How was your first time?

[steeldragons]

...playing D&D I mean, of course.

I have been thinking a lot about a "beginning/sample party" (not necessarily "iconic" characters but close, I guess) for my campaign setting. It got me to thinking/remembering about my own "starting out" in D&D and I thought it would be interesting to see/compare people's origins (esp. long term players, but everyone is welcome, including current "first timers").

So if you can recall the whole party, great. If you just remember a first and/or favorite character that was your first foray into the realms of D&D (ANY version/edition). Let me hear about it. Any amount of detail you like, but at the very least a race/sex/class.

My first party (I did a sketch a bit back of in my Art thread "Steel Dragons Art" (http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-ga...atures-painting/283445-steel-dragons-art.html)

PS: How do I embed links into threads here? I've seen them but the "add link" is obviously not the way to go.

Anywho, it was me, a family friend (who had the original Basic game) and his younger brother. Think we were both 10 or 11...his brother must have been around 8, I guess.

The party consisted of myself playing a magic-user (male/human was the only option I knew of), a lizardman (my friend's character even though in those days a humanoid PC was defintiely NOT in the rules! haha.). He was, essentially the party's fighter, and his brother played a halfling. I recall drawing on the ride home from their house of our adventure...everyone looked decidedly "Masters of the Universe" in those days. haha.

From that afternoon/evening I was hooked, even though we didn't know what we were doing or following the rules all that closely (I recall that because I found 1 spell per day "unfair", my friend ruled I could cast my one spell, Sleep, at will...hahaha.)

My imagination was on FIRE. I got my hands on everything D&D I could (Who remembers the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books? Had them all.) Totally got me into reading significantly more than I probably ever would have on my own.

But I digress...my first character: a human/male magic-user, dressed all in various shades of blue with a big collared cloak looking like "He-Man." Teamed up with a lizardman and a "fraidy cat" halfling (more from his player than any actual thought into the character's mind).

Once I got the AD&D PH, it was all over. I created evvvverything/body at one point or another.

But tell me, who were your firsts...

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

I played the human fighter from the Mentzer Red Box solo adventure. After playing through the solo adventure a dozen times or so, I took that same character, named him Duke (after the G.I. Joe character) and played him in my step-brother's version of the Isle of Dread with a couple of his friends (the only other character I remember is the magic-user).

Not too long after that I started DMing and have rarely sat on the players' side of the screen since then.

 

[possum]

It was sometime right after 3e came out, that spring, I think. The group I was in were long time players of 2e and this was their first session of third. I played a half-elf fighter, because they told me it was likely the easiest to play (well, I picked the half-elf part myself).

We started at 1st level and were charged with protecting a treasure chamber from the person robbing it every night. Turned out it was this shadow person that had some connection with a renegade mage of the kingdom. Then, I had to go home... I stayed with the group until its inevitable breakup two years later, though.

 

[Wicht]

It was, I think, 1982 and I was 9 (either that or it was 1981 and I was 8 - I should have kept a journal). I was at a friends house. He had 1 module and a limited understanding of the rules. I made a thief style character and embarked on the adventure solo. Neither of us really, in retrospect knew what was allowed or not allowed (I clearly remember using my climb wall ability to scoot along the ceiling of a dungeon above the monsters), but I was hooked. I went home and made characters for my brother and my sister (7 and 5) and made up adventures for them. Following my next birthday, I took my money, went into a drug-store and bought a copy of the Moldvay Basic Boxed set.

 

[Richards]

My two cousins, who lived about an hour and a half away, brought their D&D game over one visit. They had each created half of a dungeon and were going to swap off DM/player roles as we explored their respective halves of the dungeon. Rather than waste time on character creation, they brought about eight 1st-level PCs that they let us choose from, and we woke up in the dungeon with no memories of how we had gotten there, and we were off!

I remember being very disappointed in the PCs we had to choose from, because once it had been explained that the ability scores went from 3-18 and 18 was the good end of the scale, I couldn't help but notice that just about every PC had a "4" or "5" or "6" in their ability scores. Newbie that I was, I knew that meant they sucked at something in the game, but I chose a human druid named "Jon" (my cousins had prenamed each PC as well) whose ability scores didn't suck too much, and we made it through the dungeon. (After the game, I found out they had used a computer program to randomly generate a number between 3 and 18, rather than randomly generate three numbers between 1 and 6 and add them together, or, you know, just roll the dang dice!)

In any case, the first thing we met up with were a bunch of giant rats, and I (quite wisely, I thought at the time) ran away at full speed like a frightened girl. Once it was explained that giant rats were wimps and we could easily take them, I got more into the spirit of the game.

Johnathan

 

[Achan hiArusa]

It was 1984 and the guys in the gifted class started chanting D&D when they found Miss Longfellow's Holmes boxed set. I was given a character sheet from someone who was absent (they played it before, I was also in Special Ed classes, go figure, so I wasn't there all the time). We were at the Keep on the Borderlands and we went through the woods and encountered the hermit. I managed to make a Pick Pockets roll and took his ring of invisibility and we killed him and took his stuff.

 

[Henry]

I DMed when I was 10, and played my first character when I was 17. Therefore I cam into the hobby a little backwards from a lot of people.

First time I played I and my friends and relatives couldn't really grasp the rules 100% - even with the Moldvay and Cook sets, we couldn't quite get the way the dice interacted with the saving throw charts, etc. (Had I ever seen an actual game of it, it would have clicked immediately, but I never met another group until 7 years later) Therefore, I made most of it up. You swung your sword, I (the DM) decided if you hit or missed, depending on what made good story. I decided if the black dragon's breath killed you or not, etc. Our D&D almost might as well have not been played with books, based on the way we played it. Because of the heavy "choose your own adventure" book influence we had, we made it work to the experience we knew.

It wasn't until high school that I met a group that showed me how it REALLY got played.

 

[White Tornado]

I was 15 years old. I discover some classmates played AD&D 2nd edition (I had heard about it), and I invited myself to their next session ^_^ The party consisted of two human fighters, an invoker, a necromancer, and a halfling thief. They made me play a priest, and the DM invented an overpowered specialty priest on the spot. The session consisted of my character meeting the rest of the party, and the halfling thief leading a rebellion in the kingdom where we apparently were. Can't remember why. The character never saw any combat action.

 

[DragonLancer]

My first game was so cool, but in such a way that I've never managed to recapture that feeling. I was playing a human fighter type. But what made it was that I could envision everything that happened perfectly in my imagination. After that first session I was never able to recapture that.

 

[delericho]

It was awesome. I instantly fell in love with the game.

And I can remember almost none of it.

It was 1988, and I'd just started high school. I was handed someone's 12th level Thief to play (he may not even have had a name). I robbed someone, then we all got on a ship bound for... somewhere. Then we were attacked by skeletons. (Oh, the flashbacks I got while watching "Pirates of the Carribean"!)

And that's about it. Except that it was AD&D 1st Edition (the only time I've played that edition), and the game ran for about six weeks before the DM disappeared off to university.