Was Santa Claus the reason you started playing D&D?

[sjmiller]

Santa Claus made me a Traveller player back in 1979. I became a D&D player on my own. I think that happened in 1980 or so.

Christmas break of 1979 was spent stealing the dice from Yatzee and rolling up dozens (literally!) of characters, planets, and subsectors. I also spent a lot of time creating ships. Wow, was that a blast!

 

[Bold or Stupid]

Not quite Santa for me but I did buy the Red Box with money Santa tucked in cards from my reletives.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Yeah, I got the red box set with the Elmore cover for a birthday present when I was 9 years old. My mother and step father brought me into a Toys R' Us and I picked it out. Then I got it home and really had no clue how you played it, so it ended up sitting there unused until a friend of mine visited from out of town and got me started on it. Incidentally, said friend and I didn't live in the same town again for about twenty years after that, and when we did again in Seattle, he had moved on to computer games exclusively.

 

[WayneLigon]

I did not get it as a gift; I discovered it on my own. I did get a handfull of modules for Christmas presents, a couple of times.

I am not giving the gift of D&D. I don't have any young cousins or such to give it to, and frankly... there's nothing that has the play value of the red box. If I gave a young would-be gamer anything, it would be Savage Worlds, Mutants and Masterminds, or maybe Chaosium's BRP (though I wish it were the much smaller book of days gone past).

 

[Darrin Drader]

I am not giving the gift of D&D. I don't have any young cousins or such to give it to, and frankly... there's nothing that has the play value of the red box. If I gave a young would-be gamer anything, it would be Savage Worlds, Mutants and Masterminds, or maybe Chaosium's BRP (though I wish it were the much smaller book of days gone past).

I'd probably go Castles and Crusades and an average set of dice, myself.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Santa almost made me lose Dungeons and Dragons, what with his bright idea of giving a Nintendo ;p. Granted, that later lead to those first D&D games with our Most Unimaginable Group Ever, made of Gandalf, Link, and Buttcheese.

If anyone or anything brought me to D&D, it was Carol and David Turrietta, owners of what was easily the friendliest local game store in the history of the world, Allstar Games. My god, do I miss it.

 

[joethelawyer]

Not santa a guy in high school in '84 had it in class, and one day the teacher was out. an all day session lead to 24 years of happy playing. i bought the red box in 84.

though we do have a christmas connection. last year the DM threw in a random side adventure where we had to rescue someone from the clutches of these 2 foul creatures. as a reward we were given a red double-sized bag of holding, with white furry trim. guess who we had to rescue...

 

[joethelawyer]

I agree. We have been in TRU and have a shot at Target. WalMart is the tough nut to crack. Old stereotypes on the evilness of D&D still persist.

Yes we have considered it and will continue to do so. We have been trying to do a younger skewing board game like Dungeon or a D&D Clue style adventure game for a while. Surprising enough for a company as large as WotC, with direct lines to Hasbro, doing a low cost quality board game (that is profitable) is kind of a challenge because the initial quantities are low without interest from the big box stores. We'll keep working at it though as I feel like this is a great way to acquire the next generation.

i think i speak for almost all of us, scott, when i say that it would be great if you can do something to bring kids into the game. no matter what version of the game we play, we all appreciate the unique position hasbro/wotc has in the retail world and its potential to make a game that appeals to kids. without them the hobby will wither away...

 

[I'm A Banana]

What brought me to D&D was videogames.

When I started learning where the original 8-Bit Final Fantasy pulled its sources from, I was fascinated, and I loved the idea of making it up myself (I made up all sorts of games when I was younger).

I was re-reading some of the old 2e books in High School (having never been in a group, but loving the idea of creating my own character and world), and they caught the attention of people who were playing in a group, and I got invited to join.

I'm wondering if the love affair will last. I feel like an old married man whose wife keeps hitting on the shallow young punks at the party. I'm just tired of getting you to do what I want you to do. My first love of videogames is making motions toward me again, I've got this puppy called FFZ that I adopted and fixed up, and I've found that deep love for Writing has only grown with time.

But that's neither here nor there. Giving a kid D&D for christmas is pretty keen. Beats giving them a card with $20 in it, beats a pair of socks, beats the new High School Musical soundtrack, beats the Furby, heck, beats most plastic toys and wooden trains before it.

I'd love to see D&D in Wal*Mart, and I'd probably be pretty stoked to see a "dungeon crawl" board game.

 

[joethelawyer]

But that's neither here nor there. Giving a kid D&D for christmas is pretty keen. Beats giving them a card with $20 in it, beats a pair of socks, beats the new High School Musical soundtrack, beats the Furby, heck, beats most plastic toys and wooden trains before it.

I'd love to see D&D in Wal*Mart, and I'd probably be pretty stoked to see a "dungeon crawl" board game.

i remember this board game tsr used to put out called dungeon, i think. it was a fun game. i think that ended up under the tree one year. we had a good time with it. i wouldn't mind seeing that game on the shelves again.

i think something like that would be perfect to get kids into it. and you can play with the family and friends any time, without having to have the same group of people together, like an rpg.