Why did you start the hobby?

[Ao the Overkitty]

Back, first year of Highschool, a group of kids started a D&D club. I figured, why not? Went to the first meeting, borrowed a PHB and made an Aranea wizard for Red Steel. We didn't have any clue what we were doing, but had fun.

Then met up with some more gamers in my when I went to Philmont Scout Ranch. It's a High Adventure Ranch in Cimmaron New Mexico where you hike through the mountains over a span of 12 days. I highly recommend it; lots of fun. But getting off track. So, there were a couple of gamers in my troop for that trip, so one of the kids "DM'd" and the rest of us were "players." No dice, no character sheets, just having fun with the story.

School game died out the following year and wasn't until 2 more years had gone by that I got into a real group. Even eventually got my old GMm back into gaming.

Good times...good times... (okay, high school was NOT good times, but the gaming was). ^_^

 

[DaveMage]

1980 - Red Box Set

A gift from mom and dad.

See - it's all their fault!

I accuse my parents! (for you MSTers out there)

 

[barsoomcore]

I started playing D&D as a way to meet stewardesses.

 

[orchid blossom]

I got started in roleplaying my junior year in college. I'd heard about it before, but had never had the opportunity to play.

I was settling in for a Star Wars movie marathon to distract myself from worrying about the results of the biopsy I'd had that day. One of my roomates at the time said, "Let me call my friend before you start, he loves Star Wars." An hour or so later the friend shows up with WEG Star Wars. We played instead of watching the movies, and I played that first character of mine for 5 years until I moved to Albany.

It wasn't long after that I stared playing 2ed D&D. But I still have a soft spot for big handfuls of d6's. My first 3rd ed character was a rogue... loved the sneak attack dice. My current sorcerer throws lightning bolts, another method of dealing sweet d6 destruction. I can add d6's so fast it'll make your head spin. You had to, it really slows a game down to roll 24d6 if you can't add 'em up quick.

 

[LostSoul]

My Dad had the books, and they had neat pictures in them.

 

[Protean]

My story seems pale in camparison to the others that have posted here, but let's proceed anyway.
As a child I was always captivated by the fantastic: mythology, mutant turtles and the like. After I received a comic from that Chick guy I decided I had to play that game. I mean what,13 year old social misfit wouldn't want to know the finer points of sorcery...










The real story to come soon....

 

[LGodamus]

The dragon art.....I was just a young kid interested in drawing monsters...and my favorite was of course dragons...I had lots of frazetta and others but their art was paintings , so it was difficult to get any techniqus from them for my pencil drawings.. Lo and behold one day many years ago , I stood in the hobby and magazine shop in the mall and I see this " monster manual" with all sorts of cool , odd critters , and dragons by heavens they had dragons...with simple art that was done in pen and ink ..yay. I bought it. Later on I got interested in what all the numbers and whatnot were in the stat block so I bought the players and DMs books and the rest is ancient history.

 

[William Ronald]

I put down friends, as I was first introduced to the game by a high school classmate who knew I enjoyed science fiction and fantasy literature.

It was 23 years ago. The first campaign was bad, essentially a weird Lord of the Rings/Norse Mythology knockoff using the Greyhawk map. However, despite DM favoritism and Monty Haulism (except for the non-favorites), I enjoyed the game.

 

[D+1]

I was really just a sci-fi buff to start out with as there just wasn't any fantasy around, at least not in our high school library. It did have a bit of SF and I picked up a bit more in bookstores. Then a friend suggested that I read Lord of the Rings (and I actually found out later that he'd never read the whole trilogy through himself) and I was just as solidly hooked on fantasy. Shortly afterward this guy I was in a school play with (whom I knew only superficially as he was, I believe, a senior and I a sophmore at the time) came up to me one day after school and showed me this game he'd gotten hold of called Dungeons & Dragons. He had some dice and a few figures too so we got some other players together and started gaming in his basement on the overturned ping-pong table. I played almost continually every week for the next 20 years before real life circumstances started throwing the occasional hiatus of a few years into campaigns.

I'm still not sure where HE actually picked it up from or what convinced him to buy it. Had I seen it myself I likely would never have given it a second glance. He must have found it while browsing through American Eagles in Seattle because that was THE game store we went to for D&D supplies for the next few decades (before they moved out of Greenwood to Lake City).

Oh yeah, this was of course long before computer games actually existed (unless they were written in basic and no longer than about 50k to run on a TRS-80.) I bought my first computer in 1979 - a Commodore 64. By that time I'd been playing D&D for probably 4 years.

 

[Impeesa]

I voted 'other' - I blame my interest in the fantasy genre on equal parts Warcraft 2, Lord of the Rings, and Magic, but I might never have gotten into D&D if a friend's dad (an old-school player) hadn't run a few games for us early on in high school.

--Impeesa--