It's D&D's 40th anniversary. Tell me your D&D history, and what it means to you!

[Gatorsama]

Holmes Boxer

Christmas 1977. I was in 7th grade and my grandmother got me this strange game with a dragon on the cover of the box. I remember vividly reading the book and thinking what is infrared vision. I think it was talking about dwarves. I was soon hooked though and got other friends to play with me. No one in our little Iowa town had ever heard of D&D or roleplaying before. ................................................................................................ My art teacher who had also that year gotten me and some others into civil war gaming decided to try this D&D thing out too and that helped us get a handle on things much better. I remember hearing about AD&D when it came out and I worked all summer detasseling corn so I could afford to go to the only game store in Iowa in Des Moines to buy the books. The whole thing felt like an epic quest let me tell you. I still have those original three books and I got them signed by Gary Gygax later at GenCon in 1985. ....................................................................................................... By high school I was running three campaigns for different groups and was loving every minute of it. My campaign world maps covered an entire wall of my bedroom from floor to ceiling and 20 feet long. Great times. Then things got dark in our little roleplaying heaven. We lived in a very religious town full of Dutch Calvinists and others. We were hit with the full force of the satanic panic and many people were forced to quit playing the game by their parents. ................................................................................................. At this point I only had one group left which was a bizarre mix of adult farmers, quaker college students and some vietnam veterans and their wives. Still the best group I ever dm'ed. ...........................................................................................................After high school I joined the army and became an MP. I played rarely in the army and strangely enough even less in college after that. I kept my hand in mostly by reading Forgotten Realms books and playing things like Baldur's Gate and reading Knights of the Dinner Table. .................................................................................................... I also owned a game and book store for awhile and played a lot of Warhammer and Napoleonic wargaming over the years. .............................................................................................. Just recently I have started to play again using Dungeon Crawl Classics. The itch to start DMing again is growing in me all these years later. Its a good feeling. ...................................................................................................... (Please excuse the gratuitous dots. For some reason I can't make this thing show paragraphs)

 

[sheadunne]

1983 - Baltimore - My Cousin's House

My cousin, who was in high school, ran myself and his younger brother through an A&D scenario. I was hooked. We moved to Norway soon after and I loaded up on gaming stuff as quickly as I could. It didn't matter whether it was Basic or Advanced, I had to have it (which was a bit more difficult living in Norway). I've played other games along the way (Elfquest, Gurps, Battletech, WoD, Shadowrun, etc), but I've always wandered back to D&D. 40 years is a long time for a game to be around and everyone associated with it should be proud. I just hope in another 40 years there will be old folks sitting around the retirement home rolling d20s and telling stories.

 

[Anastrace]

I started in 1986. My parents bought me a player's handbook for my 6th birthday. I'd never been into outdoor activities or other toys really as a kid, I just read books but I devoured this book. When I learned the library had the DMG I read the holy heck out of that thing. I played my first game before I was seven. I think I died in my first encounter. It was glorious. I'd go on to have many fantasy adventures with others which helped my overcome my social anxiety disorder a bit. (Thanks D&D!) Though I'd go on to play many other rpg's, D&D is still my first love, I go back and play whatever edition is current because bumps and all it helped launch me into gaming, even with save or die, psionics rolls of insanity, I BECOME A BARD HOW?!, wait you can have 3 classes and I only get 1? But at least at level 9 or so, you got followers. Oh 1st edition, you were so fun to start with. And 2nd edition, all the worlds to explore (mostly expansions to the realms but I digress), kara tur, maztica, al-qadim, spelljammer, dark sun, planescape, ravenloft whew. And the home of my favorite supplement of all time, the one I still use even in my pathfinder games. Aurora's whole realms catalogue. I mean, it's like a Sears-Roebuck catalogue in a fantasy setting. So Awesome. 3.5, you were great, and I loved you more as Pathfinder. No offense. 4th, hey I liked you. Might be a minority, not sure. I thought you were fun, and while we needed a grid to play you a lot of my friends who hadn't played before grasped it. Possibly because it's similar to a board game? Who knows. It was fun. Also fun was Amethyst and it's modern counterpart. They worked really well with 4e. (well, modern 4e was weird when one person decided to use a spellcaster, but we modified the setting to adjust)

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in the summer of 1981 with the Moldvay red (pink?) box set. My parents were recently divorced, and I spent every other weekend at my dad's place with my sister. One weekend while looking at stamps in a stamp/coin shop in the mall (I can't remember which one), I saw some D&D miniatures and the D&D Basic and Expert sets in the window. I was fascinated. I stared longingly through the window at the box, and left with my stamps . . . but no D&D.

Two weeks later when I showed up at my dad's place there was the Dungeons and Dragons basic set! I was ecstatic, and I spent the entire weekend reading and drawing dungeons and begging my sister and dad to play. Alas, there would be no games for me that summer. Although they tried to humor me, neither my dad nor my sister could get interested in the ramblings of a 10-year old kid trying to learn the rules and explain them at the same time.

When Fall arrived that year I met some kids at school that I managed to wrangle into playing D&D. What a blast! Ten year old boys have vivid imaginations, and we were quickly burning through all of the challenges in the Basic Set including The Keep on the Borderlands and looking forward to the blue box Expert Set.

I don't know when or how I got it (maybe for Christmas), but eventually the Expert Set was mine. Before the following summer we had exhausted the full contents of both the Basic and Expert sets and had 14th level heroes storming around simple, nonsensical dungeons crushing and blasting everything in their paths.

Within a year or so I got turned on to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons by another kid at school. He had the Monster Manual with the bare-breasted female demons and devils and the gynosphinx! I had to get it. I later found out I also had to get the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide . . . ah, yes, the joys of reading Gygax at his best . . . or worst. While the DMG was absolutely one of the worst organized books ever, it was probably my favorite RPG book. You could pick up this book, turn to a page at random and be almost guaranteed to see something you had not seen before. Random encounters in the city? We got 'em; complete with street harlots and vampires! WTF?!?!

Many years of fun followed.

Thank you, Gary and Dave!

 

[Plaguescarred]

Happy 40th anniversary D&D! I started playing 25 years ago with my friends, which i'm still blessed enought to have around to this day, including my mentor, a rare thing i know. This game has done so much to help me as a young kid, it also helped me tremendously with my english, i wouldn't be working in aviation if it wasn't of that Thank you D&D! #LongLiveDnD

 

[Hippy]

I played my first game of D&D in 1978. I was nine years old and was shown how to play by my friend who was a year older. I was a dwarf that was promptly killed off by Demigorgon, but I did not care. In that brief session I was hooked. I begged my parents to let me have the game, and by my 10th birthday I had the first two books. I saved my allowance to buy the DMG that had just been released. The salesman was a 30 thirty-something clerk who managed the FLGS in my hometown. The store is now gone, but 25 years later I became re-introduced to this man by a mutual friend. I joined their 3.5 D&D game and became fast friends. He did not remember me, but after I relayed the story (I recognized him immediately), he did indeed remember. He was surprised that a kid my age back then was interested in buying D&D products, and the memory stuck with him. He has become a good friend; and while his health has declined (he now resides in a nursing home
as a result of diabetes and heart problems) we still get together at the nursing home to socialize over gaming.

I owe all my close friends to D&D. The game as a common interest became the catalyst to build friendships. I still game with two of my middle and high school friends on a bi-weekly basis. Thanks Gary and Dave for making a game that made life-long friendships.

Game on!

Hippy

 

[Kaodi]

I am not sure of the exact chronology of the early events, but I will give it a shot:

[sblock=My Possibly Way Too Long And Thorough Version]My Sister and I had a regular babysitter for several years when we were young. She had three sons, two about four and five years older than me and one two years younger (my Sister is a year younger than me). I believe when I was eight or nine (born in 1984) I was introduced at their house to the Bakshi version of Lord of the Rings. I ended up reading the trilogy in Grade 3. I believe I was nine when it came to pass that a friend of two older brothers (who was also the older brother of a girl from school who was my age) would come by the house every so often and they would play D&D (the friend was DM), along with my Sister's best friend's older brother as well. Anyway, to make a long story short I rarely ever got a chance to try out D&D while I was there, but I did get at least one introduction from the friend. I am not sure whether I would have gotten into these things had it not been for that, but there is probably a very strong chance I would still have become a LotR fan and a not hopeless chance I would have become a D&D fan. I also am not sure whether they played OD&D or Basic. I avoid talking to most of those guys though, except the brother of my classmate, because they were rather terrible to me on the whole.

Anyway, I believe when I was 12 I had a very fortuitous Summer at garage sales. I found a set of D&D things, including the AD&D (1st Ed) DM, PHB, and MM, along with Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Oasis of the White Palm, and Conan Unchained, as well as character sheets, and a strangely out of place Palladium book on ninjas. Other than the books, the other things came packed in a Moldvay Boxed Set box, even though it was pretty much all AD&D stuff. I believe I bought that all for under $30. I also believe that was the Summer I bought my Snark at a garage sale for $30 and a set of used wooden golf clubs for $30 (it was just when metal woods started to become a big thing, I believe). I entertained myself for many years with the books I got at that sale, though I did not know anyone who was interested in D&D. I was pretty must the least popular kid in my class, and it was a country school.

My school library had few fantasy books to keep me going after Lord of the Rings, but it did have Weasel's Luck and I think one other D&D novel. I am not sure it was Darkwalker On Moonshae, or if I got that at a different library or in high school. I kind of think it was another DragonLance novel. Actually, now that I look at a list of DL novels I believe it was the Gates of Thorbardin. The other thing that happened when I was 12 was I got into MUDs. My first was ArcticMUD, which was based on DragonLance, and who by some bizarre coincidence was run by a patient of my Mom's cousin who lived on the other side of the country. Somewhere around the same time I must have found TSR Chat on their website, because I think I frequented it for at least a year or two before TSR was bought by WotC and it became WotC Chat. Anyway, it was on TSR Chat that I got my first real chance to start playing D&D. Most games were technically 2e I think, but I was able to wing it with my 1e books. I also met a couple people there who I still know to this day, including ToreadorVampire, Aeolius, and NiTessine, all of whom have been members here at one time or another.

As a side note, various other things happened back in this time: I found my first ancient copies of Dragon at the local Goodwill, and I bought my first new module (Knight's Sword). I also read fantasy fiction voraciously when I was younger, building up a substantial collection of books, including a lot of D&D novels both DragonLance and Forgotten Realms, back in the day. I also bought a number of new issues of Dungeon.

Naturally it was on that chat that I heard about Eric Noah's website. It was a big time for me because when 3e came out it was the first time I was playing a version of D&D that was completely current (something that is not so much a big deal for me now, but it was back then given 2e's age and my lack of material). I bought a number of books, though I quickly fell behind. I also bought a decent number of copies of Dragon and Dungeon (and /Polyhedron) during that time, though I have never had a subscription. Of course, a new edition did not magically mean I had people to play with that I did not have before. High school never really provided me with other people who would have been interested in playing D&D (though my friends and no less my friends for their differing tastes!).

A lot of the stuff after that is basically the history of Eric's site and EN World, so I not think it all bears repeating (other than how I started reading PirateCat and Sagiro's Story Hours, which definitely form part of what I would aspire to in my dream campaign). But in 2005 I think I finally found my first real life D&D group, through here, actually. A poster by the name of Obscure was putting together in the local city, and I was working at the time and had use of a car so that I could drive in to play. Obscure and one of the other players were Masters students in Astronomy, and we played in the same building they were in, Sterling Hall on the Queen's University campus. We started the Age of Worms set in Eberron, and made it through the second module and into a replacement for the third before the game fell apart (amicably).

It was not until I went to university myself (UWO, University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario) that I found another group in 2nd year, in 2008, once again through the Gamers Seeking Gamers section here. We started Age of Worms again, this time in Greyhawk. It was good, but the transition to 4e kind of messed things up. Our group fell apart again because of the Summer breaks I believe and other priorities (like, you know, academics). But the DM and I transitioned to a new group that I was in for a while held in the basement of a local game shop (as opposed to the previous game which had been held in the basement of his house). I think I fell off the boat on the latter group before the group itself petered out (if it did, I am not sure).

Since then it has all been PbP with the occasionally game in IRC. I was in Aeolius' undersea game for a while (which I think he used to talk about even waaay back in TSR/WotC Chat). But it has been pretty dry. I am not sure when, or even if, I will get another chance for a RL group. Though I was initially enthusiastic about 4e, I have become a big Pathfinder fan, a game which I originally eschewed (despite opportunity with gamers in the Anime Club) for being to close to v3.5e to be worth it. I kind of wonder though if I can keep interest going on indefinitely with so little face to face game time. In 20 years I have *maybe* been in face to face groups for a combined total of a year and a half of actual meeting (so not counting Summer).

Anyway, I apologize for all of the inane details. That was probably way too much. Did not set out to write that much, just sort of happened.[/sblock]

TL;DR version: Became interested ~1993, age 9. First got books around ~1996. Spent a lot of time in TSR Chat, from which I learned about Eric Noah's website. Bought the Core of 3e as soon as it came out. Have only been in RL groups ~2005 and ~2008-2009.

 

[Raith5]

Great thread. I started playing Basic when I was 11 in 1982 and like most players quickly moved on to Advanced. I have played every edition and have liked each a little bit better than the previous edition. Have played serious roleplaying games (2nd ed and 4th ed especially), casual dungeon crawling games (especially 1st and 3rd ed) and monty haul capers (1st ed) with hirelings carrying our magic items around. Good times!

Like others here I have met lots of interesting people though this game and have also enjoyed the way D&D has shaped and informed computer games and pop culture (except the D&D films of course...).

 

[kunadam]

It was around 1989-1990. I heard about AD&D from some magazines and after playing some CRPG it was hinted that a paper based version also exist (without internet info spread slowly). There were no place in Hungary to buy foreign books.
I went to the UK on some language course and found a DMG and MC I-II in the local book store. I admit I did not even know tha DMG alone would not be enough to play. Then RPG books came into Hungary, albeit slowly and at a horrendous price. At any rate by 1991 we (borther and me) had a PHB.
From that on we played whenever we could. The best period was high school and early University time (93-96), when we could play at least once a week.
Later on, we established the tradition with some friends to go for a long weekend every summer to play (we still do that). We switched to D&D3.5 late (around the time 4th was already around the corner). We also play Call of Cthulhu. We have tried some more RPGs (d6 Star Wars, Shadowrun, Ars Magica, MAGUS (Hungarian RPG)), but mostly stayed with (A)D&D for our fantasy needs.

 

[Aenghus]

I first attempted to run D&D in 1981, from the Basic D&D Red Box, dragooning my sister as a player. (It didn't go so well). Still, I bought AD&D, and continued to read the books despite the lack of games around.

I found it difficult to talk to people, and couldn't find any other players locally. Roleplaying is a social activity, so I was inspired to stretch my limits, and keep looking. It took a few years, as RPGs were less common in Ireland, but eventually I found other players and got a chance to play in other people's games. It got easier when I got to university. I joined UCC WARPS, it's hobby gaming society, on it's founding in 1990, it's most popular RPG at the time being D&D.

I got to play some AD&D and lots of 2e, mostly set in the Forgotten Realms.

I started running my own D&D campaigns about 11 years ago on the launch of 3rd ed, moving to 3.5 and then 4th ed when they came along.

I have played lots of other games since, RPGs, boardgames etc, but D&D still remains my main hobby to this day.