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Blueiji
2012-05-15, 10:17 PM
My first time playing a role-playing game was second edition D&D in fourth grade. It was an after school program lead by this ancient, wise, D&D grognard with the longest, whitest, most food-stained beard I have seen in my entire life.

There were 22 kids in the class (most of us 8-10 years old), and the DM (the previously mentioned bearded guy) had every one of us play a Lawful Good Fighter/Wizard/Thief Elf.

Inspired to play our own campaigns, my friends and I bought the 3.5 handbooks, we played a rule-less zany campaign were we were all Ancient Wyrm Dragons.

- - -

What was your first role-playing game experience? Was it D&D, or maybe a video game of some sort? Who was the DM? Who was your first character?

Looking foward to your answers. :smallbiggrin:

Shadowknight12
2012-05-15, 10:32 PM
I can't remember.

So I'll go with 3.5e, playing a half-celestial abjurer/rogue heading for daggerspell master. He was SO useless.

Morithias
2012-05-15, 10:40 PM
It was 10th or 11th grade, first campaign. Dread Necromancer with 18 charisma (i got very lucky).

He was a character based off another character from a popular series, he sparkled and was every girl's dream guy.

Click the spoiler for the picture of the guy I based him off of.

http://i426.photobucket.com/albums/pp346/Vic6889/OHS/TamakiSuohSparkly-1.png

Yeah I played a dread necromancer based off of Tamaki Suoh from Ouran High School host club, he spent 90% of the campaign either killing with his "magic touch" or flirting with the party druid.

Othesemo
2012-05-15, 10:48 PM
D&D 3.0 with my older brothers. A long time ago.

Rallicus
2012-05-15, 10:57 PM
Found a bunch of old AD&D 2e books in my friend's garage as a kid, about 14 years ago probably. I was 9 or 10.

Up until that time we thought it was a board game. When we read the manuals we couldn't really understand it.

The books were my friend's older brother's, but he'd since moved out, gotten married and had kids if I remember correctly. When he'd come to visit my friend would ask him a bunch of questions about DnD. I was fortunate enough to sit in and listen to him talk one time, and it was amazing. The way he ran his campaigns seemed like a ton of fun.

Well, eventually I gathered up enough knowledge to figure out how to make a character and my friend learned how to DM. But we were still pretty oblivious to it all, because my friend decided to run a 4-man module his brother had left behind.

... But I was the only player.

After spending hours making my character properly, I started the dungeon. It was described to me, and of course, the first thing I did was tear open a strange looking sack of flour in the corner. Turns out it wasn't flour, but poison, and my character died.

That was my first experience with DnD. 3e came a bit later but I only dabbled in it slightly. Didn't come back until finding a bunch of 3.5e books in my friend's closet last year. Learned the adjusted system, and now here I am, currently DMing a campaign and being a player in another.

DrBurr
2012-05-15, 11:02 PM
My first real RPG game was with a friend of my older brother who played 3rd edition, at that point I had already been free form roleplaying for a year and wanted to learn D&D seeing as I bought the Players handbook on a whim. This was before I knew about editions so everything from that session didn't apply when I started my group.

navar100
2012-05-15, 11:09 PM
High school club. I don't know if it was Basic D&D or 1st Edition. I was given a 7th level Lawful Good Healer. I had no idea what I was doing. I played along but didn't really feel involved. Suddenly the DM took an interest that my character actually existed. When he referenced some magic item I didn't have, he realized he was speaking to the wrong person and I was ignored again.

When the opportunity arrived to play a different game at the club I took it. It was a different game, but I thought it played relatively the same. Thus I was badly introduced to Paranoia. I don't remember if the club stopped meeting or I just stopped going, but eventually I did just stop going.

It would be my junior year in college that I would be reintroduced to RPG. It was 2E D&D. I was reluctant because of my bad experience in high school, but my friends really wanted to play it, so I gave it a try. I still didn't know what I was doing, but I was having a better time and learned the game.

Ozreth
2012-05-16, 12:51 AM
High school club. I don't know if it was Basic D&D or 1st Edition. I was given a 7th level Lawful Good Healer. I had no idea what I was doing. I played along but didn't really feel involved. Suddenly the DM took an interest that my character actually existed. When he referenced some magic item I didn't have, he realized he was speaking to the wrong person and I was ignored again.

When the opportunity arrived to play a different game at the club I took it. It was a different game, but I thought it played relatively the same. Thus I was badly introduced to Paranoia. I don't remember if the club stopped meeting or I just stopped going, but eventually I did just stop going.

It would be my junior year in college that I would be reintroduced to RPG. It was 2E D&D. I was reluctant because of my bad experience in high school, but my friends really wanted to play it, so I gave it a try. I still didn't know what I was doing, but I was having a better time and learned the game.

And are you still playing 2e?

For me it was 3.5 in 2003 but I've since come to prefer 2e. I still run a lot of 3rd edition though.

Kol Korran
2012-05-16, 01:26 AM
my first game was in 1st editio (the red box) where i joined as a rogue (all rogue were human then) survivor of a party to join the existing party in mid dungeon. i think i was at 4th grade then. the Dm was 2-3 years above us, and at that time seemed like the most cool and knowledgeable guy out there.that dungeon was brutal as hell. my rogue died soon after to be replaced by a halfling who got one leg paralyzed and one eye blind (but damn did i love him!).

the adventure ended in protecting the city from possible marauding dragons from a great flying horde of them above. one of the best sessions i ever had. only 2 characters survived, and just barely.

Ninjadeadbeard
2012-05-16, 01:36 AM
Just after 3.0 came out, my dad brought home one of those kits that had a couple adventures built in so a 1-3rd level party could learn how to play. Looking back I realize I sucked at it, but we had a blast. I remember liking Jordzan (the stock Human Cleric if I recall) and Regdar (ditto human fighter). It was just me playing as a small party, but I didn't know anyone else at the time who played.

I remember going into a dungeon and teaming up with a rouge I found trying to loot the place before I came through. I got to like the character, and we teamed up to beat down the local displacer beast holding onto some jewel. On the way up, I failed my sneak and woke up an ogre who started beating the party into pulp. The rogue (coulda sworn the rulebook called him a Thief) ended up taking the hit for the team and dying on us.

I asked my dad if my characters (specifically Jordzan) could give him a proper burial (instead of the usual loot & ditch). That was probably the first time I ever acted in character, and I don't think I noticed until later. Good game.

NikitaDarkstar
2012-05-16, 01:46 AM
Actual, proper role playing with official, published rules? Swedish Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons) rule version 1, which was a lot like AD&D but with more micro-management in the combat. Me and a bunch of other people had gotten together for the Easter week and one of the guys had brought his rule books with him and offered to run a game for anyone who wanted to try it. So I ended up with a half-elven ranger, we had a duck fighter (yes, an anthro duck was an actual race), full elf other ranger, human mage and human thief and a few others. We played for about 20 hours straight and had a very good time. Good but random.

That was 9 years ago, and I'm still hooked. But I honestly tried looser forms such as forum roleplay back in 96-97. My current screen name was actually the name of my very first RP character, but that type of RP'ing is somewhat different.

Crow
2012-05-16, 01:59 AM
Well, when I was in high school, I was dating this chick that was 10 years older than me, and she like to wear costumes when we-

Oh. I mean a heavily homebrewed (I think?) version of Rifts. Man, that was fun as hell!

Shadowknight12
2012-05-16, 02:04 AM
Well, when I was in high school, I was dating this chick that was 10 years older than me, and she like to wear costumes when we-

Well, I'm sure there's plenty of THAT kind of roleplaying combined with this other kind of roleplaying when gamers get together.

It's less "nurse and school teacher" and more "elf knight and cleric of Sune".

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-16, 02:10 AM
DnD 4e. Yup. That was my first RPG.

dsmiles
2012-05-16, 05:17 AM
So...AD&D. Yeah, I'm THAT old. I started in 1983, at the ripe old age of 7.

J.Gellert
2012-05-16, 06:09 AM
Does Hero Quest count?

If not, then Baldur's Gate, and 2nd Ed AD&D (revised).

JennTora
2012-05-16, 07:23 AM
Super mario rpg.


But the first that I consider a real role playing game is morrowind. Better than oblivion was morrowind, and with skyrim it's kind of a toss-up as one hand I think the free form character development works better than a class system in elder scrolls. But I don't think they should have eliminated attributes. Also morrowind had more factions.

My first experience with d20 involved a big ridiculous pile of conflicting sourcebooks all being used together, including that slayers d20 book. It sucked cause I was playing a sorcerer and the fact that we were using the slayers casting system made that decision stupid, and I purely picked the sorcerer class for flavor. Also it gets confusing using all the different books. Still it was fun. Also there was this one guy that just sat at the tavern drinking the whole time. And we were on a ship that had a powder in the cargo hold that explodes when water hits it. At the end he came onto the the ship and I was the only one staying on to watch him, so he tried to run down and I blinded him and he ran down anyway, so he crashed into a thing and knocked chemicals into the powder and the whole freakin dock got blown to all hell.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-16, 10:33 AM
I don't think video games count.

And for me, it was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, first edition - the most popular RPG system in Poland in the nineties and early oughties. The year was, I believe, 1998. I was the GM, and did as well as you'd expect from someone with such awesome roleplaying experience. Got much better over time, though.

JennTora
2012-05-16, 10:52 AM
I don't think video games count.


Then go reread the original post. Particularly the part at the end that asks if it was a video game of some sort.

Partysan
2012-05-16, 10:52 AM
First pen&paper for me was The Dark Eye (DSA), second or third edition (I believe third) in around 2000 (It's somewhat more well known here in Germany). First I played regularly was Shadowrun 3.01 about 2-3 years later. Many followed.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-16, 11:00 AM
Then go reread the original post. Particularly the part at the end that asks if it was a video game of some sort.

Oh, derp. In that case it'd start even earlier for me, because I've been playing computer RPGs for years before trying tabletop ones. Need to remember which one exactly was my first one, though.

olejars
2012-05-16, 11:07 AM
I had my first tabletop experience back in 2003. I was told nothing about the game and was handed some dice with a character sheet that might as well have been written in draconic.

They gave me some some celestial template with wings and the guy that DM'd was a douche. I never touched another tabletop rpg for 5 years and now I play every week. Funny how a group/dm make all the difference.

Any other role playing experiences with VG's I don't count because I can't immerse my self in that way.

navar100
2012-05-16, 11:44 AM
And are you still playing 2e?

For me it was 3.5 in 2003 but I've since come to prefer 2e. I still run a lot of 3rd edition though.

That was way back in Stone Age times of the late 1980's. I play 3E/Pathfinder now.

Totally Guy
2012-05-16, 04:16 PM
My first game was in the summer of 2007. It was D&D 3.5 and I played a rogue on a dungeon crawl. My character was called Decanter and the DM's younger brother played a fighter called Hermocrates. It was at the first of the up GitP meetups.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-16, 05:09 PM
Well, I'm sure there's plenty of THAT kind of roleplaying combined with this other kind of roleplaying when gamers get together.

It's less "nurse and school teacher" and more "elf knight and cleric of Sune".

I can personally attest to the existence of this. At my house, when the dice come out, the panties come off.



Anyway, if video games count, my first RPG was Chrono Trigger. I loved it, but it was the only SNES-era RPG that I played when it was new.

My first tabletop RPG though was D&D 3.5, a solo game with myself and my significant other, with him playing a 10th-level Fighter and me the DM. I set him up with something simple and (seemingly) standard: He was on a quest to slay a Red Dragon who was threatening a local city.

...It literally ended with him having sex with the dragon instead of trying to attack it. Our sessions end up that way a lot.

Rallicus
2012-05-16, 05:22 PM
...It literally ended with him having sex with the dragon instead of trying to attack it. Our sessions end up that way a lot.

I'm inclined to ask if the dragon was in natural or human form, but maybe I don't really want to know the answer.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-16, 07:02 PM
I'm inclined to ask if the dragon was in natural or human form, but maybe I don't really want to know the answer.

Actually, at the time, I didn't know that dragons regularly taking humanoid form was a thing. So... yeah. It's not the worst thing he's done though, but that's a story for another thread.

NX_Phoenix
2012-05-16, 07:31 PM
The first RPG I owned was the Last Unicorn Games' Star Trek: The Next Generation Roleplaying Game when I was a kid. I tried to run a couple games but they never panned out. I still love that system and I hold all supplements/sourcebooks to the standards of that game's sourcebooks.

Counting video games, the first RPG I played was the PC version of Knights of the Old Republic with a light side Scout 5/Jedi Sentinel 20. That was a week I never left the house except for school.

The first live pen and paper game I played in was during the second half of freshman year in college. I played a ranged Ranger in a 3.5 campaign run in my co-ed fraternity. I had the reputation for trying not to be a bother by mentioning my low HP and therefore becoming a major one. I improved quickly afterwards.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-16, 08:46 PM
I can personally attest to the existence of this. At my house, when the dice come out, the panties come off.

...It literally ended with him having sex with the dragon instead of trying to attack it. Our sessions end up that way a lot.

Ditto on both accounts. I can vouch for that as well.

Saintheart
2012-05-16, 09:17 PM
Counting book/tabletop, probably a horribly hilarious one called Fighting Fantasy - not the "Choose your own adventure" style series of books, rather the tabletop RPG system that came out of it.

If you're counting video games, Pool of Radiance on the Commodore 64. Those damn trolls in the slums...

rgrekejin
2012-05-16, 09:30 PM
My freshman year of college, my then-girlfriend roped me in to filling the cleric slot for her DnD group for a 3.5 game. My character was a male human cleric who worshiped Kratos, the newly-created God of War. His name was Alexander, and he was modeled heavily on Hellsing's Alexander Anderson, in terms of physical appearance, personality, and outlook on life.

My subsequent campaigns have all been markedly less silly and with far fewer pop-culture references. I kept the gaming group (although not the girlfriend), and have since played a woodelf warlock named Azazel, a woodelf ranger named Israfel (yes, he did have a twin, why do you ask?), a human fighter named Kaleb, and a human cleric of Boccob named Embriel.

With respect to videogames, I don't remember what my first RPG was, I've played so many of them. But whatever it was, it was a game where it made sense for me to name my protagonist "R. Daneel", as every subsequent RPG I've ever played has been subjected to that name as it's legacy.

Dumbledore lives
2012-05-16, 09:40 PM
About 6 or 7 years ago my history teacher loaned me the core rulebook to AD&D, might have been 1st or 2nd edition I don't remember which, but I know negative AC was a good thing, so definitely before 3rd. The next year we started playing an amalgamation of 3rd and 2nd edition, running through a fairly basic dungeon and it was loads of fun. I played a rogue, my friends played a wizard, cleric, and fighter, I don't really remember races. I think I was around 10 at the time, and it was amazing.

After the campaign I moved to New Zealand and kind of left off for a while which was probably for the best, though eventually I DMed a campaign here that was fairly successful and have been playing and DMing since.

Verte
2012-05-16, 09:41 PM
My very first pen-and-paper rpg was AD&D 1. I played it with my parents when I was six, I think. I only got to play it the one time, but I continued to read the books until 3.0 came out. I didn't play in a full campaign until I was fourteen - I played a half-elven wizard, which I had wanted to do since I was a little kid.

My first video rpg was Ultima VI for the SNES. I just wandered around the world with my party, stealing food out of inns while trying to figure out where the library I was supposed to visit was. I ended up in the underworld under the castle and in the weird southern region with all of the demons. I also made a panpipe out of wood and blew up doors with powdered kegs. It was an awesome game.

Geostationary
2012-05-16, 11:36 PM
Let's see... I started dabbling in tabletop rpgs in my freshmen year of college with Hero System/Champions/whatever they call it nowadays. I ended up playing an illusionist conman in a 1920's-era fantasy world. One of the highlights was where I killed a dragon with imaginary bullets while in freefall over an active volcano.

About the same time I also got involved in 4e, as some friends had bought the new version of the Red Box, and I was interested in joining them in this rpg nonsense. I ended up playing a Dragonborn Paladin for all of the three or so sessions that ensued.

After that, I moved on to other strange and bizzare systems such as CthulhuTech and Nobilis, amongst other things.

Bronk
2012-05-17, 02:12 PM
It took a while for me to warm up to tabletop RPGs... None of my immediate friends played, and DnD had a bad rep in my junior high/high school because it had been used as a scapegoat for a nasty incident the year before.

Eventually though, I went to work at a scout summer camp, where quite a few of the staff members played AD&D pretty seriously. It was like a shadow society that only appeared late at night or when the campers were out of sight. I swear it was just like Knights of the Dinner Table, where everyone was ready to game at any time. It was kind of weird at first, but I started to pick up the gist of what was going on. A castle was being stormed, and a fortress acquired. A few guys hit level nine all at the same time, and got all excited as they formed a new party... out by the docks, at night, in the real world, in a rainstorm. I also ended up filling out camper forms while they were playing their game in the dining lodge, and I got to listen in as kenders stole shiny trash and chaotic neutral barbarians went crazy and critted mice with mattocks. I should have joined in, but I had no idea how to play, I was intimidated by some of the older players, and the guy DMing was slightly nuts. Mostly the not knowing how to play though, and not wanting to break into their fun.

When I got back to school, I kept my eyes open for more roleplaying. Some of my friends kept bringing in RIFTS books and telling stories about the characters they wanted to make, but they never got around to actually playing.

That winter I was camping with the scouts again... and I had decided not to stay outside that time. I ended up seeing a couple of the younger kids, one of whom I had babysat for just the year before, playing some kind of homebrew RPG. They wanted me to play, and since it seemed pretty low key I joined in. I ended up with some kind of sword wielding fighter, and the other guy had a character based of that weird wing handed centaur alien from the cover of "A Wrinkle in Time". They helped me set up my character, explaining that the more hips I had the better. If someone hit me and I had no more hips left I would die! That seemed... self evident, for a human, but I figured it out eventually. As far as the game went, I think we suddenly appeared in a hallway, turned a corner and saw a fireplace. Since there were no other doors or windows, the winged centaur tried to fly up and out of the chimney. Whoops, the fire was lit, you have half your hips! As far as I know, the universe was exactly that large and no larger...

That was the ice breaker for me, and I went on to play various games at camp, at college and beyond. Good times all around!

Mordar
2012-05-17, 06:56 PM
D&D 3.0 with my older brothers. A long time ago.

This response alone was enough to make me reply..."D&D 3.0" and "A long time ago" are mutually exclusive in my frame of reference :smallbiggrin:

Had the red box and light blue box. Would have been...1982. Stayed in the D&D well for only a short while (perhaps 3 months?) before jumping into AD&D. The mid 80s were a wonderful heyday of gaming...Call of C'thulhu, Star Frontiers, Chill, Timemaster, and then my true favorite, Rolemaster.

Now then, you darn kids get off my lawn!

- M

SowZ
2012-05-17, 07:11 PM
3.5 core only, maybe seven years ago? Maybe six and a half? Back in high school, anyway. We went from levels one to five using standard XP rules so it took us a decent amount of time. The DM became my debate partner and then later married my sister. Go figure. I was a CN gnomish sorcerer. You all know the type.

Sergeantbrother
2012-05-18, 03:36 AM
I was 10 years old, it was 2nd edition AD&D, and the year was 1989. I played a Chaotic Neutral fighter with a two handed sword, his name was Lodin.

Kurgan
2012-05-18, 03:53 AM
For me it was 3.5 in 2003 but I've since come to prefer 2e. I still run a lot of 3rd edition though.

Pretty much my story too. Think it was 3.0 in 2002, I was 13, and some friends mentioned that another kid from school was running a dnd game at the local gaming shop. Have no idea what I played, since the games didn't last too long and the group fell apart in about a month and a half. That said, a good number of the people I met and gamed with then, I am still gaming with today.

First character I remember was in 2004, when I joined a group made up of the people I gamed with two years earlier, and rolled up a half-orc fighter or barbarian [forget which] named Scrag. All I remember is it was 3.0 dnd and he used an orc double axe.

I'm sure I played a videogame rpg or two before then, but no idea what.

Morghen
2012-05-18, 07:40 AM
I was about 8 (so somewhere around 1985) and my fundamentalist Christian cousins got me into RedBox D&D over Christmas break.

I think I bought my own RedBox with Christmas money right after that. A little while later I bought the BlueBox. At that point I was DMing for, like, nobody. I ran my 6 or 7 year old sister through a terrible rip-off of the games I'd played with my cousins.



Bargle was a ****.

aldeayeah
2012-05-18, 07:43 AM
Old MERP around 1992. I was such a wee kid.

DigoDragon
2012-05-18, 07:59 AM
First experience with RPGs was AD&D 2e back in highschool (circa 1993~94). I got into it pretty quickly and had much fun since.
Videogame-wise, I recall in late 1994 I visited my cousins and they had the original Final Fantasy 1 on NES. They didn't know how to play it, but I figured it out considering how close to D&D it was.

Good times.

willpell
2012-05-18, 12:24 PM
I started with Champions. Pity me.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great system if you would like to take a college course in character design, but it makes a lousy gateway drug.

Remmirath
2012-05-19, 10:04 AM
The first game I played was with my mom's group at the time, when I was six or so. It was 1st edition AD&D, and I played a cleric - originally meant to be a paladin, but her stats weren't nearly good enough - named Nedla. Stats-wise and all she was a pretty awful character, but I liked playing her, and she hung around for a good long time - until we finally switched from 1st edition to 3rd edition when I was thirteen.

I believe I started playing MERP when I was ten, although I'm not quite so sure of that. It was with my mom and my brother, since the rest of the original group had moved on by then. MERP's the only other system I regularly play. My first character there... I don't remember her name, but she was a hobbit scout who didn't last past the first session.

The first computer roleplaying game I played was Baldur's Gate, but that of course wasn't until it came out, so I had already been playing AD&D for several years by then.

Rallicus
2012-05-19, 11:07 AM
The first game I played was with my mom's group at the time, when I was six or so.

Man, I wish my parents were cool enough to introduce me to DnD. And AD&D at age 6? Whoah.

My dad did dabble in DnD during his time in the marines in the 80s, because there wasn't much to do on base. Said he really liked it, up until his group started taking things a little too seriously. DM kicked him out because he didn't want to buy a miniature and paint it.

When I started playing 2e with my friend for the first time, I remember my dad telling me about his time in the military, and how to watch my friend (the DM) and not let him get out of control. "Don't let him take it too seriously, and don't let him ruin the fun for you."

It was great advice that I still use to this day when dealing with crappy DMs.

So not quite as good as actually playing tabletop with family members as a kid, but at least I've got my dad to thank for good advice.

Stubbazubba
2012-05-19, 04:30 PM
My first RPG ever was Chrono Cross on the PlayStation, at least, that's the earliest one I recall playing.

My brother and I, probably 12 and 9 at the time, give or take, wanted to get into D&D, but my Dad was against it. However, he being a good sport, got us the d20 Star Wars RPG (Revised Edition) and the Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game by Decipher, Inc. the next Christmas (Y'see, it wasn't D&D; these were two settings he trusted to be family-friendly). I guess I must have been a little older than that, since that was when those movies were coming out. Probably more like 14 for me. Anyways, I DM'd for my brother, and I typically also had a character (or two) in the party. I still remember when I was going to go in and rescue a hostage being held behind a door. The dice were against me, and two crit fails later, both my characters were down in one round. That luck with dice has followed me, and remains an inside joke with my brother. At some point we picked up the Marvel Universe RPG, and that was a whole new way of looking at things, very easy to play. But we never played with anyone else. I had never heard of anyone playing it until I went to college, where I finally began playing D&D 3.5 with a group, first online, and then in different groups in person. I learned later that several people I knew in HS also played D&D, but no one ever brought it up since everyone thought no one else was into that stuff. Funny how life works sometimes.

Dr.Epic
2012-05-19, 06:58 PM
Dungeons & Dragons 3.5

Knaight
2012-05-19, 07:06 PM
My younger brother and I inadvertently reinvented freeform when bored (we shared a bedroom, both of us were practically nocturnal when we were young, lights went off when we were wide awake. It was inevitable). That would have been 1999 or so. I got into D&D in 2003, and got out of it in favor of other games in 2004.

TheThan
2012-05-19, 08:02 PM
My first experience with DnD actually had nothing to do with role-playing games at all. It has to do with comic books. I used to be fairly big into comic books. In this one comic book I had there was an add for a dungeons and dragons board game. This add had an awesome pic of this guy.


http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g42/TheThan/Dark_Sun_-_Shattered_Lands_Coverart.jpg


Naturally I thought this guy looked pretty badass, and I was interested. However I never really any other connection to role playing games. I had no idea that role-playing games existed, and I certainly didn’t know anyone who played. So yeah, I thought, “what is this cool thing called DnD”.
Anyway years go by and Lucas film releases Star Wars Episode I. In the huge excitement of the release of a new star wars movie, Wizards of the coast launched a new little RPG called “Star Wars the role-playing game”. well I though I’d buy it and try it out, this was my first roleplaying game. from there I moved on to other such games.

Grail
2012-05-20, 09:09 PM
This response alone was enough to make me reply..."D&D 3.0" and "A long time ago" are mutually exclusive in my frame of reference :smallbiggrin:

Had the red box and light blue box. Would have been...1982. Stayed in the D&D well for only a short while (perhaps 3 months?) before jumping into AD&D. The mid 80s were a wonderful heyday of gaming...Call of C'thulhu, Star Frontiers, Chill, Timemaster, and then my true favorite, Rolemaster.

Now then, you darn kids get off my lawn!

- M

Amen!!!

Let's add to that list of games from the halcyon days.

Man, Myth & Magic
Villains & Vigilantes
Gamma World 1e
Gamma World 1e mixed with AD&D 1e to play "Mutants & Magic"
Boot Hill
Boot Hill mixed with AD&D 1e to play "Sixguns & Sorcery"
MERP
RuneQuest
Traveller
Twilight 2000

Grail
2012-05-20, 09:14 PM
My first RPG experience was with the Blue Box (Expert). It was run by my cousin a 1 on 2 game (my sister was supposed to play as well, but she was too young and wasn't interested, so I ended up playing both characters).

The adventure was X1: The Isle of Dread.

I had a level 6 Chaotic* Elf with a +3 Sword.
My sister's character that I played was also a Chaotic* Elf with a +3 Bow.

* Back in the Basic version of the game, there were 3 alignments. Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic - that is all.

My cousin ran the game for me the whole day, I remember that I was so engrossed that we forgot about lunch. At the end of the day, I really liked D&D so much, that even though I didn't have the game, I wrote my own rules and ran my friends on campaigns. I was probably 9 or 10 or so at the time.

Hiro Protagonest
2012-05-20, 09:21 PM
Well, if we're counting video games, I'm not sure if I played LoZ: Windwaker or Morrowind first. I guess the former doesn't really count as a full RPG, since there's not much choice in what you do, except for how many pictures you're willing to bring to the sculpture guy, how many squares of the map you're willing to fill out, and how many of the small amount of sidequests you're willing to do. But then, I never finished the latter (never even got that far).

Zenos
2012-05-20, 10:47 PM
I don't remember when it was, but it was a fair while ago, and the roleplaying game was Fabula.

AshesOfOld
2012-05-21, 04:23 PM
I was 8 or 9 I think, when I first watched my brother play AD&D in the living room with his friends. I had no idea what it was, just that it looked kinda secret and cool, with all the candles and the DM's big screen with a dragon on it.

I did know that you couldn't be a DM without a big cardboard screen. That much was certain.

A year or so later, my brother introduced me to it (when he got his own screen), and I later joined his live- and tabletop rp club, and ended up leading it for a few years before I left town.

My first video game-rpg was Baldur's Gate, I think. Or maybe FFVII. But we only had it in German so I didn't understand a thing :smallsmile:.

Ramen&Malt Liqr
2012-05-21, 06:20 PM
First video game RPG I played was, Pools of radiance (or was it darkness?) for NES. Which almost coincided with my first PnP game, which the books said was AD&D hmm, 1st ed.? This was all 23 years and many nights at the tavern ago. The details are fuzzy.

See we house-ruled that poor box set so horribly it couldn't stand up. If a game is defined by it's rules, we weren't playing DnD. Needless to say we loved every minute of it.

The first PnP game I played that had any structure to it was Arduin, about three years later. It was DnD only a little more Tolkeinesque, and a lot more heavy on the rules. Once again, I don't remember much of Arduin, but I do remember it was a good system. I recommend it to all.

Currently I'm playing NwN1 on a strict roleplay server, and I hate to say it, I look at dice and books with a tinge of loathing now.

Hybban
2012-05-22, 10:07 AM
First pen&paper for me was The Dark Eye (DSA), second or third edition (I believe third) in around 2000 (It's somewhat more well known here in Germany).
Same for me, except it was the 1st french Edition (corresponding to the second German one IIRC) in 6th grade. My parents thought she had bought me another choose-your-own-adventure book. And in a way they did, it was a solo module. But I told them they had to buy the rules to go with that book, because there were not part of the book. They were a little relunctant, but I was a good kid, so I got my first box of l'Oeil Noir.

And the idea of being able to run those games for my friends was mind bogling. I think it took me a year before trying to recruit other gamebook players.

Sajach
2012-05-22, 03:02 PM
A half elf ranger in third edition.

DrewID
2012-05-22, 04:34 PM
Original D&D in 1978 in high-school. My first player was probably a dwarf fighter, but Eric was a bit of a killer DM, and characters didn't last very long, so I'm not certain. I went through a lot of dwarf fighters and human fighters and human thieves and human clerics, the rare human druids, and the one human assassin, with one shining moment when I rolled good enough stats (3d6, in order, take 'em as they fall) to run a human ranger. That was in the first 9 months. Like I said, a bit of a killer DM.

DrewID

Empedocles
2012-05-22, 04:40 PM
Incredibly low optimization, less-than-core 3.5.

We had the following classes available: Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Paladin, Ranger, and Wizard. No bards, druids, monks, sorcerers, or barbarians.

No evil characters, and humans only (although I feel like we had a dwarf, randomly...).

I was a human rogue! This was when I was 8. I had loads of fun (and played a paladin shortly after that).

Lemmy
2012-05-24, 06:54 AM
I guess the veyr first would be Final Fantasy 5 for the SNES.

But my 1st P&P RPG was AD&D 2nd Ed. I was 10. I found the core books in my big brother's room when I was looking for comics.

I loved the idea of a boundless game, and in 3 months I managed to convince my cousin and a few friends to play. My friend's older brother decided to DM for us. I was a ranger, my very first and very favorite class.

3 years later, D&D 3.0 hit the stores and I've been hooked ever since.

Winterborne
2012-05-24, 10:07 AM
I began playing when I was six. A friend of mine and I were hanging out at the bowling alley, waiting for our parents to finish bowling with their league. Tired of rifling the arcade games for lost quarters, we happened upon a pair of older kids (a whopping eight years old) who had this game called Dungeons & Dragons. They invited us to play with them. Of course we had no idea what we were doing, and I specifically remember that, when faced with a black pudding, we declared "We'll eat it!" But the experience must have left an impression, because I quickly set my mind to saving up the cash necessary to buy myself a D&D book of my own. The year was 1980, and the book in question was the 1st Ed. AD&D Monster Manual.

After that, it was all over for me. Now my fulltime business is taking that wonderful old tabletop RPG experience, and reworking it for Web-based gaming. So it's fair to say that bowling alley experience changed my life.

incandescent
2012-05-24, 11:32 AM
In my first TTRPG, I tried to play a six foot tall dwarf strong hero in D20 modern because I didn't want to be short (this was my first exposure to many fantasy tropes) but the DM cut me down to four feet max. I wanted to become a werewolf as soon as we saw werewolf like things in the campaign (they were actually gnolls).

Tengu_temp
2012-05-24, 01:21 PM
I already talked about my first tabletop RPG (WFRP 1e in 1998). My first RPG videogame, on the other hand, was Dungeon Master 2, in 1996 if I recall correctly. I played some vaguely RPG-like games on the Amiga CD32 (ha, does anyone even remember what that is anymore?) before, like Dragonstone or Heimdall 2, but I don't think those games count.

If board game with RPG elements count, though, then I played Talisman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talisman_%28board_game%29) for the first time in 1991 or 1992. Man, do I have precious memories with that game.

Balain
2012-05-25, 01:05 PM
Well the first rpg I played was the red box D&D. A neighbors cousin was in town, I was over at the neighbors visiting and was introduced to it. I was about 10. I think I made a fighter. That was like 20 years ago though. First video game rpg was I think Ultima 4. I had seen Ultima 3 at a friends, but never really played it.

jaybird
2012-05-25, 01:52 PM
Pathfinder. I was having dinner with a friend of mine in the caf when he said a friend of his had invited him to a Pathfinder game, and I asked him what Pathfinder was. He replied "pretty much D&D" and next thing you know, I had grabbed him by the shoulders and was shaking him while begging him to bring me along :smallbiggrin:

TechnoScrabble
2012-05-25, 03:06 PM
My first role playing experience was when I found my dad's old AD&D books in the attic and taught myself to DM so that my friends could play with me.

Doug Lampert
2012-05-25, 03:11 PM
So...AD&D. Yeah, I'm THAT old. I started in 1983, at the ripe old age of 7.

Infant.

Back in 1975 or so when I started we didn't need no "A" in front of D&D, it was just D&D because there was only one. It's possible I may have started in 1974, but I was certainly playing by the end of 1975.

DougL

Alaris
2012-05-25, 03:17 PM
In 2005, I was roped into a new game that friend of my friend was going to start. It all started because my friend wanted to play D&D (He had read about it, but never got to play), and aformentioned "friend of friend" was a DM who was about to quit. He was convinced to run the game... and notably, it has continued to THIS YEAR. Granted, it's on a temporary break, but it has continued for several years.

My first session, was playing a Half-Elf Cleric apparently, working for the Elves to "wipe out all humans." So, when we ran into the human 'adventuring' party, I promptly, abandoned my quest, and surrendered. The rest of the PCs were killed, with me even pointing out the direction of where one of them ran.

Notably, it did NOT help that the Dwarf of the party referred to my character as "Emergency Rations."

Regardless, the campaign CONTINUED fro that point (honestly I thought it would be over, and the other players would be angry, but they were fine), with a new adventuring party created in the Human Nation, now that I had defected.

I'm playing a new character now (well, new-old), but it's still the same campaign world, and the DM is quite amazing. Continuity is an awesome thing.

russdm
2012-05-26, 10:56 PM
For me it was AD&D 2nd Edition SSL Game: Dark Sun Shattered Lands

Jay R
2012-05-29, 10:40 AM
What was your first role-playing game experience? Was it D&D, or maybe a video game of some sort? Who was the DM? Who was your first character?

Yes, it was D&D. Not AD&D, not D&D with a number - just D&D.

My college roommate walked into the room with a white box containing three books, and my life changed forever. I played an utterly forgettable fighter for one session.

Because one week later, we had the first expansion, a book called Greyhawk, which added thieves, paladins, half-elves, and a slew of monsters and treasures. I played a paladin called Darkstar, who was turned chaotic (which meant evil then) that game, and slew the rest of the lawful party.

Video games? Not a chance. The only video games then were Pong and Breakout. (And on the entire school campus, there was exactly one computer, which had exactly two text games - Star Trek and Hammurabi.)

Analytica
2012-05-29, 11:31 AM
Actual, proper role playing with official, published rules? Swedish Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons) rule version 1, which was a lot like AD&D but with more micro-management in the combat. Me and a bunch of other people had gotten together for the Easter week and one of the guys had brought his rule books with him and offered to run a game for anyone who wanted to try it. So I ended up with a half-elven ranger, we had a duck fighter (yes, an anthro duck was an actual race), full elf other ranger, human mage and human thief and a few others. We played for about 20 hours straight and had a very good time. Good but random.

That was 9 years ago, and I'm still hooked. But I honestly tried looser forms such as forum roleplay back in 96-97. My current screen name was actually the name of my very first RP character, but that type of RP'ing is somewhat different.

I started with that same game, but the third edition, run by my big sister back in 1992 or so. Given that you say this was nine years ago, that does mean you were playing a fairly vintage first game, as such things go. :smallbiggrin:

Starscream
2012-05-29, 11:46 AM
I was 10 and I had some birthday money, so I went to KB Toys at the mall to splurge.

I got a couple of things and had about $10 left. I was trying to do the mental arithmetic required to figure out if I could get two Ninja Turtles for that, when I saw a box that looked like this:
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSga4wbF-MyM1z5e5AIVp5mic8Gi8JVfzCR0Yu7j6xkH56qIevzSQ

It cost exactly $10 and was a D&D 2nd Edition Basic starter set (the one with Zanzer Tem, if any of you recall it). And I had absolutely no clue what any of that meant. The box gave no indication of what sort of "toy" it actually was. It kinda seemed like a board game, but looked way too small (this was before some genius had invented those game boards that fold into squares, so board game boxes were long and rectangular). And it was sealed in plastic, so I couldn't open it to look inside. The box also said it included a "Dungeon Master Screen". A screen? Is it a computer game? What the hell is this thing?!

I did recall there being a cartoon called Dungeons & Dragons that I had seen. Any connection to that? None of the characters appeared on the box, and the name seemed generic enough that it could be a coincidence.

My fate was sealed. I was buying the thing. the money would be worth it just to not spend the rest of my life wondering.

I tore into it as soon as I got to the car, but the contents only deepened the mystery. There was a book that looked more like a school assignment than board game rules (which half the time you could fit on the lid of the box). There was a "board", but it was printed on paper. There was a cardboard thing with charts on it, the aforementioned "screen". There were plastic figures that looked like board game pieces, but also some ones printed on cardboard that you could fold up. And there were dice.

And such dice! I'd never seen a die that wasn't six sided before, and here we had 4s, 6s, 8s, 10s, 12s, and a 20! A 20 sided die! I'd never even heard of such a thing. If the box had just said "there is a freaking die with 20 sides in this box", I would have been sold instantly. They were all different colors, too. Clearly whatever this was, it was awesome.

I was now completely determined to figure this thing out, and devoured the book in an afternoon. The rest is history.

Malachei
2012-06-04, 09:47 AM
D&D Expert Set, Castle Amber (Château d'Amberville). More than 25 years ago. Incredible experience.

Dreamteller
2012-06-04, 11:46 AM
For me it was a first edition of Warhammer. I was probably ten or eleven, which makes it almost 20 years ago :smalleek:. Me and my brothers played a lot of fantasy themed tabletops and then we've heard about those RPG games where you could do eeeeverything. I borrowed the system from a friend, and each of us quickly read different part of the rules and then told it to the rest. It resulted in pretty patched-up idea of what RPGs are all about. I remember first sessions were like

"You're standing on a field. There's a town up north, a forest to the east and mountains ..."
It was quite primitive, but nevertheless very exciting.

obryn
2012-06-04, 12:15 PM
Basic D&D, the three-hole-punch one with the sorceress on the cover.

Some family friends visited for a week or a weekend, and they wanted to play, so my brother, the DM's brother, and I all played D&D together using the caves from Keep on the Borderlands. (So this Next playtest was a bit nostalgic.) I had a Wizard. We played that day, and I wanted to play again the next day so we ran a solo adventure. My wizard hit second level; I think the DM took it easy on me.

When they left, the DM gave me the red book, the adventure, and a handful of dice (the nearly-spherical d20 of which, I still have to this day) because he was going to get the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books instead.

I was 7, I think. I don't remember much of how we played back then, but I was the DM and my neighbor made a Fighter named Smart. My brother had a Magic-User named Zeron. I think I got the Expert and Companion sets, and I want to say a few modules.

A year or two later, he'd stopped playing, so I convinced my dad to buy the AD&D books off of him. We mixed & matched the two rule-sets freely, like probably 90% of everyone in those days. The inconsistencies never bothered us.

-O

Siegel
2012-06-04, 01:07 PM
I have two completly new players and there first system is Mouse Guard. It's a really good starting system because it forces you to play your mouse.

(And someone on this forum said these mice are often more human than DnD humans (or in other generic systems))

My first game was DSA/TDE a (crapy) german system. The first system i really played (sorry, GMed) was DnD4 and Dresden Files.

Dr. Yes
2012-06-04, 01:18 PM
If you count computer games, my first RPG was original Diablo. I don't, though, because there was no actual roleplay involved---just duping impossible items and dungeon crawling.

My first actual RPG was Rolemaster FRP, where a friend of mine was DMing his first campaign. He helped me roll up an arcanist (kind of like a D&D wizard, but with a pretty hefty chance of blowing yourself up), which I proceeded to use in the most blasty, ineffective way possible. There was some encounter with undead T-Rexes I guess; I don't remember much, because we only played like 2 sessions of that campaign. After that the friend's dad, a killer DM who encouraged horrific powergaming (which I was absolutely guilty of), ran a few games for the group as it evolved over the years. That group finally fell apart when most of us went off to college, but about two years ago another friend told me about a 4E group her coworker's husband was running. I've been gaming with them since, and in that time we've "refined" the group, weeding out unsavories and adding people we genuinely like, while switching over to PF and d20 Modern.

kyoryu
2012-06-04, 02:53 PM
Basic Set. Don't remember the precise year, but it would have probably been somewhere around '82, putting me at 10. Give or take a year or two either way.

Aidan305
2012-06-04, 03:20 PM
D&D 3.5, the Burning Plague module. I ran the game in our half-hour lunch breaks at school. I loved the kobolds in that scenario and still run it occasionally.

My character was a 5th level wizard with a sunblade and a staff of fire. Everyone else was only 3rd level.

Drakefall
2012-06-04, 05:04 PM
My first pen and paper rpg was DnD 4th ed. I remember my poor half-elf wizard... much woe did betide him until his eventual semi-heroic death. What followed was a about three further dead characters over the course of two sessions until I brought out Zhann the Ukranian-accented, water genasi sword-and-board, fighter. He managed to stay alive until the campaign died. It was a fairly average game. Not too serious, though the plot barely got anywhere due to the masses of dead characters we seemed to produce out of some woeful combination of player ineptitude and the DM not having yet grasped the art of 4th ed encounter balance.

Then I starting boffer LARPing. Still do, and it still love it. First "real" character I ever roleplayed, though it took a couple events to get him there.

Next up, Fading Suns... Absolutely amazing setting. Unfortunately, being only my second p&p rpg my character was fairly mediocre. I never really jazzed with him and he had few epic moments throughout what was a brilliant campaign. Next time I'm rolling me a scraver based off of John Chriton and Bron from Game of Thrones, and there will be much awesome.

Then came NWoD - Hunter: The Vigil. Man I love the NWoD system and the Hunter fluff. This campaign saw the first character I managed to mostly put together before the first session: A lucifuge university lecturer with a doctorate in archeology who ended up being a bit of a badass. Pity that paranoia and mistrust turned the party against each other and ended up with me summoning a demon and tpking all of us... At least I didn't start it, I guess.

Ack! This has turned into a lot more than just my first rpg. At least it's still a list of firsts though.:smallredface:

Kiero
2012-06-05, 08:52 AM
Red Box D&D in 1991. I got it as a birthday present, took it to school and formed a group with my friends. I don't remember what character I played, my friend from school was the GM (we alternated between him and me).

Can't really remember much from those days, even though we played weekly for about 3 years (though we quickly moved from Red Box to Rules Cyclopedia, then rapidly to AD&D2e).