Why did you start the hobby?

[MEG Hal]

Friends started me, I started and got hooked, worked at a game store/adult movie store chain in high school. Started gaming about 1978-79, took a hiatus but am back and won't leave now---

I am an RPG'er and damn glad to be here!

 

[fusangite]

I was already a fan of fantasy literature (JRR Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, CS Lewis) at the age of 9 but had been put off D&D because my ex-best friend had taken it up. So, I can't actually credit my love of the fantasy genre and its authors. Instead, I had to select "other" from the list of options.

The real reason I started playing RPGs is because the child psychiatrist I had been sent to recommended to my mother that she get me into playing D&D as a means of curing my alienation, depression and social phobia.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

I saw an article on it in "Hot Dog!" magazine, something that you could get through the Scholastic Book Club back around 1981 or so. I told my mom to get me that game - she did - and no one I knew, including my mom and me, could make head or tails of the rules. Then my aunt said that my cousins knew how to play - they taught me - and I've been gaming ever since.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Some amazing person whom I can't remember now gave me the D&D Coloring Album when I was a young child. I remembered thinking how awesome that Demogorgon guy looked. Then, when I was about 11 or 12, I came across the tiny D&D section of my local Kay Bee Toys. I talked my mom into buying the red box set for me, which I perused for a few months alone. I got the basics, but it seemed a little kiddy. Then I met a friend who played 1E AD&D with his older brother, and he showed me the ropes. That was 15 years ago.

 

[Slomoot]

Picked up the old red box at a church yard sale for 25 cents... man who knew how much that would end up costing me

 

[Mark]

i was a wargamer first.

i love my minis

Boardgamer/Wargamer before Chainmail came along, then a minis and Chainmail guy, then D&D when that finally came out...

 

[shilsen]

I was in India (where, far as I know, D&D has never been marketed) when I first read about a game which you played almost completely in your head. That was enough to sell me on it. The fact that it was fantasy was icing on the cake, since I'd got into mythology when I was 4 and fantasy thereafter.

 

[gunter uxbridge]

My first year in college some friends had talked about it, and when some people in my dorm said they were starting a group I asked to join. That campaign lasted about a year and a half and even after I left college I still drove the 45 miles each weekend to play.

My name for this board is taken from the human thief character I played in that campaign. Best gaming experience I ever had. That was in 1990. Here we are all these years later and I am still going at it.

 

[talinthas]

For me, in 1989-1990, my friend Hariprem was reading a blue paperback book with this cool shot of a dragon and a couple people standing in front of it. One had deep blue armor and a crazy helmet, one was a short elfy thing, and one was this elf lady with this huge spear. He said that this book was part of a series where a group of heroes tries to bring gods back to the world.

Then he lent me Dragons of Autumn Twilight. After i read the whole chronicals, he told me that this 'dragonlance' thing had a game attached to it, called dungeons and dragons, where you could actually play as the heroes, or make your own. I rolled up a red mage, and failed my saving throw against hopeless Dragonlance addiction for life.

 

[Oni]

I've always been interested in fantasy, books and movies and the like. I played M:TG in highschool, which I loved. (They really ought to think about doing some M:TG supplements for DnD.) However I would never have started playing dnd where it not for a couple of friends in college that dragged me into it. I am very glad that I did find the world of table top rpg's though, because it has really become one of my loves over the last few years.