull out a 1st ed PHB or an early Paranoia book and pretend I was into RPGs before they were cool. ;-)
For a birthday in 1991, I received "Space Crusade", the Games Workshop/Milton Bradley sci-fi board game. I had apparently been eyeing it up for ages beforehand (I do remember the TV adverts for it and HeroQuest, and looking at the box pictuers in shops) so I was uber thrilled to receive it. My family were a bit confused by all the rules but they did their best to play it with me, and there's a rather cute picture of a smaller GQuail pnchign out blip tokens whilst an aunt looks bemused at the various dice therin. :>
Thes ame Aunt who got me this present later told me about the existence of Games Workshop (I have no idea how she kenw this: she's far too trendy for that sort of thing
) and I went in and bought one of the SPace Crusade expansions from there. From there I slowly got into the GW wargames, starting out with Man O War. I remember seeing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but by the time I was getting into it it was somewhat sparesly supported to say the least.Well, knowing I was into these sorts of games tended to lead my relatives to pick up various kinds of presents for me, so I started getting all kidns of stuff: including, whyen I was around 10 or 11, D&D. I can't remember if the Dragon Quest box (which I think someone mentioned earlier: dungeon room board, loads of counters anmd mosnter stats/treasure on cards) or the BD&D Red Dragon/Zanzer Tem adventure was my first, but I had both before I went to secondary school. I rarely played them because I was an only child and didn't really have a huge amount of after-school friends: but I did own them, and would often design my own dungeons much as I had for Heroquest & Advanced Heroquest beforehand.
I picked up other RPGs whilst at secondary (Star Wars D6, Street Fighter and even 3rd edition: I have no recollection of when and how I bought the core rules, because it seem sunlikely I got all three on a spur of the moment, but maybe I just had an awful lot of money that week ;-) ) but only properly started to play them when I went to University, and found a gaming society which gave me a horde of players and GMs.
Since then I've discovered a proper FLGS (before that, eitehr normal bookstores or Forbidden Planet were my main outlets: though I do remember when I played Magic noticing that Virgin sold RPG products, I never bought any there. Changed days, eh?) Thankfully, an ever-growing collection of OOP products means I can pull out a 1st ed PHB or an early Paranoia book and pretend I was into RPGs before they were cool. ;-)
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