When and how did you learn to play D&D?

[Raith5]

I got a copy of Moldvay Basic in 1982 and tried to play with my younger brother. All a remember was that it took hours for us to conduct a fight with 4 hobgoblins. This has prepared me well for 3rd and 4th ed combats! We had no idea what we were doing and only realized we needed a DM a few hours in.

 

[Lanefan]

Early 1980's, taught by friends - I didn't have the patience for all those rulebooks so I just said "tell me what to do and when" and took it from there.

Lan-"they had no idea what they were setting in motion"-efan

 

[pemerton]

1982, Moldvay Basic. I went on to Expert by the end of the year, and then on to AD&D in 1984.

My brother and I taught ourselves the game from the Moldvay rulebook.

We already had a copy of Traveller, but had found that impenetrable - we could generate PCs, but didn't know what to do with them. We knew that D&D was the same sort of game - perhaps from ET, or from ads in the back of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks - and I remember insisting to my brother that D&D would make more sense, but he expressed doubt about this. I was right - Moldvay Basic had excellent GMing advice, and also examples of GM prep and of play, that made it clear how the game was actually to be used by the players.

I ran the first dungeon, with a blue dragon at the end of it. Of my brother's 14 1st level PCs - named after the dwarves + Bilbo - only one survived; but he went on to greater glory. (In my view that was a flaw in Moldvay Basic - that it made dragons such iconic creatures, but didn't support the use of them as opponents for its PCs.)

 

[Bluenose]

The same way all TRUE PLAYERS OF THE ONE TRUE WAY OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS learned to, of course.

The BECMI Red Box!

So people who started playing before that existed can't be "True Players"?

1976, me and a few of my friends got hold of some OD&D products. We played, checked the rules, played some more, finally ended up playing something that approximated to the way you were supposed to.

 

[delericho]

It was right on the edge of the 80's and the 90's, but mostly in '89.

I picked "by the product", since that's how I learned something that resembled rules... though in hindsight there's a lot that we got wrong...

 

[Lindeloef]

EDIT: Also, your poll left out the 2010s as an option.

Which is a shame, cause that would be the option I would vote for...

I learned how to play D&D (4e) in the middle of 2010 (july/august) when I discovered a group streaming their online sessions. I watched them and thereby absorbed the rules and got interested in playing and bought the (new) red box.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Can't remember if it was '79 or '80 - went with '70s in the poll. I was 10 and asked for D&D for Christmas. Read the rules on Christmas day and asked my Mom to DM. She picked it up and did a creditable job of running the sample dungeon in the back of the book that evening. First game was my parents and 3 kids, ages 10, 9, and 8. My Dad wasn't interested after that, but my Mom ran a campaign for us kids for about a year. After that I decided to introduce my friends to the game and be the DM, and I was off and running.

 

[Weather Report]

Can't remember if it was '79 or '80 - went with '70s in the poll. I was 10 and asked for D&D for Christmas. Read the rules on Christmas day and asked my Mom to DM. She picked it up and did a creditable job of running the sample dungeon in the back of the book that evening. First game was my parents and 3 kids, ages 10, 9, and 8. My Dad wasn't interested after that, but my Mom ran a campaign for us kids for about a year. After that I decided to introduce my friends to the game and be the DM, and I was off and running.

Your Mom sounds rad.

 

[Shemeska]

A really good friend of mine in college invited me over to her dorm room to chatter and generally geek out, and she had a copy of the 3e PHB sitting out in view. I asked about it, and within the next week I was playing D&D, and then Shadowrun, and then other games.

 

[Starfox]

A friend of mine was at a confirmation camp in the US and came back having played DnD. His dad traveled a lot and got us a basic set - dragon on box, blue book and "In search of the unknown" inside. Think this was in 1979.

Oh, all the things we did wrong at first - well, some of those wrong ideas had merits, like re-rolling hp each day.

Edit: Lovely thread btw