How Old Were You When You Played Your First TTRPG?

[Ondath]

I discovered TTRPGs in middle school through Sword & Sorcery's Warcraft RPG, but since I had nobody around me interested in trying it, the only thing I could do was read the books for a good while. I started playing when I was 15 (so this is 2010), as a DM, running 3.5. through an MSN Messenger group chat (the game was text only). Come to think it, it was like starting on hard mode...

 

[RareBreed]

8 years old for me. My father had always done historical miniature gaming, and there was a small little "convention" at my older brother's high school. At first, I just watched my father and brother play, and both seemed interesting. I later bugged my parents to buy the the core books, and I remember being excited when Deities and Demigods came out.

I remember it was just 2 other friends from school and we only played a handful of sessions. I didn't get seriously back into it until I was 10 though. Perhaps unusually, my run with AD&D was not long lived at all. Once I got back into RPG's when i was 10, the next game I played was a handful of sessions of Top Secret, Villains and Vigilantes, and Champions. Then a lot of one shots (I remember playing some Runequest, Boot Hill, and Gangbusters). I don't think we settled down to a long term campaign until Twilight 2000 came out when I was 12.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

11, because my copy of The Riddling Reaver (a quasi-RPG) which I was given by an uncle when I was 8 was confiscated by my parents on the grounds of being to scary/gory (probably fair). So it wasn't until June 1989.

 

[Scottius]

I was in the 6th grade so between 11-12 when I ran my first game. I didn't partake as a player until 3-4 years later since I was the only GM for my group back then. Was running from the local libraries RPG books which I had or more or less permanent check out until I was able to acquire my own copies.

 

[CleverNickName]

Being a kid in the 80's is not the same as being a kid today.

Well of course not. Being a kid in the 90s wasn't the same as being a kid today either. The poll only asks how old you were when you first started playing. Some of us were kids in the 80s like I was, but some were kids in the 90s, 2000s, and even the 2010s (some of us might still be kids.)

Times certainly changed, but it doesn't look like the age of entry into the hobby changed much at all.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

(some of us might still be kids.)

[raises hand] guilty
57 year old kid here...

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

12 years old in 1988. My older step-brother loaned me his Mentzer Basic Set and I got one of my own shortly there-after. AD&D 2nd Edition came out the next year and I acquired a Player's Handbook, along with a friend's 1st Edition Monster Manual and Monster Manual II. So, what I ended up with was a bit of a mish-mash until I got the Rules Cyclopedia a couple of years later.

 

[GamerforHire]

Sixth grade in 1980. Had purchased the Monster Manual and the Players Handbook for AD&D at a local toy store in the big local shopping mall, along with a copy of the Holmes Basic set. A friend and I tried to figure it out. In seventh grade, within a couple months of starting school, we had a full-fledged group playing AD&D going.

 

[the Jester]

I was 10.

 

[Blue]

Just a quick story. Before we were married, my wife told me she used to play D&D back in the girl scouts. I asked her why she stopped.

Her answer: puberty.

Oooh that stung.