D&D General What Was Your First Time Playing and/or Running D&D Like?

[Tonguez]

I couldnt save Aleena

we were kids and had a blast, though often there were lots of debates - I didnt stick to the rules then either

 

[David Howery]

first time running a game? Not so well. I had those Dungeon Geomorphs and put a bunch of them together to make a huge dungeon stuffed to the gills with monsters and treasure, to the point that the players' eyes started to glaze over with all the slaughter/dice rolling. No real purpose to it, no story, no background, just 'go here and kill things and take their stuff'....

 

[Ogre Mage]

1st edition, 1986. I was so excited to play a wizard. Then I discovered 1st level wizards suck.

After that, my usual character was a cleric or an elven multi-class fighter/wizard.

 

[cbwjm]

It would have been sometime in the 90s. I don't remember it, but I know we were running some of the thunder rift modules using the rules cyclopedia.

 

[JEB]

First game I ran was AD&D 2E. Players were my brother (who was only 7 or 8 at the time) and an older friend, who both made half-elf fighter/mages. I used the Haunted Keep (from the Moldvay Basic Rulebook) for the layout of my first dungeon, but discarded everything else, randomly populating it with stuff like neanderthals (which my brother intentionally attracted the attention of, because anarchy) and a mad gnome who wanted to know where his golden chariot was. That first campaign proceeded in much the same fashion, me making things up as we went...

 

[DragonBelow]

The first games, we played without books and pulling notes with numbers from inside a properly shaken candy bag. We had no books and instead used photocopies from the pages at the back of the PHB. I got my 2e PHB a few of years after it was released. My first campaign as a player I rolled a human fighter, 3d6 in order, his highest stat was 14, in those days that didn't do much. We all ended up accumulating a large number of pets, and my character rode a giant fire breathing lizard. My first campaign as a DM was a post Legends Dragonlance game, involving a new dragon highlord of my own creation.

 

[pukunui]

I can’t remember. I would’ve been 13 or so. Playing with friends in a classmate’s basement. I recall the look of the character sheets. I recall the binder with the loose leaf monsters. I don’t remember what my character was or what we were playing or who was DM or even who all was playing.

 

[delericho]

First time playing was in August or September 1988, a few weeks after I started high school. It was an AD&D game, and I was handed a thief to play. And it was a revelation!

First time running wasn't long thereafter. The DM of those early sessions had actually left school, and so disappeared shortly thereafter to start university. There was then a sequence of middling to poor DMs trying their best, before I decided to take on the role myself. I was probably better at the job than they were, but in my arrogance I thought I was a good DM which wasn't entirely true...

 

[Ondath]

A D&D 3.5 campaign that I ran over MSN Messenger in the summer of 2010. The very first game started in a tavern when the party was randomly recruited by a city that was under attack by Drow forces, the captain of which was another player (who I'd make sure would switch to the party's side with shenanigans). I believe I ended the first session when the party + the Drow PC were trapped in the tunnels from which the drows came, and the second game was an adventure through an underground dungeon where the party released a BBEG and started working to stop them for the rest of the campaign.

When I look back on it, I basically committed all the cardinal sins of DMing: Starting in a tavern and later forcing down a needlessly strong plot hook, setting up PvP and betting that the party will come together later on... It's a wonder how that campaign survived as long as it did.

Then again, I remember the game not taking itself very seriously. The Drow PC was named Trizzt To'urden (and was of course a ranger with two scimitars), and we had a Halfling Rogue (later got the Assassin prestige class) named Dungen Siage. I had just finished Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood at the time, so I had also shoehorned in Alchemists that work with transmutation circles as a player option. It was very much a mixed bag, but it was a nice way to spend the summer. I can also proudly say that my very first campaign finished its entire story arc succesfully, which not a lot of people can do I reckon!

 

[amethal]

My first game was running the example adventure in the Mentzer Basic Set for my brother and my grandfather (in the latter case, his first game was also his last). It was probably around 1983 or 1984, so not long after the Mentzer revision had come out, not that we knew that at the time - we asked in the hobby shop for "Dungeons and Dragons" and that was what we were given, and we had no concept that the game had gone through different versions, or that there was an "advanced" edition.

None of us had any idea what we were doing, and their first encounter was with the darn carrion crawler, which would have been a TPK if I hadn't fudged it horribly. So I've been "cheating" as the DM right from the very beginning.