Your first brush with D&D (OF ANY STRIPE)

[Kafkonia]

I don't remember how I was introduced to it, or any of the details of the game, but it was the mid-80s. I was in the gifted programme, grade 4, and the DM was in Grade 3. We played under the play structure in the yard. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I could borrow the PHB or DMG from the public library (that, in retrospect, was really lucky) because I couldn't afford to buy them. My dad was uncomfortable with the idea, this being around the height of the Steam Tunnel fears, but my mom had enough faith in me to trust that I wouldn't go all Blackleaf.

I did buy one book once, but I got rid of it a few years later when I realized I was never using it. It was a collection of short adventures, but other than that I don't recall anything.

I still have the sparkling gold d12 my first DM gave to me.

 

[Aeric]

The year was 1983; I was 9 or 10 at the time. I first became aware of D&D when I saw Elliot's older brother and his friends playing it in the movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. I'm not sure how I figured out what it was they were playing, but the next thing I knew, my dad and I were at a hobby store picking up the Basic Set (red box) and some miniatures, paints, and brushes.

My first experience with D&D was as a DM, not a player. I ran Palace of the Silver Princess for my parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin a couple of years later. I played once or twice after that, but didn't start seriously roleplaying until I was a freshman in high school. My history teacher found out about my interest in gaming and introduced me to some older students who played. I haven't stopped playing since.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

'77-78, one of the (slightly younger) guys at work mentioned to a couple of us that he had bought a couple of new games, not the usual boardgames either. Sounded like it could be fun so we got together at his house and started a D&D game. Then a Traveler game. (Where, as I've said before, we had our first house rule when my character died because of the last Character Creation roll. We junked that as a really dumb rule.)

 

[Bad Paper]

Someone gave my father the Basic box set (including B2) for his fortieth birthday in 1982. He never touched it. I cracked it open a year or two later, realized:
1) how insanely complicated it was, and
2) that you couldn't play it one-player, and no one around would play it with me.

A year or two later I found out that a few friends of mine played, but they played this "advanced" business. I think my first dungeon crawl was probably White Plume Mountain. So yeah, it was about junior high school for me. Played until high school. Didn't touch it after 2nd ed came out. Came back when 3rd ed hit.

 

[Lidgar]

1978. I was in grade school and some friends were bragging how they beat Demogorgan (ah to be young again). I just had to see what they were doing and ended up at a friend's house that Friday night doing a dungeon dive (home brew I think). Got killed by some water wierds, and was hooked. We then ventured out to other games - Top Secret, Traveler, Star Troopers...but in the end, D&D was always the best.

 

[jdrakeh]

I tell this story a lot (on these forums, no less), so I'll stick to the short version. . .

1983. I'm part of our school's Gifted Education program for advanced learning. Our GE teacher has our class (consisting of four kids) play the D&D Basic Game as part of our lesson plan. I honestly don't recall a great deal about the experience.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

1993. I was in Fifth grade, I believe. My friend Christian and I were hanging out in his attic, looking for something to occupy a rainy day. We stumbled across his dad's olde PHB and we made up some characters. Christian was the DM, I was Dek (Magic-User). He found some old notes his dad had made in college, and ran the adventure from there.

He said that I was locked in a prison cell, and that I had a knife and my fists as weapons. He couldn't figure out the damage charts...

Christian: It says the knife does 1d4 damage, and the punch does 1d2 damage. 1 divided by 4? A knife should hurt more than a punch, but whatever. Which are you using?
Me: I guess I'll just punch stuff. 1/2 is better than 1/4.

I killed a goblin guard and a carrior crawler, only because of abyssmal rolls on Christian's part did I survive.

We didn't play again until we got into Boy Scouts. Then, I was the DM and he and the other boys were the players. Their party went through 36 PCs over the course of that summer camp, but I still remember their original characters.

Christian - Thaco, the Fighter
Jon - Len, the Fighter
Josh - Bybee, the Fighter
Eric - Elric, the Mage
Nick - Elrand, the Mage / Cleric
Jason - Jason, the Fighter

Yep. Lots of fighters. Out of the 36 odd PCs, I think 30 of them were fighters. Thaco was the only character to survive the entire week. As a result, we retired the charcter and laminated the character sheet. I think Christian still has it somewhere, with all of our signatures on it and "Summer Camp 1995 - Year of Death" as the campaign.

Good times.

-TRRW

 

[Shemeska]

1986 or so, the Endless Quest choose your own adventure type books, the local library. I was hooked on them. Now they weren't D&D, but they had Advanced Dungeons & Dragons imprinted on the cover, so they got me familiar with the general gist of what the game was even if I wouldn't actually really play it for another 14 years or so.

Back in 1996 or 1997 we talked about character creation for a 2e game when power was knocked out by a hurricane at my highschool, but the DM was an unstable kook and he had some sort of drama-fest and took his books and we never actually rolled dice. So I don't truly count this as playing D&D.

Finally in 2000 was when Clueless introduced me to 3rd edition, and I played shortly thereafter.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Aurora, Colorado. East Middle School, 1977, I heard of Dungeons & Dragons through rumors around school.

Early 1978, someone decided to run an intro game after school in the library & I gave it a stab.

I can't remember the PC's name, but he was a human fighter with a 2 handed sword & chainmail. He and the party Wizard were looking like they were to be the only survivors of the adventure. Our PCs walked across a HUGE room swirling with mist 4' deep...and out of it rose a Purple Worm.

We tried to back towards the door we entered through, but it spotted us and persued. Backs to the wall (literally), we fought back. The mage opened with Magic Missile (his last spell) while I fended it off with some well-placed swings, but suddenly, our fortunes turned.

I stopped hitting, while the Mage was making solid connections with his staff. The turn we got simultaneous initiative, the DM rolled a nat 20 and the Mage dissapeared down its gullet, and my Fighter landed a solid blow.

Both of us were down to 4 HP.

He lost initiative, but I failed to connect while he succeeded. End of game.

Start of addiction!

 

[frankthedm]

D&D cartoon back in the 80's was my first exposure to D&D material.