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

[R_J_K75]

I don't really remember it. All I remember until I got my hands on Moldvay was that we entirely winged it

I remember getting that boxed set too after I played my first few games with friends of my fathers. He bought the box used. I remember when I first got it reading the passage..."Rumor has it"...I thought to myself who is Rumor and what does he have? Thats all my 7-year-old pea brain could come up with. Me and my friends winged it for quite a few years until we got the hang of it.

 

[Havrik Stoneskimmer]

My very first time playing was about 1983. I was about 7, and it was at a school festival/party. It must have been one of the parents running it. I don't remember too much about the adventure except that there were colored portals at one point and we had to choose which one to go through. Someone had a flame tongue sword and set a pool of oil on fire, which I thought was pretty cool. I thought that "magic missile" created a big red rocket like in the Roadrunner cartoons.

My parents got me the Mentzer Basic box a year or so later, which explained a lot!

 

[Reynard]

My cleric got eaten by the carrion crawler beneath the fallen gate on the first turn of my first game.
I was immediately hooked.

 

[MockingBird]

Mid 90s, the 2e black box starter set that came with a cd. We ran those 3 dungeons it cane with. Shortly after I got my hands on a DMG and PHB. Ran several home made adventures.

 

[amethal]

My cleric got eaten by the carrion crawler beneath the fallen gate on the first turn of my first game.
I was immediately hooked.

It's a shame that "Back in my day, a carrion crawler was perfectly acceptable as the first encounter for novice players, and we liked it that way!" is a bit long to put on a T-shirt.

 

[GuyBoy]

As a player: late in 1976, my mate Phil knew this lad from the year above in school who had this new game from the USA. The older boy, Dave, had designed a dungeon and Phil and I rolled up characters to explore it. Aelfric the fighter was mine and Phil had Amroth the wizard, with his one spell. We killed a giant spider, slept some goblins then got trapped and killed by orcs. I was hooked.

As a DM: I badgered for, and received, the white box set for Xmas 1976 and set about designing a six level dungeon those holidays. Weird how I can still remember the names of my friends’ characters who first trod the dungeon’s dusty (and totally ecologically implausible) halls. Celetan the mage, Valon the priest and Grimbold the dwarf fighter.

 

[Emirikol]

My first experience was when I was 9 years old (1981). We were on a scouts trip to historical sites throughout minnesota. We stopped at a hobby shop in Bloomington MN. My buddy (older scout) bought the Moldvay Basic and Expert sets. We played on the way home. I was hooked. My first character was determined with 3d6 (Fighter with a str of 14). I got the 5 AD&D hardcovers for xmas in 1983. By late 1983, I was told by my parents that I had to "calm down on the D&D stuff"

 

[Sacrosanct]

1981, played with my older brother sitting in the front "yard" (I say yard, but it was really the space between all the mobile homes in Ketchikan Alaska. He was DMing. I was playing a cleric (Moldvay basic). I beat a skeleton in the first room, but had 1 hp left. He asked which direction I was going. The map was on the ground between us, so I said left, because my left was the door. His left was the wall, however, and he replied, "You walk into the wall and take 1 hp damage."

I died.

But I was still hooked

 

[payn]

My first experience was when I was 9 years old (1981). We were on a scouts trip to historical sites throughout minnesota. We stopped at a hobby shop in Bloomington MN. My buddy (older scout) bought the Moldvay Basic and Expert sets. We played on the way home. I was hooked. My first character was determined with 3d6 (Fighter with a str of 14). I got the 5 AD&D hardcovers for xmas in 1983. By late 1983, I was told by my parents that I had to "calm down on the D&D stuff"

I got all my first gear at Schinders and then The Source in Roseville, MN.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Playing

College 2001, 3e.

Not good.

The DM stuck us in Dragonlance with Paladine shoving his butt into everything with a ton of 'but thou must' crap, including forcing us to pull from DoMT. I pulled three. Got the Fighter one that gave me a level 3 dwarf bodyguard and was quite happy. Got the keep, which was the card I dreamed of pulling ever since reading the DoMT table. Was really happy.

Got Balance and my CG character is now LN and told by freaking Paladine I have to conform to that. Suffered three more sessions trying to get my crappy LN borepile killed only to have Paladine save him every time, locking him into a hellish life support where he knew he used to have a personality, but couldn't get back to it.

Me and the other player met up with some dudes named Andrew and Sharky; learned D&D could be fun instead.


DMing:

College 2002

3e shackled and brainboxed by houserules as god intended.

All woman cadre of players including the other player from the first game. All of them were chaos gremlins that loved pets, fire and looting what can not be looted. Game ran three years and actually ended naturally having eventually grown to 8 players, most of whom went on to be awesome DMs in their own right.