D&D General Was your first experience with D&D as a player or as a DM?

[Lanefan]

Started playing under a DM who had been running games for about a year and a half at that point. Started DMing about 2 years later.

 

[jmartkdr2]

"Experienced" is a bit of an overstatement, but it wasn't the first time my brother dmed (I don't think so, anyways. It was many years ago.)

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm actually a little surprised how evenly spread the votes are. From this data, meager though it is, there's at least the suggestion that many groups actually do start out with a first-time DM (since option 1 is the most common, but the other two combined, both of which have a first-time DM, are 55.9%.) Meager data, forum poll, early days, etc. etc., I know not to make much of these results. Just surprising, since I expected something a lot closer to like...80% "player with an experienced DM."

(To explain a bit further: in order for us to get to 80% "player with an experienced DM," assuming no one changes their vote, we would need to rack up 61 more votes for that option without even one person voting for the other two. Even getting 30 votes all going to that one option would be pretty dramatic at this point, so these results are significantly different from what I expected.)

Sure, but there is another way of looking at it and that is why perhaps there should have been a fourth option.

2a Player with a first time DM, but the DM having been an experienced player.
2b Player with a first time DM.

 

[Older Beholder]

Sure, but there is another way of looking at it and that is why perhaps there should have been a fourth option.

2a Player with a first time DM, but the DM having been an experienced player.
2b Player with a first time DM.

I did consider breaking it down in the way you mention when I was making the poll.
I thought maybe people might not know/remember how experienced their first DM was.
I was also more interested in if people got their start as a player or DM.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Mine was with two experienced DMs at a convention, but I should note after those two experiences I leapt right into GMing and did not play again for some months.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I was a DM first, with the caveats that I had had a single brief experience as a player in a quickly aborted campaign 20 years earlier (we rolled up characters, but I don't remember if we ever even actually played) that I'm not counting, and, much more importantly, that I had substantial experience with D&D computer games, and some of those require learning a variation of the basic tabletop mechanics to play effectively (others, of course, are about as connected to the game as the D&D Magic Cards).

In any case I DMed having no memory of what any other DM did that I could draw upon. Probably not ideal, but I think the "oh you really need to be a player first, learning from more experienced people" myth has kept a lot of people from ever finding their way into the game. The best way to start is whatever way gets you started.

 

[Blue]

So two guys at my summer camp played D&D, and it seemed really interesting. So I got the Red Box Basic Set for my birthday (after camp ended), and had no one to play with. My first attempt was in an adventure I wrote called "City of the Underlings" about a lost race living under a castle that I tried to run my dad though. He didn't get it, couldn't understand the point of the game and gave up after 45 minutes. I'm sure it beign totally foreign to him as a concept, and my complete lack of experience was part of it. So my first time was DMing.

It wasn't until a long time (in child-time, so likely months) later that I found one of my friends was interested and we started playing, taking turns DMing or running a whole party, but I have no memory of which of us went first in that which I'd consider my first "real" play.

 

[David Howery]

I lucked out in that my first game was as a player, with a DM who had quite a lot of practice at it, and several experienced players who were willing to let me sit in... they were running a one shot with new PCs, and were down a player, and let me join in. I had read the books, so I knew somewhat of what it was all about....

 

[AnotherGuy]

I did consider breaking it down in the way you mention when I was making the poll.
I thought maybe people might not know/remember how experienced their first DM was.
I was also more interested in if people got their start as a player or DM.

Just to confirm, experienced DM per your poll also equates to experienced player?
Because that may change things for some - certainly for me.

 

[Older Beholder]

Just to confirm, experienced DM per your poll also equates to experienced player?
Because that may change things for some - certainly for me.

By experienced DM, I meant someone that had either DM’d or played before.