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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 6251972" data-attributes="member: 6701124">By some point during 5th grade in 1980/81 LotR had already swept through school (I remember one girl in particular was devastated by a character's pin-cushiony-death), I was hearing about D&D from some of the people on the youth soccer team , and saw it at the toy store in the mall.   In 1981 I got a copy of Moldvay and read through it on my own for several weeks.  On one of the fairly rare occasions when my folks went out, the sitter knew how to play and DMed for me.  I made a dwarf (Alexis) and halfling (Antares) that I played for quite a while after - I think I still have their final character sheets boxed up downstairs.  In that first adventure Alexis lost his hand in an unfortunate incident with a cursed sword, but at least they lived.   After that there were several of us in the neighborhood who played.  I want to say for some of the first games on our own we reversed whether low or high was good on the saving throw table.Within a year or so we stumbled upon the game at the neighborhood comic/collectible shop. It had between 8 and 20 people playing one night a week - some using OD&D, some of us using B/X, and some using AD&D, all at the same time.  That was my gateway to AD&D.   I can still remember that my curfew in middle school was about the time the game usually ended... so I would have to leave a bit before to make it the 4 1/2 blocks home in time and a friend would play my character for me.  Sadly that meant I missed the death of at least one of them (an elven cleric one level from retirement - perhaps my first AD&D character).  In those early years we also played quite a bit of the original Gamma World (I might have purchased it at that comic shop) and I started picking up Dragon around issue 64.Played D&D along with some other games through middle and high school (with Star Fleet Battles being the biggest secondary game), a bit in undergrad, a lot in grad school (with VtM being the biggest secondary game), and then pretty regularly since (mostly D&D). I don't think it's possible for me to overstate the value of the friendships I've made or strengthened over the years at those weekly D&D sessions.P.S. - My 4 year old knows the breath weapons of each of the five chromatic dragons!</blockquote>

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