What was your first D&D session like?

[RFisher]

I got my dad to DM. As I recall we had a piece of posterboard with a 1" grid penciled onto it. We used dominoes to build walls & the four boxed of official AD&D miniatures. We had the "turn" and "round" procedures copied from the Basic Rules on 3x5 cards. I think it was the Haunted Keep from the Basic book.

We enter a room. My dad reads the entire description including the part about the concealed spider that is suppossed to surprise us.

Not as good as when he was running B2 & we were given the rumors that sometimes an "orgy" help out the goblins. (See it was really "ogre"...see...nevermind.)

 

[MetalBard]

My older brother was about 12(?) when he got the red boxed-set for christmas, and after that he began investing in every AD&D book he could he could get his hands on. He played with some friends of my parents who let him in their group as a novice/apprentice. I wanted to go with him so bad, but I was way too young.

He told me that I had to memorize the players handbook and dungeonmaster's guide and when I turned 8 he'd let me play; that rat-bastard. I don't remember my first game exactly, but we would map out dungeons by putting masking tape down on the basement floor to mark out walls and rooms. Usually he'd DM me until he got bored and then kill my character in some gruesome way, and then make me clean up the tape.

What I remember the most is the painting of the City of Brass on the old DMG cover. I'd stare at it and think how I could totally go there in a game.

That is one of the funniest D&D memories I've ever heard. Sorry to laugh at your misfortune Grackle.

My first game was in 1993. I was in the British equivalent of middle school at the time while living in Norway. I had learned about the game from my uncle and after having related what I knew to a friend of mine, he asked his older brother about the game. We both eventually got the right rulebooks to play and the first time we did we were up all night and well into the morning absolutely fascinated. I have been hooked ever since. Yes, it was second edition and we loved it.

 

[Pierce]

(Ask me some day about the chest with the cat statue on it, or the ever increasing teleport.)

I vaguely remember the chest with a cat guardian being a trap in some module. If you kill the cat, it comes back as a bigger cat. You have to kill it 9 times and it gets progressively bigger each time. By the end, the thing is as big as an ancient dragon or something. That always stuck with me as a cool trap. I can't remember now if there was an easier way around it (feed the first cat some catnip?)

Anywho, my first time was in 79. I was 7 or 8 and my dad and one of his buddies brought home the Blue Box printing (79 edition). We spent that first night reading through the rules and trying to figure out the game. IIRC, that following weekend was the first game. My dad's friend DMed and there were four or five of us kids as players. My first character was a halfling (were they halflings then or hobbits? anyway, the small people). We played Keep on the Borderlands. I don't remember much other than my character was pretty much crap. However, he did end up with the killing blow on the ogre. He died soon after, but I was soooooo excited about that kill that I was hooked.

I played constantly until roughly Junior/Senior year in HS, then I got too cool. Actually, it coincided with my first car and girlfriend. I finally realized back in 2000 that I was just cool enough to start playing again. I mentioned that I used to play to my good friend (whom I met as an adult) - he mentioned that he had too and was also itching to start playing again. We picked up just as 3E was coming out and have been playing weekly ever since.

I love this game.

 

[Ulrick]

I was ten. I had begged my brother who was in college to run a D&D game. He used to run D&D for his friends when he was in high school but wouldn't let me play.

I convinced him to run a short game. I rolled up a 1st level dwarven fighter named Havoc. I journeyed north from my home village to another town that was suffering monster raids. On the way there I killed a couple kobolds (didn't know what they were at the time). When I reached the village, I found out that the monsters were raiding from the forest.

So I went into the forest and set up an ambush. 4 orcs (AGAIN, I didn't know what they really were so I couldn't guess if I could take them) came along and after a fierce battle where I shot two with my crossbow and hewed the others with my battle axe, I went back to town to recover.

When I went out the second time I encountered 4 more orcs and an OGRE. I had set up another ambush. This time I had two crossbows. So I killed two orcs before they found out my position. I had to fight the orcs. One wounded me before I dispatched them.

I distinctly remember Havoc charging the ogre. It took 4 or 5 hits before I brought the thing down. I was amazed that I survived. Then my brother said that dwarves, because of their small size and the fact that they are trained to fight ogres, made them harder to hit.

I thought that was so cool.

That was 15 years ago and I'm still hooked.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I don't precisely remember the first game I played, way back in '81, but I remember that it was a strange, almost uninhabited dungeon that belonged to a mad wizard, at the bottom of which was a white dragon I had to kill. I'd just finished reading Lord of the Rings, and this was vaguely Hobbitish, so I was hooked. I borrowed the rules (Moldvay pink box Basic) from the friend who DM'd, and proceeded to read and make up characters (most of whom had names like Frodo, Sam, Gimli, and Legolas). I didn't have dice, so I made my own out of cardstock and tape. Eventually my parents bought me the Basic set for Christmas, then Expert for my birthday, and I was really hooked. I didn't have anyone to play with at first, so I tried to teach my parents and sister to play, though eventually I found some friends who knew the game, and they introduced me to AD&D by way of Hall of the Fire Giant King.

Many years later, I got the Dragon Mag CD compilation, and learned that that first adventure was a Dragon Mag dungeon titled "Creature of the Rhyll" -- which I still kind of like to this day.

 

[Tolen Mar]

I vaguely remember the chest with a cat guardian being a trap in some module. If you kill the cat, it comes back as a bigger cat. You have to kill it 9 times and it gets progressively bigger each time. By the end, the thing is as big as an ancient dragon or something. That always stuck with me as a cool trap. I can't remember now if there was an easier way around it (feed the first cat some catnip?)

That be the one. The thing is, my uncle was the only one interested in it. Everyone else caught on fairly quickly and decided to leave it be. Yet there was Jess dragging that chest again...they weren't too happy with him when it kept reanimating...over and over and over...

I never actually heard (or found out) how to get past it the easy way.

 

[The Grackle]

That is one of the funniest D&D memories I've ever heard. Sorry to laugh at your misfortune Grackle.

Nah, it wasn't misfortunate- it was character building. By the time I started playing with my own friends I knew every single cursed magic item and could quote the potion miscibility table from memory.

Good times. Good times.

 

[iblis]

Um, kinda hazy here, so...

I was 9 or 10, I'm pretty sure.

Basic D&D, I have no idea what box or whatever. The main books were red. There was a warrior in chainmail fighting a red dragon on the front of one of them; I think it was those ones.

The DM was a bastard. Yeh, yeh, we're all bastards. I know. But this was a 10-11 year old bastard. Blech. At least one of the other players was a friend of mine, I guess. There were three players all up, and the DM.

I had an elf, because I was led to believe they were both a magic-user and a fighter! Cool, yeh, sign me up.

I died. Something big and unfriendly ate my head all off after I lobbed a couple of arrows and some Web (I think) at it.

So, that was great fun. But no, it wasn't all bad. I liked the freedom of going through a fantasy world in this new way. The closest I'd got until then was Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy, that kind of stuff - well, apart from 'make believe' of course (of which I and a lot of other kids had historically been avid fans, but had 'grown out of' at the wise old age of whenever).

Anyway, that did it. I was hooked forevermore.

 

[emeraldtryst]

Let's see here...it was about 10 or so years ago and I was about 12 or 13 if I remember correctly. The DM was a really good friend and I remember being worried that the game was going to mess me up because of all the horror stories I'd heard from my parents, it certainly wasn't what I expected.

This was basic D&D so I rolled up a cleric named Gunther and we started the adventure...in jail. So the group was myself, my good friend who was a player-DM (you know, like the old baseball player-managers) and his little brother who was controlling two characters.

The dungeon of the evil wizard, Zanzer Tem. The only thing I really remember about it was throwing large chunks of salt at kobolds and the DM deciding that maybe that fireball spell was too much for us after everyone died the moment it hit.

Soon enough all of our friends were jumping in to play. Good times, indeed.