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

[Morrus]

Tomorrow, January 26th, is researcher Jon Peterson's best-guess for the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. "For all the reasons listed above, it's probably impossible to narrow in on one date and say with any certainty that this is when the game was released. But if we need to celebrate somewhere in the neighborhood of late January, then the last Sunday of the month (this year, the 26th) seems like the best candidate. As the El Conquistador advertisement above notes, Sunday was the day when Gary invited the world to drop by his house, at 1:30 PM, to have a first experience of Dungeons & Dragons. Since it's a weekend, many of us can clear our schedules to revisit some classic tabletop. So this coming January 26th, 2014, do take the time to celebrate the birth of Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing games."

I started playing D&D nearly 30 years ago. I was about 12 years old, and played the B of BECMI at lunchtime with my friends at school. One day somebody turned up with some hardcover books called "Advanced" Dungeons & Dragons, which we promptly switched to. The following years were filled with avid consumption of Weis & Hickman's Dragonlance Chronicles (and later, the Legends). I had a bit of a break round about the time I went off to university, but soon fell in with a new gaming crowd and AD&D 2nd Edition. I remember one rules dispute which had me look up the phone number of TSR UK to ask them a question - it was about a lion's claw attacks and offhand weapons or somesuch. A nice lady took my phone number, saying everyone was at lunch. Half an hour later, my phone rang and a chap from TSR UK (I wish I knew his name) called to help us with the rules.

In 1999-ish I stumbled across a website called Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News. It transpired that a new edition of D&D was in the works, and I devoured every snippet of information coming from a remarkably candid development team at WotC. Since then I've played 3E, 3.5, 4E, and Pathfinder; and later this year we'll see the advent of D&D Next (or whatever name they go with).

D&D has been an enormous part of my life for nearly 30 years, and I suspect it will be for many years to come.

Plenty of news organizations have mentioned this occasion, including the Guardian and USA Today. This year, Community (the TV show) will have a D&D 40th-anniversary episode.

Happy birthday, Dungeons & Dragons!

 

[DaveMage]

For me, D&D (now Pathfinder) has always been my creative outlet.

I started with the basic set then quickly moved to AD&D as well. I devoured the 1E Player's Handbook, DMG, and Monster Manual and have been smitten since. I still remember the sheer joy I felt when walking into Waldenbooks and seeing the 1E Monster Manual 2 when it first came out. I read that thing form cover to cover immediately.

As a 10-14 year old kid at the time, the game really expanded my vocabulary and introduced me to the whole fantasy genre (thanks, Appendix N!). I appreciated that the game was not written for children.

I quickly moved to 2E when it came out, but hated the loss of demons & devils (what the heck is a tanar'ri?). Unfortunately, my gaming group dissolved near the end of 2E because the rules became so imbalanced that it stopped being fun for some. I was hesitant about 3E at first, but since they kept the fluff (for the most part), I was very jazzed up when it released and loved it immediately. I liked the changes in 3.5, but was unhappy that it (along with Osseum's implosion) killed one of the main d20 companies I admired: Bastion Press.

Never tried 4E as the timing, marketing, and changes were all big turn-offs for me (and, most importantly, I was *happy* with 3.5).

So now it's Pathfinder, which I think they've done a super job with.

I don't need Next, so the only way I see me getting any further D&D product is if it's usable with Pathfinder (such as an adventure).

Still, I love what D&D was to me as a 10-38 year old.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

in 1995 I had made friends at my new highschool with a family of 5 brothers, they had gotten me to a reinfair that year, and a LARP, and we played RIFTs once...

right before Christmas I was at a book store and found a beginner box set of D&D and bought it. One of our friends had played 1e long before with his uncle and walked me through setting up a game.

Christmas holiday we started. I bought folders for each player, and put a green character sheet a few sheets of lined paper, a few index cards and a sheet of graph paper in each.

We started with a Human Ranger (anikin) an Elven wizard (Dalimar) a Human Bard (Mcbride) an albino elven fighter/theif (Shadar Doom) and a human cleric (Benard). Three or four games in another friend joined as half elf Cleric/WIzard

The friends I made have stayed with me all the way through the years...

I think I should call them today... but not to game half of them play pathfinder, and I will never do that again.

I am looking forward to NEXT, and can hardl wait to read the new PHB just like that starter one almost 20 years ago

 

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

I was 8 years old, and Bobby down the street liked me. My mom thought it was so cute I had a 'boyfriend'. (Years later she didn't think at 15 it was cute I had one though) Bobby and I were at his house watching an old VHS of King Kong when he told me about this game his dad played.

When his dad got home that night we begged him to let me play. My first character was a half elf Fighter named ‘Lady Knightstar’ She died only a few hours into my second game. I was heartbroken, but itwas my own fault I charged a group of bugbears…

Bobby was my first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first timeskinny dipping… but I will always remember him as the guy who taought me toplay the game I have played for 18 years now…wow I feel old


D&D to this day is my favorite pass time.

Thank you Gary and Dave, thank you Morrus


Tommorrow I will be playing Myth and magic a 2e retro clone

 

[D'karr]

My first character was a half elf Fighter named ‘Lady Knightstar’ She died only a few hours into my second game. I was heartbroken, but itwas my own fault I charged a group of bugbears…

But did you scream, "No, Not Lady Knightstar! NO, NO! I'M GOING TO DIE!"

If not, you couldn't have cared enough about the role-playing...

 

[edemaitre]

What D&D means to me

I started role-playing back in high school in the early 1980s with the boxed sets and "BECMI" edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I've been running my homebrew "Vanished Lands" campaign setting for about 30 years now, with hundreds of Player Characters and dozens of role-players over the years.

Through gaming, I met lifelong friends in college in Upstate New York. In freshman year, I even got my entire floor in the dorm to try gaming. Through those AD&D circles, I met the woman who became my wife.

When I had the good fortune to teach for a year in New York City, most of my students participated in my AD&D2 games, including some who later got married themselves. D&D has given my friends a common interest and language.

In the 1990s near Washington, D.C., and in the 2000s around Boston, D&D3.x and other tabletop RPGs helped me build new circles of friends. I've never had difficulty recruiting players, with groups as large as more than a dozen people at a time.

EnWorld has helped me stay in touch with the larger community and follow trends in our hobby. I'm currently running two adventuring parties using the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, a D20 retro-clone, but I hope that D&D "Next" is successful. Long live RPGs!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In 1979, at National Wildlife Federation summer camp in North Carolina, a kid in my cabin had the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook and, at a picnic table outside one afternoon, helped several of us create a group (I'm pretty sure I was a half-elf ranger, since I made several more of them over the next few years) and ran us through the "adventure" on the cover of the book. I was the only one to avoid being slaughtered by the lizardmen in their temple, although the adventure ended with me hiding around a corridor, trying to figure out how I was going to escape.

My family moved after camp that summer (my parents needed us out of the house to pack everything up without us being underfoot) and in our new town, we found an experienced middle school DM and a family of kids up for playing. We played AD&D (with Basic and Expert modules as well), Villains & Vigilantes, experimented with Runequest and Traveller and even Toon.

My brother and I played two-person games once we moved again, and I mostly drifted away from it until after college. I started an online game via Java chat window embedded on my home page with some friends, playing 2E D&D (and using stuff from the 2E Diablo adaptation, probably making me the only person to have used that stuff) online for a few months, until we heard about a new edition coming, which I followed closely on Eric Noah's site.

Another group wanted to start playing D&D with the third edition, but this time, we were wanting to use this new Ptolus book I'd preordered. But we started a warm-up campaign at the other end of the empire, before the book came out, intending to shut it down and switch over to Ptolus once I had the book in my hot little hands. Eight years later, that campaign is just wrapping up now. The next campaign will be set in Ptolus, although it'll likely be run in Castles & Crusades, which brings back the 1E flavor I started off with and many of the D20 improvements under the hood.

 

[Zardnaar]

Started in 1993 after playing Eye of the Beholder and reading the 1st ed MM, FF, UA, OA and DMG. We had no PHB and eventually started using a very old Red Box and some modules. 1st campaign I played in was BECMI as one of the guys bought the RC. Switched to 2nd ed in 1995 and 3rd ed in 2000. Went back to 2nd ed and retroclones end of 2012.

D&D as a brand name is basically dead to me though. Not that interested in D&DN for me and the local RPG club seems to have rejected it already so no other DMs will be using it that I know of.

 

[qbalrog]

Thank you for the call out on the anniversary! As with you I started about age 12 but I'm older so it has been closer to 37 years that I've been playing.

My first exposure to it was at West Point, where my father taught math. A friend invited me to try it out. We played in a musty basement of one of the old officer's quarters houses with my friend and 4-5 cadets. I was rather nervous in their presence and the game was a mystery, since I did not know any of the rules. I still remember the character: a dwarf fighter with 2 hit points and can still remember the cadet-referee describing us walking down a wooden passage covered with hay. One of us fell through a hole. There was much more to it b ut that's all I remember after all the years.

Regardless, I was hooked at the time. I already played a lot of wargames (this was the golden age of hex war games) so I was no stranger to games but this game was very different, with its figures, open ended play, game master, even little oddities like using the Outdoor Survival map (in the very early days).

For the next 30 days I played continuously, daily when younger, moving to weekends in college and post college gradually becoming less frequent. These days, sadly, we only play every few months but I'm starting to look for a more frequent gaming group.

I've played all the editions, from the original 3 book game, then with the original supplements, through 4E although I have since moved to Pathfinder but am not sure I will try D&D next, at least not without finding a group that is playing it. These days, I do a lot more table top gaming than RPGs, although that's more a matter of path of least resistance.

Cheers to D&D!

 

[rom525]

What D&D means to me

My first game of D&D took place over 30 years ago in an empty classroom at the Bronx High School of Science. A kid I met in my sophomore year told me about this older student that ran this game called Dungeons and Dragons occasionally when they could find an empty classroom away from the faculty. It was a wonderful combination of sneaking around, rebellion and the reward of being able to play a game all at a school that was pretty intensive academically and very competitive.

While I sort of lost track of our Original Dungeon Master, I still keep in touch (sort of) with the guy that brought me to my first game. Thanks Peter, thanks to Gary Gygax and to all the people that help create a world that I still visit today. I have played many characters but the Paladins have always been my favorites.

Mr. Gygax, R.I.P. Sir.