What Generation of D&D are you?

[Dinkeldog]

The dates are fuzzy. I'm chronologically at the beginning of "Generation 2", but really the hard cover books weren't out yet in my area, so we were playing in the pre-red box basic set.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yeah the categories are screwy...

Be that as it may, I started in 1977 with the 3 brown books and the Greyhawk supplement long before the MM surfaced. Which should really be the first generation of D&D'ers I suppose.

I'm with JeffB and Mark... this was my first experience with D&D (back in 1976 in my case) and I would think this had to be 1st generation D&D. Prior to the 3 brown books it was basically house rules between Gygax and Arneson!

So mark me down as 1st generation.

 

[drothgery]

I'm in between 3rd and 4th, I suppose.

So am I; like the 2nd person in this thread, I started with 2e in 1994. Of course, I was a freshman in college at the time, which is a bit old for a first game.

 

[Intermagus]

And now for a correction.....

I was incorrect that the original D&D game was accompanied by the set of chits instead of dice.

Words from the great one follows:

Thanks for your email.

The only time I ever used chits was in the play of the WWII military miniatures game I co-created with Mike Reese and Leaon Tucker back in the late 1960s, TRACTICS. We used a 1-20 range for determining success, and at that time the d20 had not been "discovered."

When I wrote the initial manuscript for the D&D game in 1972, I had found an educational supply enterprise that had the Platonic solids as dice, so D&D was written assuming dice.

In the 1970s, around 1978, the person managing production at TSR did substitute paper chits for dice in the D&D Basic Set. That was an error, very poorly received by the consumers, and the matter was corrected in the next run of the game.

Regards,
Gary

"He who publishes a book runs a great hazard, since nothing can be more impossible than to compose one that may secure the approbation of every reader."
Cervantes

My thanks to Mr. Gygax for clearing that up for me, even if he's not here to read after this.

 

[MerricB]

2nd Generation (broadly speaking)

First introduced to the game in 1982; I soon had a copy of the Moldvay edition of the Basic rules (still the best introduction to D&D I've ever seen), and was borrowing copies of the 1E rules.

Cheers!

 

[Thakkar Rogsnar]

Although I started in the mid 70s, I did not start with 1e, I started in the basic book and worked up from there. Changed over to 1e sometime in the latter 70s.

 

[Tidus4444]

I'm new. How new? I started playing because Neverwinter Nights was coolio.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Well, I started in OD&D, but I did so in the early 90s (8 years old).

Back then, I of course did not realize that there were any other
editions of the game, or any other RPGs at all.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Well, since your generations don't cover all the years, I had to choose 2nd generation since I started in either 1983 or 1984 and those years fall between your second and third generation. I mean how could I be 3rd generation if it didn't exist yet when I started playing?

 

[s/LaSH]

3rd. I guess. Started with Basic in the early 90s, never got into AD&D, and when 3E came out I decided the previews looked like the game now made sense, and picked up the PHB.