Your intro to RPGs

[khantroll]

I was 7 years old, and my Aunt had just gotten married. Her husband, Tim, was one of those guys that most kids like; he was always around play video games or board games with, and he always wanted to be your friend. I wasn't terribly keen on him though. He was different then most of the adults I knew; he listened to Heavy Metal, wore his hair long, and talked fast. For a kid living in a remote part of Arkansas, that was weird.

At any rate, one day that summer my Aunt was babysitting myself and two cousins when the adults decided that they needed to go shopping. The loaded us up in their van and took us into town. We were told to stay in the van while they ran into this particular store, and after a few minutes I got bored. I convinced my cousins that it would be alright to get out of the van, and it only took few minutes of walking around the parking lot of this mini-mall to spy this bright blue sign at the end of the complex. It was obviously hand-made, and it had a picture of knight and sword on it with blue on white lettering that read "Mystic Domain". I took off for it, and I once inside I was honestly stupefied.

The building, which wasn't very big (today, I'd say it couldn't have been more then 450sq), was filled to the brim with books and boxes. What floor space was not covered by shelves was taken up with two tables covered with green felt and little figures, and these were being attended to by the two employees. As I looked around this example of controlled clutter, my eyes were drawn to this large game box on the top shelf against the back wall. The box showed demon overlaying a picture of the game board and some kind of cards. And scrawled across the top in blue letters it said "Dungeons and Dragons". I was so caught up in this box that I didn't hear the door open and my new uncle come in behind me.

He told me I was in trouble, but I didn't care. I asked him if he could get that game down for me. He followed my pointing arm and we walked to the back. He got the game down for me, and I turned it every which way I could, until I saw the price tag. 59.95. Doesn't sound like a lot, but I was a poor kid in Arkansas. My face fell, and I know Tim saw it.

"You know, I used to play this game. My stuff should be in storage. Want go find it? Then we can go home and play it." I nodded yes, and he put it back on the shelf.

We didn't get to look for his stuff then, but a couple days later after my Aunt cooled over my ignoring her instructions, we went to his storage locker and he started digging through boxes of records and comic books. A little while later, he comes to me with this book with what looks like tuskan raider riding a lizard on the cover.

"I couldn't find my D&D books, but this is a lot like it. We need to go to the library to copy some stuff, and then we can go home and play."

I wasn't terribly enthused, but I had after all told him that I'd play. We went to the library and ran off some character sheets on a 1970s copy machine, and then we went back to their house. That night, I played my first game of Gamma World, played with nothing but one set of dice, that ratty, faded and stained rule book, and our imaginations. I was hooked.

We eventually got our hands on used AD&D books,and I dug that just as well. We added two of my cousins, and two of his friends to our gaming group, and as we transitioned into WoD and later 3E, Gama World got left behind. But it did a lot. It forged a friendship with Tim that has lasted longer then his marriage to my Aunt, as well as friendships with those that have come and gone from first his table and now mine.

Also, years later, I found out that the boxed set I had seen was a board game made by TSR intended to entice kids into D&D. I don't think it would have worked as well, or been as worthwhile, as that ratty old copy of Gamma World.

 

[Gentlegamer]

When I was in 6th grade, a new student, Dan, who had attended private elementary school, told me about Dungeons & Dragons. At that time, D&D was a cartoon. I had no inkling that there was a game attached to it. I was very much into Choose Your Own Adventure books, as well as the Endless Quest books ("from the producers of the D&D game," which I found puzzling).

Dan and other students had played "D&D," and this is how it was described to me (verbatim, to the best of my memory): "There's a Dungeon Master, and he draws a dungeon, and you explore it. He describes to you what you see, and hear as if you were really there, and you tell him what you want to do."

Like a lightning bolt, my mind grasped the concept and I thought to myself, "That is the coolest thing I've ever heard!"

That description Dan gave me of D&D (and role-playing) informs my view of the game-form to this very day. My reaction to it hasn't changed, despite the passage of 20+ years.

Dan and I began playing "D&D" by making up dungeons and playing "one on one," each of us taking turns as Dungeon Master. We had no rules, and since Dan never mentioned any, I don't know if he had actually ever played with any. Our sessions of "D&D" were completely free form, based wholly on what I would now call descriptive action.

Since we were both familiar with Choose Your Own Adventure and Endless Quest, we shunned combat, fearing for a quick death, which was a feature of both book series. We avoided fighting anything unless we had an object or situation that presented a "solution" to a monster encounter. Though neither of us had played them, we were handling monster encounters (at least from a combat perspective) somewhat like the computer adventure games of the time, where the solution wasn't fighting, but to use an item or other "indirect" solution to defeat it.

These early experiences with role-playing established the foundation for my understanding of the game-form and it my firm belief that they constitute the true definition of what a role-playing game is, distinct from other game-forms.

 

[DragonLancer]

I first heard of D&D when I was nine years old and I desperately wanted to play. It wasn't until 1987 though midway through high school that I finally met another roleplayer, and joined a short lived Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign. That was the start of many very happy hours over the last twenty odd years of roleplaying.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I got Hero Quest (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/699/heroquest) for Christmas one year and my brother and friends from the neighborhood got hooked on it. We played through all of the published quests, then started creating and running our own. As we ran our own we kept adding new rules to make the game more complex and at one point I picked up the core books for 2nd Ed. AD&D to mine for ideas. We spent too much time converting PHB classes and MM monsters into viable Hero Quest heroes until we came to the realization that if we wanted a more intricate game we should play this D&D game instead of trying to make Hero Quest more complex. And the rest is history...

 

[Dark Mistress]

For me I got recruited by my older brother when some of the players... all the fighters didn't show. I was honestly to young to completely grasp all the details of the game. It was AD&D and the adventure was Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh and the group was just about to go on the boat. I ended up using the pregen character Leafstern from the book. I loved playing and rolling the dice. I ended up with the pseudo dragon.

After that I pestered my brother and his group till they let me play. I ended up making a cowardly rogue and was of little help to the party for the most part but I had fun. Later my brother started running for me and I played the whole party. After a few years as I got older, I gave running a try and then switched over to World of Darkness with friends my own age and came back to DnD just about the time 3.5 came out.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I was 9 and my friend told me of this amazing thing his older brother was doing called "dee og dee". His brother had allowed him to participate in one game following some whining, where he got to play a PC's slave.

After some more whining that afternoon, we got to join. We got to play halflings (I was not yet familiar with Tolkien and they all snickered at my ignorance). I named mine "Doddini" ("Doddi" being my nickname).

My friend's brother was DM and the session was one extended humiliation. He did not care to entertain two 9 year olds and did his best to make this as agonizing as possible. Doddini was eventually crushed by a stray treasure chest.

But he failed. I was hooked. I went directly home after the session and created my own "dee og dee", which I named "DD&D" or "Doddi's Dungeons & Dragons".

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Summer of '79 at National Wildlife Federation camp in Asheville, North Carolina. A kid pulled out the 1E PHB and DMG at a picnic table and asked if I wanted to play. There were only two of us -- I have no idea what our classes or races were -- and we basically played the front cover of the 1E PHB. My companion got killed and I ended up playing hide and seek from a pair of orcs riding up and down twin elevators until I could escape. They ended up catching me ...

I went home and raved about it to my parents. My father turned out to have a photocopy of the original OD&D booklets other than Blackmoor (PIRACY!), and happily bought me both the Holmes set and the three 1E core books. My family moved that summer and our next posting turned out to both have a DM my age -- we swapped off for our group for years -- and a bunch of kids interested in playing.

We also played Villains & Vigilantes and dabbled in Runequest and Traveller. Good times.

 

[Kannik]

Ah, a great thread full of memories.

One day a friend loaned me one of his choice adventure books -- one of the Wizards, Warriors & You series. (ah yes... the singing mace, which you could _throw_) (come to think of it, what a delightfully rich way to look at magic weapons, each one flavourful...) I loved the books -- what fun! I bought more, borrowed more from the library, and eventually my friends and I would make up our own on the fly, playing out some scenario and just free-forming it. Such fun, late late into the night, surrounded by guards, trapped in a cave, figuring our way out of it.

Every now and again I would hear about this "Dungeons and Dragons" game, and heard fun stories that happened within -- but I didn't really grok it. Something remained disconnected in my mind about 'game' and the stories being told...

On a trip to the world's biggest bookstore (20 km of bookshelves!) one afternoon I saw, across an atrium, this box that had the most awesome image on it, with a gun, some passports, an array of different currencies, and a photo of a lady in a long dress. It was the Top Secret box set, and while I didn't purchase it that day I eventually did, devoured it, and at the age of 11 gathered my friends and let them descend into Sprechenhaltestelle. We were all hooked.

A few years later in high school we joined a well established D&D group. Been playing (or been wanting to play) ever since.

And, to this day, spycraftian games and adventures still hold the biggest sway in my heart.

peace,

Kannik

 

[Splurch]

My first was the original Red Box at my cousins house when it came out I was 8 and my older cousin ran the game (I believe), then I didn't play again till my Junior year in high school and started playing Marvel and AD&D 2nd. ED and haven't stop playing since.

 

[Jack7]

There was a kid I knew in school. Middle School. We weren't really friends, we were actually rivals. Academic and athletic rivals. We were on rival football and debate teams. Sometimes we'd play Chess against each other. But one day he brought Chainmail to school and asked me if I had ever heard of it. He and I had both played Wargames as far back as 6th grade. And he knew I might like Chainmail.

We were rivals (as much as is possible in Middle school) but we had some of the same interests. Wargames, history, World War II, the Medieval era, etc. He showed the game to me (with the supplements) and we would discuss it at lunch. It was different than any Wargame I had ever seen. And we both liked the theory and construction of the game.

He and I had both read Tolkien and were interested in the game from that angle as well. We discussed Chainmail for some number of weeks as a Wargame. Right before summer, If I remember correctly, he brought in some information on Blackmoor.

That summer I spent at my great aunt's house (I was the first son of the first son of the first son and so got to spend a lot of summers with whomever in the family I wished) and she took me to a store where she bought me the boxed set of Dungeons and Dragons. I had no-one to play it with there though so I just studied it and thought about it.

I played that with friends later in the summer and for about a year, including many forays into the Wizard's castle that was included in the back of the booklet. I introduced most all of my friends and the people I'd actually play with to the game.

My freshman year in High school I ordered the AD&D books which became the standard Role Play Game books for most of my childhood.

I never played D&D or Blackmoor or Chainmail, as either RPGs or Wargames, with the guy who actually introduced me to it. We played Ogre and GEV a couple of times (the Steve Jackson games) in biology class or on the bus going to a football game, but never the games he introduced me to. We just discussed those games.

But oddly, after those initial discussions, we never spoke of them again.