Was Dragon (or any RPG mag) your first exposure to gaming?

[RichGreen]

Hi,

It was White Dwarf for me, not Dragon. When I first started gaming in 1980, Dragon was hard to get in the UK and very expensive compared to White Dwarf.

Cheers


Richard

 

[morbiczer]

Dragon didn't bring me into the hobby (I bought the first magazin something like 10 years after my first RPG book), but Dragon and Dungeon helped me stay in it.

I stopped active gaming 2 years ago (not much time, constant troubles with fixing sessions, DMing being less and less fun for me, etc.), but I kept on buying Dragon and Dungeon, and later got a subscription to both of them, which I kept up until this day. Reading about the upcoming magazines (I get mine two weeks or so after you in the US) was one of the reasons to come to Enworld. Being part (even if only a lurking part) of the Enworld community and constantly beeing exposed to D&D content in Dragon and Dungeon was probably the only reason I kept on buying WotC books although I know that there is a 10% chance at best that I'll ever play again in a D&D game.

 

[Mycanid]

I voted for the 2nd option. I had already noticed rpg games ... friends down the block when my family first moved to Syracuse (in 1979) ... before I stumbled across the Dragon magazine in 9th grade in the high school library. Let me see. That was ... 1983 maybe? :\

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I had to vote for the second option, though it was Dungeon that helped develop my interest in the game/gaming.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While it wasn't my gateway into gaming, Dragon's monthly release was a way to keep the game fresh for me and so many others.

I started gaming in 1977 in Aurora, CO- a suburb of Denver- but moved mere months after picking up the dice to Manhattan...KS. The Little Apple®. Population 10k (@35k when K State was in session). Hometown of Cassandra Peterson (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark).

Yay.

Within a few months, I had bought every different game supply in Varney's- every TSR module they had, and at least one of each kind of mini- but its not like it was a huge selection. I had to save up for weeks for the trip to Kansas City or Topeka or Witchita just to get a slightly different selection of goodies...and we only went to one of those cities every other month or so.

But Varney's had Dragon. Every month, Dragon let me get new ideas, new fiction, art and so forth that helped keep interest high.

I suspect that I'd be less gung-ho about gaming if Dragon hadn't been there.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Considering how few newstands actually carry Dungeon or Dragon outside of hobby shops, the odds of the bored 11 year old finding a Dragon magazine is pretty damn slight.

My local public library carried Dragon Magazine, along with the old Endless Quest books. That's how I discovered D&D the RPG (until then I thought it was just a cartoon). Also, my local Waldenbooks and B. Dalton's carried Dragon. That's where I first started buying it regularly as a kid. It was my only connection to the wider world of RPG gaming.

 

[Templetroll]

I first found the od&d in the white box. I got a couple of issues of Dragon soon after along with Melee and Wizard. I think I played Tribes of Crane due to seeing an ad in Dragon.

 

[FireLance]

A friend introduced me to table-top RPGs, although I had been reading "Choose Your Own Adventure" and "Fighting Fantasy" type gamebook and playing computer RPGs for some time before that. It was only a few years later that I discovered that there were magazines that focused on gaming. So, option four is the closest for me.

 

[FireLance]

Mysterious double post. Since it's here, I'll just add that I think good RPG groups get more people introduced to and interested in gaming than any magazine.

 

[amethal]

Growing up in Llanelli, we didn't have any major book stores.

Now, living in Guernsey, I still don't.

I started off with Fighting Fantasy; a friend later got me to buy the red box basic set. It was only through borrowing the same friend's copies of White Dwarf that I realised what a wide hobby I'd stumbled into.

A few years later, a guy in school sold me his entire AD&D and Call of Cthulhu collection for £20 when he found out I was a semi-gamer. I've been hooked ever since.

It was only when White Dwarf became exclusively Games Workshop products that I started buying Dragon. (Bizarrely, I had already picked up Dungeon #1 at my FLGS by that point; my second purchase of Dungeon was #89, or thereabouts.)