Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The first players—looking for experiences of those playing before 1976
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9259894" data-attributes="member: 7044704"><p>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). </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9259894, member: 7044704"] 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. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The first players—looking for experiences of those playing before 1976
Top