D&D General The first players—looking for experiences of those playing before 1976

[Wofano Wotanto]

The first game I watched was in 1976, but I didn't play until early '77 when I was ten years old. Still, if that's close enough to be of interest:

1) How did you discover D&D (or roleplaying in general)
2) What was your reaction?
3) Were you a wargamer?
3a) What kind?

1) Came into the hobby through wargames and ads in scifi magazines like Analog.

2) My first thought was "why isn't there a science fiction version of this?" Needless to say, it didn't take long to find various options for exactly that.

3) Yep, big fan of wargames, both board games and miniatures, although I didn't actually paint any figs for years. I did demolish a huge number of plastic model kits for conversions, kitbashes and even minis tables for homebrew rules while I was still a preteen, though.

3a) Anything I could get a chance to play, really, but the variety back then was pretty limited so mostly historical stuff from Avalon Hill and SPI (which were arguably a bit above my age range no matter how precocious I was, but the adult gamers in my life were desperate enough to play with anyone who showed even a glimmer of interest) and everything Metagaming Concepts released (which were lighter and more age-appropriate, as well as being about fantasy/scifi subjects). Chitin: I (featuring awesome Jaquays artwork, may she RIP) and Ogre were the first two games I actually bought for myself. Playing Jutland on the gym floor in grade school as a kid instilled a lasting love of naval history.

From peer anecdotes and histories, I don't think my entry into the gaming hobby was particularly typical. Younger than many, and playing with unrelated adults more than anyone else I've met. I did roleplay with kids my age a lot more than I war gamed with them, which was mostly a thing I did with older (often much older) folks. When my home town group did start doing more wargaming in middle/high school I was usually the guy who got stuck reading and explaining the rules, although at least I managed to avoid becoming a Forever GM on the roleplaying side of things.

 

[GalacticJourney]

Ah, so you were 4yo or so? Would love to hear your story too - how did you end up with Holmes in pre-school?
Funny too, at this age now, 49-50 doesn't seem much different from my 57 (soon to be 58); but back then the difference between your 4 years old and me being 12 and playing Holmes is a big difference...

Oh yeah. So, like I said, my brother got introduced in 1976, and then he came back from Israel in 1977 and followed the friend who introduced him to D&D into the high school Conflict Simulations Club, where D&D was just becoming a big thing. By the time I was able to read (four years old) D&D was already in the air. We had dice and books and so forth. It was just second nature that there would be D&D.

I made my first dungeon when I was 4, and I wrote the monster contents in the rooms. Since I only knew a handful of them, I know one of the rooms, at least, was legended "Monsters All Kinds" It was cute.

I remember first being run when I was 5 (so, 1979). I played a cleric, and it delighted me to no end to make skeletons come out of their niches (in one of the rooms in Zenopus' Keep) and shout "IN THE NAME OF THE LORD" and turn them. Around that time, I played my first long-term character, "Sir Marc", who I ended up playing, off and on, for the next 25 years!

He was the first character with an Agility score, which my brother had gotten from Arduin Grimoire, which had been adopted by his group. They did not have Greyhawk, though I grew up with Blackmoor in the house.

 

[GalacticJourney]

The first game I watched was in 1976, but I didn't play until early '77 when I was ten years old. Still, if that's close enough to be of interest:


1) Came into the hobby through wargames and ads in scifi magazines like Analog.

2) My first thought was "why isn't there a science fiction version of this?" Needless to say, it didn't take long to find various options for exactly that.

3) Yep, big fan of wargames, both board games and miniatures, although I didn't actually paint any figs for years. I did demolish a huge number of plastic model kits for conversions, kitbashes and even minis tables for homebrew rules while I was still a preteen, though.

3a) Anything I could get a chance to play, really, but the variety back then was pretty limited so mostly historical stuff from Avalon Hill and SPI (which were arguably a bit above my age range no matter how precocious I was, but the adult gamers in my life were desperate enough to play with anyone who showed even a glimmer of interest) and everything Metagaming Concepts released (which were lighter and more age-appropriate, as well as being about fantasy/scifi subjects). Chitin: I (featuring awesome Jaquays artwork, may she RIP) and Ogre were the first two games I actually bought for myself. Playing Jutland on the gym floor in grade school as a kid instilled a lasting love of naval history.

From peer anecdotes and histories, I don't think my entry into the gaming hobby was particularly typical. Younger than many, and playing with unrelated adults more than anyone else I've met. I did roleplay with kids my age a lot more than I war gamed with them, which was mostly a thing I did with older (often much older) folks. When my home town group did start doing more wargaming in middle/high school I was usually the guy who got stuck reading and explaining the rules, although at least I managed to avoid becoming a Forever GM on the roleplaying side of things.

That's great, thank you. How old were you, and had you a concept of roleplaying before you were introduced to D&D? Or was it a revelation, this idea of structured make believe? Did you play D&D more for RP or more as a wargame?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Oh yeah. So, like I said, my brother got introduced in 1976, and then he came back from Israel in 1977 and followed the friend who introduced him to D&D into the high school Conflict Simulations Club, where D&D was just becoming a big thing. By the time I was able to read (four years old) D&D was already in the air. We had dice and books and so forth. It was just second nature that there would be D&D.

I made my first dungeon when I was 4, and I wrote the monster contents in the rooms. Since I only knew a handful of them, I know one of the rooms, at least, was legended "Monsters All Kinds" It was cute.

I remember first being run when I was 5 (so, 1979). I played a cleric, and it delighted me to no end to make skeletons come out of their niches (in one of the rooms in Zenopus' Keep) and shout "IN THE NAME OF THE LORD" and turn them. Around that time, I played my first long-term character, "Sir Marc", who I ended up playing, off and on, for the next 25 years!

He was the first character with an Agility score, which my brother had gotten from Arduin Grimoire, which had been adopted by his group. They did not have Greyhawk, though I grew up with Blackmoor in the house.

Lol As today's kids would say "all. the. monsters."

Arduin was so wacky - one of our players got a hold of it or heard of it and kept asking our DM if he could have plaid eyes (answer: No). I never did actually read it myself

Surprised it's never been republished for a newer rules set like d20 or 5e - I wonder who owns the rights

 

[the Jester]

Lol As today's kids would say "all. the. monsters."

Arduin was so wacky - one of our players got a hold of it or heard of it and kept asking our DM if he could have plaid eyes (answer: No). I never did actually read it myself

Surprised it's never been republished for a newer rules set like d20 or 5e - I wonder who owns the rights

It has been republished as its own updated ruleset a few times, I believe.

I have converted a number of Arduin monsters to my game- phraints, deodanths, air sharks, vroats.... etc.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Ah, here's something: https://rpggeek.com/rpg/27529/compleat-arduin-arduin-ii published in 1993/2002. It would be cool to have it published in a more modern rules set...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Thank you for this! I was at NASFIC in... 2019, I think? (I've been on the ballot a few times.)

Was this your first encounter with the concept of roleplaying?

Sort of? I mean, the idea goes all the way back to childhood, and I was always interested in microscale wargaming where you were playing individual soldiers, so I'd say I was sort of batting around the edges of it.

 

[wicked cool]

Assuming August '75 counts...



I was at NASFIC (the North American Science Ficition Convention) '75 when I sat next to a fellow during the costume competition who had what seemed to be some kind of resolution charts in his lap. Since I was already a wargamer, I asked him what it was about. He very briefly explained and also gave me a few copies of Alarums and Excursions (an early APA that was still being published at least as of the middle of 2023). I found all the discussion fascinating, and sought out D&D (OD&D and the Greyhawk supplement) at a wargame supply shop soon thereafter.



Fascination. I started GMing during my first year of college after only playing two sessions at the convention I mentioned.



Yes.



Hex and chit (i.e. board wargames).

Chit games. I still call them that. It’s funny they have disappeared. Stacks of chits

 

[Thomas Shey]

Chit games. I still call them that. It’s funny they have disappeared. Stacks of chits

Not completely, but I suspect over time computer wargames, especially multiplayer ones have eaten their lunch. They only really had a brief strong period anyway; the fall of SPI was kind of the beginning of the end for them.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

That's great, thank you. How old were you, and had you a concept of roleplaying before you were introduced to D&D? Or was it a revelation, this idea of structured make believe? Did you play D&D more for RP or more as a wargame?

I'm told I was playing chess (badly, no doubt) at age seven and my first wargame (probably AvHill's Jutland if my memories are accurate) was at age eight (so 1974-ish), but the first I saw of D&D was 1976 at age 10. I grokked the idea immediately, having spent the last couple of years "telling stories" (as my parents called it) with some sort-of-homebrew-rules with the less-than-a-handful of friends who lived close enough to meet outside of school (the home town was pretty rural back then, and my HS graduating class only had 121 people in it in 1984).

Structured make-believe wasn't a foreign concept for any of us (not that we'd have called it that) but the idea of writing anything down was alien. Modern oral tradition, really, and we just sort of assumed everyone played that way despite considerable evidence to the contrary. My parents tried to get me to write some of our "stories" down, but the closest I got was a bunch of crude little four-page digest-sized comics featuring characters we'd clearly ripped off from Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Don't remember them clearly at all, and they were thrown out many, many years ago now. There's also a weird little clay sculpture diorama thing that I know was based on an alien world we'd imagined - made it in 3rd or 4th grade and it was still collecting dust at the parents' house last I looked.

When I finally did start playing D&D in 1977 our early games were extremely loose with the rules at first, and only firmed up and started resembling what most folks think of when the game's mentioned after an adult 20-something cousin of one of us ran a few games. I didn't actually play much D&D early on, having lucked into an open Runequest game at the local gaming club in...probably 1979, maybe 80? That opened my eyes to other games, and I spent a fair amount of time playing Traveller and running Gamma World. Never could find a copy of Metamorphosis Alpha back then, which sounded much better to me due to books I'd read - I dig generation ships in general to this day - read Braking Day if you haven't already. Unlike a lot of people my "serious" D&D gaming was done later on with AD&D, and I was well into my teens before I registered that "Basic" wasn't actually a bunch of kiddie rules I'd clearly outgrown already.

Most of those games were pretty roleplaying-focused in that I was more interested in my character doing what they wanted to do rather than what was optimal for survival, which probably made me equal parts annoying and amusing for my various GMs. Even my wargaming tended to include roleplay elements - Diplomacy was a big favorite, and I loved Divine Right for the personality traits on the rulers and ambassadors. SPI's Swords and Sorcery was also a big hit, and we played Deathmaze and Citadel of Blood with our AD&D characters crudely translated into them.

The stereotype of the D&D grognard who treated dungeons (and their DM) as intellectual puzzles to be beaten has never resonated with me, and I've only run into a handful of people that honestly played that way in all the years I've been gaming. It was more common in military-focused Traveller games than D&D IME.