It's GM's Day! Tell us about your first GM!

[Reynard]

Happy GM's Day everyone!

I thought it would be fun if we celebrated by talking about our first GMs.

Mine was my dad. I was 10, with two older brothers, and my Dad brought home the 1983 Basic Set. My Dad was a dedicated computer adventure game and RPG player, even in those early years. So he decided to give D&D a try. he studied the books and then ran my bothers an I first through the solo adventure and then into the old keep. My cleric, Clarion, died when he investigated the old gate and the carrior crawler got him!

it turned out that my dad did not much care for D&D, and that was the only time he ever DMed for us. My oldest brother took the reins from there, until a couple years later I was itching to get behind the screen (and have been there ever since!). Even so, my love of RPGs and D&D was born that day. Thanks Dad!

My dad passed away a few years ago, but after he retired to found a group and played D&D again. I thought that was very cool.

Who was your first DM?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Mine was my brother. We were playing Palace of the Silver Princess, outside with the module map on the ground between us. I was playing a cleric. My first battle was with a skeleton that I defeated, but had 1 hp left.

My brother asked, "Which way do you go?"
I replied, "I go left."

My left was the door. His left was the wall. He said, "You run into the wall and take 1 hp of damage."

:/ Yes, my PC died.

 

[aco175]

My father invited a couple people from work over to show us the game. My brother and I were around 10 and 12 back in the early 80s as well. We played with a couple neighborhood kids and my dad and all died. There was a spot where would could have un-petrified one of the other work friends but the DM was all; "Do you touch the statue?" Even never playing we got the hint that we should not touch it and lost out on a higher level character helping out.

Next week my day was the DM, not sure when one of us kids started to be the DM on the off days my day was working and such.

 

[thullgrim]

Mine was also my Dad. He had a regular D&D group on Friday nights, army guys and their spouses. When I got to HS we moved to Germany and he ran 2e games for my friends and I.

It’s probably why I still have a soft spot for 2e.

 

[not-so-newguy]

i've told this story before
My first DM was my brother, and I played Dweeny the Dwarf. We were using the Red Box (BECMI), and he ran Castle Mistamere. I remember dying on the first encounter with the carrion crawler that was hiding underneath the fallen door outside of the castle walls. My brother mercifully retconned it

 

[Aldarc]

Not the biggest fan of my first GM.

 

[Sacrosanct]

i've told this story before
My first DM was my brother, and I played Dweeny the Dwarf. We were using the Red Box (BECMI), and he ran Castle Mistamere. I remember dying on the first encounter with the carrion crawler that was hiding underneath the fallen door outside of the castle walls. My brother mercifully retconned it

wanna trade brothers?

 

[overgeeked]

The first referee I had was a friend of my brother. Their group brought me in and introduced me to the game. I was maybe 10-years-old at the time. They were all about ten years older than me. We were playing AD&D. I managed to roll good stats and leveled a fighter to something like 7th or 8th level. I made some off-hand comment about the character being a badass…so the referee brought in Tiamat. Round 1 she polymorphed my character into dog food. Round 2 she summoned a pack of dogs. That was the end of that character.

 

[Fenris-77]

I was there Gandalf, 3000 years ago...

 

[billd91]

My first DM was my friend Rob. He had gotten the Holmes edition for Xmas in 1980. He had played before with some of the older kids from the Boy Scouts and was willing to DM me. We lived out in the boonies and getting a group together was tough. As a result, I put together a group of 6 first level adventurers and went into the dungeons. The group whittled down until it was the lone fighter who made it out of the dungeon alive to reach 2nd level.

Not long after that, I got drafted into running Keep on the Borderlands out of another friend's (Mike) copy of the Moldvay Basic set with Rob occasionally playing (he had the weird schedule), Mike, and Stuart.

Rob died in Summer 2020 from a pulmonary embolism.