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slaydemons
2011-02-17, 12:45 AM
I want to hear people and how they were newbies at one point on their first adventure so to speak I will of course start with my first experience as a player... mind you I didn't know about tiers and how bad the class is.


my first class was complete warrior's samurai, It looks cool to me I was like yeah that is bad ass, my friend is an elf fighter both of our first adventures. so keep this in mind also I was a half elf.



we start by a campfire in a cave because its raining outside. we had to sleep I decided (and wish I didn't) that my elf friend could take the first night watch and when he needs to trance I would watch over him.

sometime during the night the fire started to dim out my friend decides to go out and look for wood as the storm has passed. as he is looking for said wood I get attacked by rats, and scream for help since i am unarmored and .... my friend doesn't come he hears me but decides to get more firewood. I grabbed my bastard sword and short sword and swung at the tiny vermin (about 4-7 of them) and killed maybe half before dying. YES DYING at some rats hands.


The dm felt bad for me and gave me a rez for no cost as if the battle never happened. my samurai couldn't fall back asleep and let the elf trance. he kept watch over his body like a good boy and when the sun rose orcs came out from a secret tunnel.

we killed these orcs no problem and proceded to the dungeon like place. A bunch of walking later (straight line)I ran through some purple mist and was back at the entrance naked (except for the undies as they never leave my characters)

We decided to search through some rooms and he found a glass key and I found a glass box saying "only an elf of purest blood may open." He unlocked the box but he didn't take the ring which caused them both to shatter.

In another room there were three orbs and a pair of gloves (red, blue, white) so I took the gloves and grabbed the red orb fusing with the gloves the became warm on the inside but I didn't know the effect IC (ooc it was some sort of fire immunity gloves) the white one shifted into a shield which the elf took and the blue one cracked open into a rusty dagger.

after this was done we go back to the main room and the purple mist is gone my clothes off in a corner of this room. I first go for my weapons quietly as there is a mummy laying in the center quietly. as I wanted to get rid of my rusted dagger I plundged it into he mummy as it stood up and tossed my into a wall graceful landing later and we attack it died.

and thats pretty much what happened my first time sorry for the bad grammer let me comb over it and add punctioactions before hitting submit

Barbin
2011-02-17, 01:20 AM
Oooh boy, my first campaign was roughly 5 years ago. We were our group was composed of 8 or 9 year olds, all we had a Player's Handbook, a few character sheets and dice.

The campaign was so epic: Demonic goats everywere, and the final boss a colossal goat that could be killed by casting Create Water on it's flamming horns.

Ozreth
2011-02-17, 01:25 AM
My first time playing I DM'd for some friends. (and have almost every time since). We had some character sheets with maybe 1/4 of the sheet filled out, no DMG, one PHB that we couldn't figure out, a wet erase mat that wasn't to scale, and the Sunless Citadel.

I got to the first monster stat block in Sunless Citadel, scratched my head and set it aside, proceeding to improvise everything. The session ended with our Bard being captured and taken to an orc camp (with around 150 orcs). They tied him over a fire to cook. He started singing a farewell song (he sang every single thing he said the whole game, and started most sentences with "ye olde") and realized that the orcs were very entertained by his singing. He realize that he could probably keep them enthralled long enough for the rest of the party to arrive and rescue him.

Well, the rest of the party sneaks in behind the camp and the barbarian charges in screaming for blood, leaving the rest of the group wide eyed with jaws to the floor. Everybody died.

Barbin
2011-02-17, 01:30 AM
My first time playing I DM'd for some friends. (and have almost every time since). We had some character sheets with maybe 1/4 of the sheet filled out, no DMG, one PHB that we couldn't figure out, a wet erase mat that wasn't to scale, and the Sunless Citadel.

I got to the first monster stat block in Sunless Citadel, scratched my head and set it aside, proceeding to improvise everything. The session ended with our Bard being captured and taken to an orc camp (with around 150 orcs). They tied him over a fire to cook. He started singing a farewell song (he sang every single thing he said the whole game, and started most sentences with "ye olde") and realized that the orcs were very entertained by his singing. He realize that he could probably keep them enthralled long enough for the rest of the party to arrive and rescue him.

Well, the rest of the party sneaks in behind the camp and the barbarian charges in screaming for blood, leaving the rest of the group wide eyed with jaws to the floor. Everybody died.

*Lurk powers activate!*


That sounds like most of that campaigns I DM... I sometimes wonder if being PCs causes major brain damage to some individuals for a short period of time.

BobVosh
2011-02-17, 01:56 AM
My first D&D character was a monk. He lived for about 10 minutes before being stomped on by a dragon.

Good times.
The DM followed the silly rule of all characters come in at level 1. The party was mainly level 10s. Incrediably OP level 10s as they went down the chart and added all the values with +X. So BAB of 55 was for a full BAB class, etc. Saves were 45 for good saves etc.

Percival
2011-02-17, 02:06 AM
Let's see, my very first character. Kyralia, the NE elf rogue who'd been raised by gnomes. We were hired by a mysterious, shadowy figure to go to this abandoned temple of Moradin out in the mountains. We get to the mountains and find a stream winding its way up to it and then right into it, into a tunnel.

Kyralia spots something strange in the water. So, what do I have her do? Dive in to investigate. And then fail 4 swim checks in a row. She finally manages to pull herself up onto the walkway 50 feet into the tunnel, only to find herself up against two skeletons.

Rogue. Solo. Wielding nothing but daggers. Against two undead.

Fortunately, the party saw what happened and the half-orc barbarian came in after me, and managed to pretty much round the skeletons before I died. Needless to say, that was a good first lesson in "look before you leap". Literally.

That character ended up getting the Death Stare from a hag some sessions later, though, and would be just one in a long line of dead characters that I played. Most of which died through no fault of my own:


Kyralia - save or die from hag
Kethrati the Raptoran Ninja - turned to stone by a medusa in a low-magic (4th level and lower spells) campaign. Even if we'd been high enough level, stone to flesh didn't exist.
Alys the githzerai monk - Had Sleep cast on her during a BBEG battle, got coup de graced by a bunch of tiny-sized sapling creatures because the party thought it was a better idea to try and kill all the saplings surrounding me instead of simply slapping me in the face to wake me up.
Talthar the gray elf dread necro - Had Tomb-Tainted Soul so he could heal himself whenever he wanted. Told the party cleric this. She (READ: the player, not the character) forgot, and cast Cure Serious on him in an attempt to save him when we were being destroyed by a dragon's breath weapon. He died.

However, this one I didn't mind as a round before Talthar was healed to death, his imp had vorpaled the dragon. Rolled 3 nat 20s in a row, and a 1d4 sting attack exploded through a dragon's face. BEST. DEATH. EVER.
Then comes the only death that was truly my own fault. There was a set of double doors, only one was open -- the one my whisper gnome rogue Fenn had just opened. He dodge-tanked against a couple bugbear zombies for a few rounds, but started taking hits, so he and the barbarian switched. Then i decided to open the second door (that I was now hiding behind) so he could hit the zombies better. One of them took its AoO. Critted. Chopped Fenn in half.

slaydemons
2011-02-17, 02:34 AM
My first character died in a far less epic way then dragon stomping

icantsavemyself
2011-02-17, 02:48 AM
My first D&D session I was an Elf Rogue. We made our into a dungeon and talked to a zombie for a little while( He said something about awakening great danger(I don't know why he was talking)). Then I shot my crossbow at him and missed. After that we were walking down a very large, slippery spiral staircase when the Dwarf Fighter fell down 50 feet and was knocked unconscious. I decided to swan dive the 50 feet down into an unknown depth of water and ended up breaking my neck in two feet of water.

BiblioRook
2011-02-17, 03:23 AM
My first D&D game started out with a sewer-dungeon crawl in Ebberon hunting kidnappers/cultists. I forget what the other two were, but we were all level 1 and I was a Rogue.
When we found where the cultists were, while the other two took care of the mooks I thought it would have been a great idea to take a shot at the Boos. One stealthy ranged sneak attack later and... Opps, turns out that was armor under his culty robes. More then that it drew attention to myself. What we learned next was that our DM was itching for an excuse to use the Book of Vile Darkness, and the next thing I know... my eyes explode right out of my head (did I mention we were just level 1?).

Amazingly, not only did I survive but eventually the fight came down to just the Boss and the warrior-type (I was huddled nearby in a corner, useless as I was heavily injured and perminately blind and the other party member was even more useless as he started the fight running out of the room due to fear effects). After a while I was getting really sick of skipping my turn repeatedly, so I declared that blind or not I was going to attack the Boos again, despite my DM constantly pointing out the odds against me doing anything. I ended up not only Criting but finishing off the Boss. While Blind. :smallbiggrin:

Unfortunately despite his heroic efforts, we had to retire that character almost immediately as restoring his sight would have cost much more then our party could manage at the time. It was almost worth it though for the mental image of a man with blood-streaked empty eye cavities trying to calmly sooth half a dozen kidnapped girls that were minutes away from being ritualistically murdered that everything was going to be alright and that they should fallow him. :smallwink:

Caliphbubba
2011-02-17, 09:18 AM
My first D&D experiance was with running my brother through the canned adventure in the "Red Box" basic set of D&D. I was 9 and he was 7. I had a Lawful Cleric that we pronounced "Sell-ric" because I was a little dsylexic (and still am a little) that tagged along with his Lawful Elf( elf was a class in that edition).

I'm pretty sure we both got owned by a carrion crawler very early into the dungeon.

We had a lot of fun just drawing out the maps on graph paper and trying to figure out how to pronounce different words such as the afforementioned "Sell-ric" and Chaos as "Chulk-chos".

The details are a little fuzzy because that was almost 25 years ago.

We both still play at least twice a month, but have since moved on to many different game systems.

fortesama
2011-02-17, 09:51 AM
My first game was me experimenting with a human warlock in the DM's homebrew extremely low wealth setting (i'm talking wand of cure minor wounds as our best magic item at level 12). I decided to play artificer when we got to level 12 and retrained my feats for crafting. Things got silly very fast culminating in an Gate incident involving a Solar and a Wish. Thankfully, the situation was such that it granted the wish "with pleasure". DM hated warlocks ever since.

Amphetryon
2011-02-17, 10:24 AM
My first character was a Halfling in Basic D&D in The Keep On the Borderlands, with a 17 STR and unremembered other stats. I was 7ish. I was a useful senty while the others slept but couldn't hit a darn thing in combat. We never finished because the player who organized the group wanted to move on to AD&D after the first session, and none of the rest of us knew how to DM. :smallannoyed:

Cyrion
2011-02-17, 10:34 AM
My first time was after getting the basic box for Christmas when I was about nine. I'd heard about D&D when I was in a youth community theater production of the Hobbit, and a couple of the kids we gave a ride home to one day were talking about "that nasty gelatinous cube you threw at me on level two."

My dad DM-ed for me. It was both of our very first experiences with the game. I had a party of about 6 characters. Entering the dungeon, there was a thirty-foot-long corridor that T-d, going off straight west or northeast. Up the northeast corridor was a giant lizard (2+1 HD as I recall) that completely devoured the party because I had a string of awful to hit rolls and did perhaps 5 points of damage to it.

I've been hooked ever since.

huyche
2011-02-17, 10:39 AM
Memories of the first experience with DND are rather fuzzy, as it had happened ~10 years ago, but from what I can recall, I've been playing an ADND game as paladin of some sort.
He'd received a lot of shinies recently and was on his way to the temple to make a donation, however I as a player knew next to nothing of the specifics, how much he should donate. So the GM tricked me into parting with like 90% of the gold, cause the paladin was rather dull.
At least it all went into the temple's coffers and the character even received some great feast in his name :)

Choco
2011-02-17, 10:54 AM
First game session, first boss fight.

Our party (all lvl 1):
Human Sorcerer (me)
Half-Orc Fighter
Elf Fighter (archer)
Half-Elf Cleric
Halfling Rogue

Our opponent was a lvl 4 Fighter. Yes, us 5 lvl 1's vs a lvl 4 Fighter, though we had no clue what level he was at the time (the DM admitted it after the fight). This is also after we just had 2 fights, I was out of lvl 1 spells (luckily the cleric still had one), and some of us still had HP damage.

We get the jump on him, and me, the Rogue, and the Elf Fighter all get a shot off using our bows/crossbows before he closes the distance and takes the Half-Orc Fighter (who had positioned himself in a way that the enemy could only charge him) down to the negatives in 1 hit.

That was quite the wake-up call. At this point, the DM is also realizing he KINDA overdid it.

Long story short, I desperately looked through my character sheet to see what I could do, and was QUITE thankful that I picked Daze as one of my cantrips. Luckily for me, the enemy's will save was not all that great and I was able to keep him stun-locked for all but 1 round. The fight lasted about 4-ish more rounds and we won, without DM fiat and without any casualties, though we were in no condition to keep adventuring...

So yeah, my first real D&D experience I got to save the day with a cantrip.

Comet
2011-02-17, 11:14 AM
I was the DM, with the old Red Box D&D.

It was, at first, a solo game. We didn't have the proper dice, so we mostly freeformed. This lead to the player killing a red dragon that had been terrorising a village, though his level 1 character probably wouldn't have had a chance against a dragon if we had been playing strictly by the rules. The player got a magic sword out of it, though, so it was all cool.

Then things escalated from there, we got the dice, more players joined in and the story expanded to include a world-threatening vortex of magical energy, a massive dwarven kingdom, battles on ships that sail through rock and mountains, a war between the magicians of the world and a lone warrior sworn to kill every one of them, more dragons and a handful of NPCs that dragged the full size of the party up to something in the area of seven or so heroes.

So, yeah, we used the rules wrong, I had more than one DMPC in the party and the level 1 characters gained magical items that they should never have had. But I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the most epic and fun campaigns ever.

My first experience as a player, I was playing a Thief. First thing we did, we killed a vampire, who happened to have a sword hidden away in his lair. A sword that could shoot fireballs. I named it Excalibur, because hey. We then proceeded to have adventures that included, at least, a pack of werewolves, a black dragon and a city of gnomish machinists. My Excalibur-wielding lvl 1 Thief joined said machinists, which was awesome.

So, yeah. It was quite a bit different than the games I've had more recently. We eventually moved on to 3.5 D&D and then onward to bigger, better games (my opinion only, don't look at me like that), but the Red Box really taught us how this whole roleplaying business worked. It's really well written, as an introduction, and stresses the simplicity, fastness and 'fun before everything else' mentality in a way that a lot of modern rulebooks just don't.

grimbold
2011-02-17, 11:36 AM
i remember that even though it was 2009 i was playing 1e with my friend. He was DMing the two of us as we went through a basic adventure he was a thief and i was a dwarf
just out of curiousity
does anybody remember how in first edition the dwarves make fighters obsolete?

Hyudra
2011-02-17, 11:43 AM
My first D&D game was horrible. Just no effort put in by the DM.

I'm a druid, our number also includes two fighter-types (can't remember what) and a sorcerer. Start off in a prison, someone unlocks the door. What followed was hours of "You find an empty corridor. There is a door at the far end" with the occasional right or left turn and locked/stuck door, which we would kick down. We fought a total of two dire rats on our way through this maze of corridors. I kid you not when I say the DM actually fell asleep at one point.

Cue a 'final battle' where we went up against the guy in charge of the prison. We kick down the door, see him sitting in a chair at the far end. Roll initiative, and one of our fighter types wins. He charges and offs the dungeon boss, still sitting in his chair, in round one.

Leaving the dungeon with the bad guy's +1 keen longsword and what I think was an amulet of natural health (We were level one), we proceed to the beginning of the next adventure, interrupted by the DM falling asleep again. I recognized the second adventure as the Ettin's Riddle from the WotC site, but didn't say anything as the DM didn't seem the best at improvising. To this day, I'm sure the DM had drawn out a map of the prison and when he realized it was just this huge, empty place, wasn't able/willing to change things up.

Not that my knowing the basics of how the adventure was set to go mattered. We run into the ettin, titular character of the adventure, who is on the far side of a river and retreating into the trees. Our sorcerer uses ray of fatigue or somesuch on the ettin, and despite having good numbers, despite the DM rolling low on the save (in plain sight), the DM fudged with "It doesn't work". The sorcerer blows a gasket and the game effectively ends. Funny thing because even with the ray, it would have been easy enough for the Ettin to just continue fleeing. No fudging necessary. The sorcerer said as much in his rant.

It was such a bad session (I think four or five hours total, with four combats total, including the 'combat' with the ettin) that I told myself "I can totally do better than that" and started DMing.

Gnome Alone
2011-02-17, 11:43 AM
My first experience was last summer, my brother invited me along to his 4e group, who were running a prewritten adventure involving a skill-challenge race through city streets. Being completely new to D&D and having no timeor idea how to roll up a character, the DM let me pick from the list of NPC competitors in the race. Thus did I play "Two-Teeth," Half-Orc Barbarian. Came in second, too. And of course I did the cliche Orc thing of speaking about myself in the third person and being an idiot.

During the afterparty, everyone's drinks were drugged and we woke up as prisoners in the back of a sealed covered wagon or something. We escape and get our bearings in some mysterious forest.

My brother looks around and says, "Wait, why is Two-Teeth with us?"

I said, "Two-Teef wondering same thing."

RTGoodman
2011-02-17, 11:44 AM
I kinda had two "first experiences" at D&D.

The first, I was in middle school RIGHT when 3rd Edition (not 3.5) came out. I was talking to a casual acquaintance about video games or something during homeroom, and he asked if I'd ever played D&D. His dad apparently played with him, and they were just learning the new system. I went over and we looking through the Monster Manual (it was the only book he had on him at his mom's house) and we were both instantly enthralled. Unfortunately, he ended up moving before we could ever play.

Flash forward a few years. I was a junior in high school sometime around the end of 2003, and some friends of mine had picked up 3.5 earlier in the year. They invited me and a couple others over to play. My first character for that session was a human wizard (Eldagor) who cast magic missile and killed a couple of goblins, and then spent the rest of the time shooting his crossbow. His one claim to fame was a natural 20 on a Climb check to hide up in a tree and snipe people.

The next session we settled in for a "long" campaign (it only lasted like 5 sessions) where I played my first REAL character, Krugg. Your stereotypical half-orc barbarian, he was really fun to play. In the course of the adventure he saved a chicken from the town chicken thief (yeah, Level 1 sucks :smalltongue:), and from then on had a pet chicken named (you guessed it) Chicken. (See my avatar for details.)

Kol Korran
2011-02-17, 11:57 AM
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

i was at my 4th grade, and have just learned the basic rules of 1st ed D&D. i searched around, and a classmate played D&D! "can i join?", "sure, we need a rogue", "ok, i'll play one!"

the week after i came to the DM's place an hour early, to make my character. the party were level 3 already! boy, are they powerful! i was really excited! making a rogue those days was a bit more complicated (nothing like 3.5 or 4 e) then other characters because you had to assign percentages to rogue talents and so on... anyway, i learned the party was going through the second level of a dungeon, looking for the golden fleece (our DM loved mythology). my character was from a previous party who failed, and i was the only survivor.

after joining the party, we searched the room i was in. we found a secret door! oh my! how exciting! we entered the room, and were attacked by some strange creatures the DM called "gargoyles"... um, ok, how do they look like? to this day i don't know if he didn't know either or if i got the image wrong, but i imagined grey stone like worms with horns, and snakey hands ending with claws. :smallbiggrin:

as the fight began, i completley fumbled- "what dice? what do i add? this means i missed, right?" while the battle rages. finally i hit! the party congratulates me- a backstab! yay! "um, you need a magic weapon, they are immune to normal ones" says the DM. "um... really?" after the others finished the gargoyles, the DM let us see the map of the dungeon again (we had it) and drew the hidden room. "where to now?" he said, and i was giddy with the possbilites of exploration.

it was a fun dungeon, all i can remember, died twice through it (amazing how many stranded adventurers, the sole survivors of another party remain! :smalltongue:) but i was mostly drawn to the role ofa DM. so 3 months later, that's what i did...

had my breaks, but am still doing this. and i still LOVE gargoyles (though i made quite a few changes... :smallwink:)

slaydemons
2011-02-17, 12:41 PM
I think I feel slightly better by my first dungeon but I still feel like I chose something else instead of samurai

Jay R
2011-02-17, 12:50 PM
In my first serious game, my paladin betrayed and killed the entire Lawful party.

The year was 1975 or 1976, and the game was Original D&D, so Lawful means Good. I had rolled up a paladin, and joined a party of slightly more experienced characters (2nd-4th levels).

I had rolled so low on money that my paladin couldn't afford a sword, and was wielding a mace.

After a few encounters, we defeated some monsters who had knocked us down to minimal hit points. My paladin had one point, nobody had more than 3, and we were out of healing spells. In OD&D, if you reach zero points, you are dead.

The treasure included a sword, which my paladin asked for, just to have a sword. The party agreed, so I picked it up. The DM knew it was a chaotic sword, which meant that touching it would do at least two points and kill the character. The sword had a high ego, so he decided that it changed my alignment, rather than killing me. He passed me a note. "You are now Chaotic, and holding a chaotic Flaming Sword." I asked if I could ask questions in another room, so we went out and I said, "OK, I don't need to ask anything, I just wanted them to think I did." I told him my plan, we waited a couple more minutes, and walked back into the game.

"OK, everyone, listen up; this is important. This is a Holy Sword, and it's given me a quest. I have to go on the quest alone. Go back the way we came, in single file, and no matter what you hear, never turn around."

They agreed, and started to head back. The DM said, "You hear the sound of a sword blow behind you, and a body falling to the ground."

They all know the myth of Orpheus. "We keep on going, and don't look back."

"One round later, you hear the sound of a sword blow behind you, and a body falling to the ground."

"We keep on going, and don't look back."

Lather, rinse repeat. After five iterations, the DM told them that they were all dead.

After the game, I told the other players I'd try to recover their bodies, but tell me what magic items you have, so I can keep them safe. So I got a complete inventory of the items I had just looted.

Pentachoron
2011-02-17, 12:55 PM
Back in the day (Early to Mid 90s) when I was somewhere between 7-9 I played a one shot AD&D session in which my character wound up running, screaming, crying, and dying at the hands of some vicious creatures.

Then when I started high school 3.X came out and I started playing that with my friends, I was almost always the DM. It should be noted though, that I played D&D based video games for much of my life without realizing that I was playing them. I remember one on a really early model of Apple (not quite as old as the Apple II but it definitely didn't have a HDD) that was just called AD&D that was really fun.

slaydemons
2011-02-17, 12:56 PM
good times AD&D seems to be what most people started out playing

Arillius
2011-02-17, 01:51 PM
My first DnD experience was an evil campaign with a group of very experienced players. They were nice, they showed me the ropes mechanically, but they told me to make my own rp decisions. It didn't turn out well. Still int eh campaign, its not that much further into the story and I'm on my 4th character and I suddenly realize I'm not doing much wrong, half the party is just a bunch of jerks. Thankfully the other half is real fun to play with or I'd have probably given up on DnD.

Kerrin
2011-02-17, 03:25 PM
I was introduced to D&D by a boy I was babysitting. He had the original Red Box way back when.

I made up a "knight in shining armor", bought up some meager bits of gear, and sallied forth. The first encounter was with a gold dragon which killed my character in one shot. It was probably the shortest adventuring career ever.

Later after my charge was in bed sleeping I read through the entire Red Box contents and got hooked on role playing games! :smallsmile:

slaydemons
2011-02-17, 11:14 PM
you got stomped still better then death by vermin