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What is your earliest and most impressionable childhood memory of reading the original D&D or other games
- Thread starter Greggy C
- Start date
My first exposure was seeing my brother and his friends playing keep on the borderlands. But shortly thereafter I saw Moldvays basic and fell in love with the art. Every single piece. It was like a door to my imagination just opened up.
Bill Zebub
Hero
Reading through the magic items in a borrowed copy of the original DMG, in the middle of the night, in the 8th grade. Especially Deck of Many Things.
Yora
Legend
That kobold is pretty interesting. But what about this?
When I first read the Basic rules seven years ago, it was this image on the first page that had me hooked way more than the more famous cover art. Most of the illustration in the B/X rules are really good.
I think that's the one that stands out most when I'm looking at the book (it is spectacular!)... but for some reason it doesn't stick in my memory.That kobold is pretty interesting. But what about this?
When I first read the Basic rules seven years ago, it was this image on the first page that had me hooked way more than the more famous cover art. Most of the illustration in the B/X rules are really good.
Egon Spengler
"We eat gods for breakfast!"
Ruin Explorer
Legend
My first WOW!!! moment with D&D was actually having D&D described and being told about the Cavalier class, must have been 1989 - I even remember where I was, on a particular bit of lawn outside St. Paul's Cathedral in bright sunlight, and who told me. I was just blown away by the concept and it sounded incredibly exciting.
A few weeks or months later we got AD&D 2E.
Then I wasn't actually blown away by of the writing or description in the PHB/DMG or ring-binder MC, but Forgotten Realm Adventures. The book which outlined the FR for new players, and updated it for old ones. That was amazing, and hypnotic, especially the incredibly evocative cover (a woman in bronze-looking armour on a unicorn in front of a mysterious tower).
And what got me even harder was, as people here can probably guess because I go on about it to this, Taladas - the Time of the Dragon boxed set. I was absolutely obsessed with everything in Time of the Dragon.
A lot of RPG stuff just burned itself into my soul in the next few years after that, but those are the earliest ones.
A few weeks or months later we got AD&D 2E.
Then I wasn't actually blown away by of the writing or description in the PHB/DMG or ring-binder MC, but Forgotten Realm Adventures. The book which outlined the FR for new players, and updated it for old ones. That was amazing, and hypnotic, especially the incredibly evocative cover (a woman in bronze-looking armour on a unicorn in front of a mysterious tower).
And what got me even harder was, as people here can probably guess because I go on about it to this, Taladas - the Time of the Dragon boxed set. I was absolutely obsessed with everything in Time of the Dragon.
A lot of RPG stuff just burned itself into my soul in the next few years after that, but those are the earliest ones.
Let me put it like this. The art in the B/X books, specifically Willingham's had such an enduring impact to me, that when I started experimenting with digital coloring, it was his work I started practicing with out of everything else I could have chosen.
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
Thought the Moldvay Basic set isn't my Basic, the art is great. It feels more in-continuity with the interior art of 1e, for example. And text-wise, it's such a perfectly concise distillation of the rules.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
As a bit of an amateur herpetologist since I was a kid, I was always annoyed by showing kobolds, lizard-men, and other reptilian or amphibian peoples with loin cloths and nipples.
In basic anyway, the Kobold's were never said to be reptilian (which throws me off still in some other editions):
One of the other pictures I always liked gets to the herpetology though...
Voadam
Legend
There is the scaly skin and the art for them is both dog like in the face and reptilian with the skin and the crest ridges.
So much neat art.
B/X had a lot of neat animal monsters.
Pangolians and paranthropus aethiopicus?
I think I've been recently describing them as "lizardy dog-folk". In a world with Thouls, Chimera, and Owlbears, anything is possible!
Voadam
Legend
Good calls!
Those work as justifications for that interpretation, but not my first thought of references when looking at the kobold art and description. My understanding is that the sagittal crest of mammals is usually just an anchor for attaching powerful jaw muscles and so I would think aethiopicus would look more like an ape's round head than a spiked mini-mohawk which I would generally associate with a reptile or dinosaur or such.
Generally room for a lot of individual variations on what works for us and what don't.
Thouls. Hybrid ghoul troll hobgoblins who are not explicitly undead and the result of an 0D&D encounter chart typo expanded into its own thing. One of the B/X monsters that did not really work for me.I think I've been recently describing them as "lizardy dog-folk". In a world with Thouls, Chimera, and Owlbears, anything is possible!
J.Quondam
CR 1/8
I believe the proper term in this case is "cloaca cloth".
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen
This for me too.
Plus playing the sample adventure run by my dad, and my first PC, Raven, a crossbow-wielding Elf, first Sleeping the Kobolds in the courtyard, then dying to a poisoned needle on a box in a closet.
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
Being a kid and running headfirst into early D&D's lethality was a heck of a thing.
This for me too.
Plus playing the sample adventure run by my dad, and my first PC, Raven, a crossbow-wielding Elf, first Sleeping the Kobolds in the courtyard, then dying to a poisoned needle on a box in a closet.
