Where did you first buy your D&D stuff?

[Emirikol]

1980/81 a friend of mine got the red and blue boxed sets (otis covers) during a Webelos trip. I, having been raised with a strange sense of religious fantasy (old bible stuff) and drawing knights, dragons and crap and stuff immediately fell in love with his game.

My parents got the set for me later that summer. My father ordered it wholesale for his drugstore back in 1981 from Sioux Falls SD, and also got sent to him an assortment of Boot Hill and Gamma World modules (which I told him were not D&D, so he sent them back).

I opened it, read a bunch outside, and promptly left it sitting on our picnic table out back of the house in the rain for 2 days (the cover sags to this day).

I later got the 5 A&D hardovers that xmas from my grandparents. This was quite an expense in those days considering the price of those 5 books each were $12,12,12, 12,18!

My grades immediately dropped to and my parents took D&D away from me for an ENTIRE YEAR in timeout. Once I got it back, I started GMing (ever since) and my grades usually took 2nd fiddle.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I played for a while before buying any books. I just asked the DM questions, and he answered them, and that encompassed my understanding of the rules. We didn't play often, but it was fun. In the meantime I wrote my own RPG to keep myself occupied when he wasn't available. Ah youth!

It wasn't until my family moved away that I even considered buying books. By then it was 1993 or so, and 2e AD&D was out. There was a local comic book shop in our small rural town, right in the town square (and upon my return several years later to the area have found it now no longer there). It was a treasure trove of AD&D material, and I spent much of my allowance there.

 

[skotothalamos]

1981 or so, the Waldenbooks in the Columbia Mall (Columbia, Missouri) was about a half-hour walk away from home.

 

[Loki-lie-Smith]

I started with the infamous Black Box and bought it in Toys R Us. Then I moved to AD&D 2e and got those book at the comic book store.

I still buy RPGs from the same comic store from time to time. Toys R Us no longer sells D&D stuff.

 

[wedgeski]

My first sources of D&D were my friends, who were inexplicably happy to give me Red Box, Expert, Companion, and Immortals rules for basically nothing. It might have had something to do with the fact that I was always the one who agreed to DM.

As I started earning my own money, I got my D&D stuff from the toy store in town. This was 2E's hey-day and basically all of my spare cash went into the till at that shop. Every rule-book, every Monstrous Compendium appendix, a whole bunch of Ral Partha lead miniatures, basically everything I could afford.

At university in Cardiff, the local Virgin Megastore inexplicably became *the* place to get all my RPG stuff. Not only that but they had swathes of old stock that they would regularly put out at bargain prices. This was the beginning of my twenty-year marriage to Dragonlance and Virgin equipped me with the complete DL back-catalogue for nonsense money.

I slipped out of D&D for a few years but started getting back into it following my move to Worcester. A local store called "Antics" had an entire upper floor devoted to hobby games and their selection was decent enough to retain my interest.

Then 3E hit, and I needed a reliable source for the new rules. Turning to the internet, I randomly discovered a well-regarded store in London called Leisure Games, and started a long association of mail ordering all my RPG gear from them. I still do that for new edition core rules. You gotta keep some traditions alive.

In recent years, through gaming I became friends with a local guy who ran an internet gaming shop from his back bedroom. This coincided with 4E and I suddenly had a ready source of all the role-playing stuff I could ever need, just down the road and at basically wholesale prices plus a little bit.

He's since had to cease stocking role-playing product because the market just completely dried up, and for my shame I've turned to Amazon for most of my needs, with the exception of core books from a new edition, as I mentioned. You just can't argue with the price differentials.

 

[thewok]

Best Buy. They were giving away 3E PHBs with purchase of Icewind Dale. So, when I bought that game, I also got the 3E PHB. Then, when I actually started working there, I actually found a group of people to play with.

Actually, I guess I didn't technically buy that PHB. So, I guess I bought my first D&D stuff at Lone Star Comics in Hurst, TX, where I picked up another PHB and the Monster Manual. I found an older "grey-box" FR campaign setting at a Borders later on, which I picked up just for the pleasure of reading it.

 

[Yora]

The first was a box set in a department store in 2000. Then I got the 3rd edition core books in a gaming store a few streets away from it. Since they wisely stocked all the english books (german translations took forever and were never completed) I bought a bunch of other books there as well over the years. I switched to buying books online once things started to get out of print and stores didn't always have them on stock anymore.

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&J Hobby, Campbell, CA, 1980, a 1e PH (I'd received the basic set as a gift).

(D&J is still around, though it's moved to west San Jose and doesn't carry much RPG stuff anymore.)

 

[billd91]

45 minute drive to the big city...where the mall had a "Waldenbooks" if I recall correctly. 1982?

My experience is similar but the drive to Madison was only 25 minutes. The closest mall had Waldenbooks and that's where I bought my 1e Players Handbook. Most other books came off Xmas wishlists and I have no idea where my mother found them. I did find some more off the beaten path bookstores carried 1e AD&D books too, including a small bookstore in the much smaller town of Baraboo. They still had the old printing of the Deities and Demigods with the Cthulhu mythos when I saw it there.

Once things moved to 2e (and I was driving on my own), I got more of my materials from Pegasus Games. And that's where I still get most of my games that don't come as part of a Paizo subscription.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I got my Moldvay Basic Set via mail order in '83 from one of the two mail order shops in Gemany carrying the thing. Mail order was the only way for two years until a shop opened in a neihgouring city. After I move away, mail order and rare visits to real stores. During the D20 boom I bought a lot of stuff from ebay. Today I seldom buy anything anymore and am back to mail order. the cycle seems completed.