How did you begin playing roleplaying games?

[Drakeburn]

I'm quite curious to how we get started in roleplaying games.

Well, here's my story:

It was a probably around a decade ago, that me and some friends were going to go camping (or sleep in a cabin for a weekend to be exact).

Anyways, one of the guys started this freeform roleplaying game that we really got into. From what I can remember, each of us had five minute turns to do as much as possible in that amount of time. Now what really bugged me that it was ok for one of the players (a father of one of my good friends who were both in the car), to kill himself and give his son five extra minutes for his turn, which was really unfair to have one person with a ten minute turn.
Further into the game, I managed to befriend two bear cubs, gain some mystic armor, and manage to get a dragon on my side as well.
I can't remember how the "overpowered" player (the guy with the ten minute turn) managed to gain my dragon's loyalty, but he did.
In our epic battle, with me on my valiant steed, with my lance ready (I can't remember how that happened either). And on the other side, the "overpowered" player with two dragons (including my ex-pet) on his side.
His dragons breathed their fire on me, but since I was wearing mystic armor, I ended up sitting on a saddle, completely naked.
In this situation, I should've ran. But the inner flame to take down this clown and bring balance to the roleplaying game burned brightly in my heart, so I ran towards him, and got incinerated.

I believe this was my main motivation for trying to create my own roleplaying games, which sort of annoyed the other guys.

Fast forward before my nineteenth birthday. I've been hearing about Dungeons and Dragons, did some research on it (and my mother didn't do her research for some strange reason). A couple days before my birthday, my mother and I went out to find D&D 4E (because I heard it was easier to learn). First, we looked at our local video game store (my mother's idea, not mine). Then we finally came upon one of the game stores (there are probably 3 or 4 near where I live). And we just bought the 3 books (Phb, DMG MM), the game mat for Dark Sun, and two sets of dice.

But I never got to use it for real. Because........

1) Everyone was gone on the same week because it was Spring Break

2) My mother believes roleplaying games lead kids to drop out of school, become addicted to alcohol, and move low as to sell drugs and steal to gain money.

3) Education. Of course. :smallsigh:


So, how did you get started in roleplaying games?

[factotum]

Got introduced to D&D in 1980 or thereabouts by my older brother, who was anxious to show off this new fad! Haven't really played much since I was at University, though.

[Brother Oni]

Saw a book with a dragon on the cover at the local library when I was about 8, so I borrowed it.

It turned out to be a paperback copy of the D&D red box rulebook.

Been playing on and off ever since with minor forays into Shadowrun, L5R and WoD. Haven't played since university though, much like Factotum.

[Avilan the Grey]

I got the Swedish RPG "Drakar och Demoner" for Christmas when I was.. 13. So 27 years ago. Back then RPGs were so new in Sweden that there were no "nerd stigma" with them, so basically all my friends wanted to play. :smallsmile:

We were quite a large group of 4-6 people who played at least 3 times a week for the next 3-4 years before people started splitting up to start going to different schools and such... :smallfrown:

[Anarion]

I played through all of Baldur's Gate when I was about 10 years old. Several times. Expanded from there.

[RdMarquis]

During college, a friend mentioned that we had an RPG club that met on Friday night. I was sticking around that weekend and, as I had nothing better to do, decided to stop by. It took just one session of D&D 4th ed for me to get well and truly hooked.

[dehro]

some 20 years ago.. I was 14 or 15. went to a summer camp in France.
one of the entertainers there put a bunch of us together and launched us into our first D&D campaign..half in French and half in English
the group was rather mixed.. a guy who was half Thai half American, 2 spanish guys, a Saudi kid and myself. I played an Elf, named Legolas, of course.

I remember we met your classic "dark figure in a tavern" who invited us to the mansion of his master.. I think it took us about an hour to decide exactly how to enter the mansion in such a way as to back out of it should it turn out to be a trap. of course it wasn't and we could just have walked in.

[Totally Guy]

My first game was at a GitP Meetup five and a half years ago.

I now know so much about it that I know not to post about it here. :smalltongue:

[Castaras]

"Cassie, you need to stop playing with those metal figures. They're not toys."
"Awww."
"If you really want to play with them I'll show you how to roll up a character."
"YAY! Daddy I want it to be a sneaky girl!"

... Or something like that. I would have been about 8 or 9 I think when I first rolled up a character in my parent's roleplaying system. Didn't play in any for a couple of years - pretty much until my little brother was old enough to be wanting to join in as well - but from then on I was reading and rereading rulebooks. Mostly the 3.0 ones, and a Drow sourcebook. Which is why I love drow a lot.


*snip*

... They're evolving. One day, they'll be providing intelligent discussion along with their links to questionable pills! :smalleek:

[Fragenstein]

T'was the late seventies, if I recollect. That'd be 4th grade for me. Not so sure about y'alls.

D&D was wildly popular and all three sets (Basic, Expert and 1st Edition Advanced), were all commonly available. My mother was looking for a substantial Christmas gift for myself and my brother (older by 1.5 years). She wanted to get us the books, but we had a track record of ignoring rules for games.

And let's be honest. That's all there is to D&D and there are a LOT of them.

We managed to convince her that this was not the same thing as Monopoly or Mouse Trap. This time, we'd learn to play it right.

So that year we were granted Basic and Expert box sets, some expansion material and all of the current (at the time), AD&D books. We learned the rules quickly, memorized most of the important pages in no time and had fun for years.

I still have most of that. The only book I can think of that's missing is my old Player's Handbook, and that only snuck off with my last move less than ten years ago. I still have hopes that it's in a box in my house somewhere, laying dusty and only briefly forgotten.

[mistformsquirrl]

Okay so for me, this one started when I was maybe... 12? It basically started with a couple friends of mine who had this game called Traveler. I barely remember playing it, except that I had a laser rifle that was apparently way too powerful; and that made the DM throw a fit.

Anyhoo we moved on to Call of Cthulu briefly, then Shadowrun. Shadowrun is where I cut my teeth roleplaying - I have a LOT of fond memories of that system, even if my 'roleplaying' at the time was immensely questionable.*

Anyway D&D came into my life aroune oh... 15 or 16. I grew up in one of 'those' households where I'd been taught D&D would eat my soul (quite literally!), so I had to be coaxed very gently to actually give it a try.

Despite having a really bad DM for my first couple years playing... I frankly fell in love with it and have played ever since.

*I was always ALWAYS a ninja elf. And usually I carried a light machinegun with me. Don't ask me why I thought a ninja needed a light machinegun...

[TheEmerged]

I sometimes have trouble placing the timing of events in my childhood, but I believe the year is 1980. It's toward the end of the schoolyear and I'm in the library with some of the other students that have already finished our work for the year. So the teachers are essentially giving us the last few days off to read, watch movies, etc.

One of my classmates (Brian I-don't-remember-how-to-spell-that-last-name)brings in some books and weird-looking dice in these two boxes (one blue, one pink). Naturally, being a kid, I was more interested in the weird-looking dice :smallbiggrin: He hasn't read the rulebooks yet, so we each grabbed one and started reading.

We ended up rolling characters without the foggiest idea what we were doing. I distinctly remember going, "Why would I want to be a thief when I can be a fighter/magic-user/thief?" So yes, I will admit to my powergaming roots :smallfrown:

I played and enjoyed it for a few months until the anti-D&D fervor went through town. Then a friend and I decided that if we couldn't play D&D, we'd make our OWN games... and that's pretty much how I game until I discovered computers and the Bard's Tales/Wasteland/etc. As part of this I was introduced to the Battletech world.

This is when I have another of those incidents where I'm not sure exactly when it happened. I know I was in college so it has to be late 80's / early 90's. I'm in a mall bookstore looking for Battletech books when I see the back cover of a gaming book that catches my attention. It had a picture of characters from nearly every gaming genre posing in a single picture, and the promise that the same system could run them all. I was vaguely aware of something called GURPS but this was named the HERO System...

...and that pretty much covers my gaming up until one of the guys in the gaming group brings this little card game he discovered and we agree to try it out instead of the expected adventure. Several years and entirely too much money later most of the gaming group had kids and we stopped playing M:TG just in time to get into EverQuest.

In the time between EQ and WoW is when we got back into pencil-and-paper gaming (including the second-longest campaign we ran, using the Alternity rules). We messed around with 3rd edition but things really came back into play when 4th edition D&D came out. This time, though, the kids of the original crew where joining us at the table.

[valadil]

Middle school. Between 5th and 6th grades, the three elementary schools in our town funneled kids into middle school. I'd had a few friends in elementary, but they were diluted when the class size was 3 times larger. During lunch period I drifted from table to table, failing to make friends. That is until I hit the geek table. They were playing some homebrew RPG. Instead of glaring at me they invited me to join. The GM's brother had run MERP for him, so we were playing something vaguely derivative of that. I'm still friends with some of those guys and I'm almost thirty.

[Morbis Meh]

Almost been 5 years... I blame it all on my fiancee for sucking me into the game, now out of my group of friends I am the first to get called up for optimization, don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing :smalleek: As for the actual story surrounding it well a gentleman never goes into certain details.

First game was pretty good, DM loved the game but his lady was one of those disinterested players only there because her man was running the game. Frankly the entire game deteriorated because of the feud between my fiancee and this particular lady... and she has hated druids ever since despite them being a very powerful class, even made an island in a game she ran where any and every druid was mysteriously pulled to and never seen again.

[Gnomish Wanderer]

"Cassie, you need to stop playing with those metal figures. They're not toys."
"Awww."
"If you really want to play with them I'll show you how to roll up a character."
"YAY! Daddy I want it to be a sneaky girl!"

... Or something like that. I would have been about 8 or 9 I think when I first rolled up a character in my parent's roleplaying system. Didn't play in any for a couple of years - pretty much until my little brother was old enough to be wanting to join in as well - but from then on I was reading and rereading rulebooks. Mostly the 3.0 ones, and a Drow sourcebook. Which is why I love drow a lot.
Nice, high fives to second gen gamers! *high fives*

According to my parents, they both tried D&D in the early 80's when they were kids and it was a big new thing. My mom never liked it, but my dad's love of storytelling led itself naturally for a lifelong love of the game. While he was in the military he spent his free time going to gamenight with friends playing Shadowrun 2e (at least that's the only system I knew that he played). I think I was around 7 or 8 at the time. When he brought the books home and decided to run a 'family' game of Shadowrun, I was hooked through and through. Haven't looked back since.

[KuReshtin]

My first foray into role playing started somewhere around when the Swedish Drakar & Demoner was released and the Black box was on the shelves, which must have been around 1985.
A couple of classmates were playing it and were talking about it in school between classes, and I thought it sounded fun and wanted to try.

Unfortunately, I wasn't one of the cool kids, so they didn't let me join them, but I got my own box, and started reading up on the rules and started playing with a few friends. mainly experimenting with rolling up new characters, and not actually gettign a whole lot of actual play time with those characters.

We also liked creating our own maps of the worlds where the characters were supposed to roam, and the countries had innovative names such as Hades (The Dark Mountains), Helios (The island of the sun) and Pegasa.

As we went off to separate schools after 9th grade, though, we stopped playing and I didn't really play any RPGs until I found out that one of the guys I shared a house with after I'd moved to Scotland played, and he invited me along to his group. That got the ball rolling again, and I have been playing pretty regularly since then.

[Thattaman]

About three and a half years ago, I was looking through my local games shop (probably admiring the board games.) I saw the writing Dungeons and Dragons on a book and it fired up a memory of OOTS and immediately I wanted to play a game that used the system that Rich Burlew jokes about. I tried playing a game and unfortunately that was when I realised. 4th edition sucks. I stopped for about six months, then I saw Pathfinder books in the same shop. I flicked through it and it was nothing like 4e. I went home and researched Pathfinder and found out that it is a lot more like 3.5e, OOTS's system. I bought the core rule book and read it. The system seemed a lot better than 4e, so I started doing PbP. Since then I've bought loads of Pathfinder books and think that it's probably the best system out there.

[Ravens_cry]

Well, I used to hang around Fear the Boot forum a lot.
I asked what was the best way to get into this role playing business, and they recommended checking out local gaming and hobby stores.
Strictly speaking, the first time I played a role playing games with rules was briefly taking part in a Skies of Glass game as a Play By Post on those forums.
So I did, to the only place in town. The person behind the counter said they were trying out Fourth Edition D&D that Sunday. I was aware of D&D because I used to take out 3.X books from the library to peruse and use the pictures as inspiration and guides for my own fantasy artwork. So I dropped by, and while Fourth Edition didn't take, I still play role playing games to this day.

[sktarq]

My seventh birthday so 1988....I had a very loud (later reather annoying) friend who had played DnD once said it was cool. Sounded like a good time so we started playing right there and then.....no dice, no books...used pick a number instead of dice (close to the "target #" got you a hit) Played for hours under the oak trees out behind my favorite pizza place. Kept playing the next day on the way to the air show. And over the next couple weeks the four of us each picked up books.... or internet printouts (Yea Prodigy account!) about the game started to build up over the next year or so. . . . and slowly started bringing our game more in line with the "cannon" game. An experience I credit with still having a tendincy to play fast and loose with the rules in favor of drama and speed. Without many (read any) setting books to start we all became worldbuilders-especially that first DM and I. later forming the basis of our friendship.

[factotum]

Since then I've bought loads of Pathfinder books and think that it's probably the best system out there.

The best out of the two you've tried, you mean? :smallwink:

[killer_monk]

I first remember my dad telling me about his various adventures in D&D when he was in the navy in the 80's. I remember him telling me all about his characters like Robert O'hare Christling Kessinger, or R.O.C.K the 270+lvl undead fighter! He would always spin tales of all his various characters and I just listened, soaking it up.

After my parents got divorced when I was 10 he stopped telling his stories, he wasn't the same man after that. But after about 6 and a half years he finally brought home the Forgotten Realms campaign book. I just sat and stared for hours. And kept looking at his dice. After many hours of contemplation I requested to have him run a game for me and a friend. We started out without a class and eventually went to a book store and bought some books. We played for weeks before I had finally familiarized myself with every bit of material I could get my hands on.

Now I DM my group and my father has even joined in with a character! He's slowly becoming his cheery self again and I'd like to think D&D had a little part to play. I've been playing for about a year and a half or maybe two, but I love what I do and I find that other players of D&D to be calm cool and collected. We're polite and kind, even when we do play evil paladins or necromancers! I'd like to think that we're a shining example of humanity, and it's all thanks to a man named Gary...

[Jay R]

I was in the high school chess club. Occasionally some players would bring in war games, and I was totally uninterested. Why play a game with that many complicated rules when we haven't even completely solved chess yet?

Off to college, and still played chess when possible. My junior year, my roommate was a war gamer, and I had no interest. But then he brought in a copy of Stellar Conquest, from Metagaming. This was different. This was science fiction. I played it; I loved it.

Then he brought home a small white box with three slim pamphlets and some funny dice in the shapes of the platonic solids. Wow! The platonic solids as dice - that's cool!

Then eventually I read through the game in the white box, which was called Dungeons and Dragons. We played it once. It was mostly unplayable, since the fighting system was really for massed battles with miniatures. But it was still fascinating. My first fighter died to skeletons.

Within a week or two the first supplement (Greyhawk) came out, providing an actual system intended for individual combat. The game was complete, and I was hooked.

[Lex-Kat]

Christmas 1982 or `83, my brother (5 years older) and sister (8 years older) got the blue and the red box sets, respectively. That was the first time I'd ever heard of the game. I was about 6, maybe 7? :smallconfused: Not really sure.

My sister read over the rules a bit, and tried to run a story for my brother and I. But my brother was quickly bored, and the game ended. The two boxes were never heard from... again! :smalleek: Well, until I found them much much later.

Fast forward to 1995. I'm in the Navy, on an aircraft carrier. My new friend asks me if I'd like to play a game called Rifts. And that is where my first real gaming experience begins. I now own a lot of Rifts books, along with many other game settings just waiting for a new RL gaming group to play with them.

[Gizladlo]

Freshman year of college with D&D 3.5e. Group couldn't go a session without killing a PC, and we couldn't go twenty-four hours ingame without something dying.

What great, mean-spirited times.

[Asta Kask]

About three and a half years ago, I was looking through my local games shop (probably admiring the board games.) I saw the writing Dungeons and Dragons on a book and it fired up a memory of OOTS and immediately I wanted to play a game that used the system that Rich Burlew jokes about. I tried playing a game and unfortunately that was when I realised. 4th edition sucks. I stopped for about six months, then I saw Pathfinder books in the same shop. I flicked through it and it was nothing like 4e. I went home and researched Pathfinder and found out that it is a lot more like 3.5e, OOTS's system. I bought the core rule book and read it. The system seemed a lot better than 4e, so I started doing PbP. Since then I've bought loads of Pathfinder books and think that it's probably the best system out there.

You may want to try something else. GURPS Lite is free for download at SJG.

[Thajocoth]

Friends at work invited me. First game was DC Heroes. Next one was D&D 4e, as it was being released.

[Thattaman]

The best out of the two you've tried, you mean? :smallwink:


You may want to try something else. GURPS Lite is free for download at SJG.

I might have sounded a bit opinionated, what I meant was that I now play Pathfinder and thoroughly enjoy it, while I didn't enjoy D&D 4e. I think I'm fine with just Pathfinder for the moment.

[Remmirath]

I started playing 1st edition AD&D with my mom's group when I was six. I'd been watching them with interest for some time before that, and always enjoyed her tales of older campaigns (she's been playing and DMing since the 70s), but it took a while for me to get over my shyness about people who were not in my family and ask to play in that game. My first character was a cleric who I had wanted to be a paladin, but her stats weren't good enough. I named her Nedla, because that's what I had misread part of the introduction to Duke Nukem II as the first time I played it (it's actually Neo LA, but in my defense, the Os were fairly blocky). I was the only new player at the time, and the group was going through the Keep on the Borderlands.

I've been playing since then, though the systems have changed somewhat. I started playing MERP four years later, which was also around the time I started DMing (I was, of course, not very good at it at first) and then three years after that we switched from 1st edition to 3rd edition D&D. 3rd edition and MERP are still what I mostly play, though I like occasionally trying other systems, and I still run 1st edition games whenever I get the chance.

[Tebryn]

I was taken to a gaming shop by my father when I was around seven because he felt I needed a hobby. Got into Warhammer because I liked to paint the Skaven figures and quickly took to AD&D. Now I do youtube lets plays and haven't looked back. Some of the best memories of my life.

[Ceric]

Starting some very long time ago (seriously, I don't remember, probably in the single-digit ages) my family and this other family went on camping trips together. It's hard to play most games or read books past about 6pm when you only have electric handheld lanterns, but the older brother of the other family had a binder of the entire DnD 3.5 player's handbook that he'd painstakingly photocopied out from a library book. He'd bring character sheets for us to fill out, but beyond that first couple of hours we never really used them. If we came to a locked door, he'd just ask whoever was playing a rogue to roll a d6 and if you got above, say, 3, you'd successfully pick the lock. Or maybe a d20 and 15. Or maybe we didn't have dice with us at the moment and just point at someone's cup randomly instead of rolling a die. We still told stories and had fun. And I've still never played DnD with real numbers :smalltongue:

[Lord Raziere]

I began, in a very strange way.

I began roleplaying on a freeform forum, that unfortunately was populated by…not the most reasonable of people to roleplay with. I began roleplaying in the midst of chaos, arguments and crazily high levels of power, with very little rules to keep such power in check- this was not fun for me. on the contrary, I got screwed over by all the smarter, more well-thought out people there who meticulously detailed their powers strengths and limitations then used such things to exploit them to defeat me numerous times, to the point where many of my characters, died multiple times. even when I adapted to the environment and tried to be just as detailed…it wasn't enough.

this did not make me dislike freeform, it only made me hate the abuse of it, and the highly-technical powergaming and rules-lawyering arguments that ensued because of it when these people clashed. it was not until later that I would even acquire rpgs that use actual mathematical rules, and even then, many of them feel too limited to me, because despite it all, I still do my best when I have no system to hold me down.

it is why, after looking at both 3.5 and 4e, that I disliked them both for not being flexible enough and gone searching for an RPG that was.

this was only six years ago by my reckoning, I was thirteen at the time. when I finally left that bad freeform place… about three years had passed and it was beginning to die down anyways. I was annoying, stupid and still immature back then….sigh….

[North_Ranger]

One or two test-games as a kid with a class mate who had RuneQuest. We were kids, and we basically just messed around. Later, before they moved out, a decent little campaign with his little brother, playing elven adventurers in Elhendi (a Finnish gaming system/campaign setting that was set in an elf-dominated world). This was in the mid-90s.

Then a long dry spell with only storytelling roleplaying online, until I moved to study at Turku University in 2002. There I found The Dungeon, the university's own role-playing/strategy-gaming society.

I've not stopped gaming since.

[Scarlet Knight]

I was in college, and had just devoured "The Lord of The Rings". I was ripe, and a friend of mine mentioned this game , D&D. So we went to the book store, & bought a Blue Box .

Next year, new campus, & I needed to find a new group, when I over heard a guy in class talking about D&D and got myself invited to play at his apartment.

Friday night comes, & when I go to find his place, I see a girl at the bus stop & ask directions. "Oh, you must be going to the game. Right up those stairs" she says.

Hmmm. This must be some game. I go up the stairs, & when I go into the apartment, the girl is there. "Weren't you just at the bus stop?" I stutter.
"No, it must have been my twin sister; but don't worry, she'll be playing next week with us!"

@v *Note to self: send story to Phil Foglio....*

[North_Ranger]

I was in college, and had just devoured "The Lord of The Rings". I was ripe, and a friend of mine mentioned this game , D&D. So we went to the book store, & bought a Blue Box .

Next year, new campus, & I needed to find a new group, when I over heard a guy in class talking about D&D and got myself invited to play at his apartment.

Friday night comes, & when I go to find his place, I see a girl at the bus stop & ask directions. "Oh, you must be going to the game. Right up those stairs" she says.

Hmmm. This must be some game. I go up the stairs, & when I go into the apartment, the girl is there. "Weren't you just at the bus stop?" I stutter.
"No, it must have been my twin sister; but don't worry, she'll be playing next week with us!"

I'm liking where this story is heading... I hope :smallbiggrin:

[Velaryon]

I'd been into Magic: the Gathering since I was 12 or 13, and video game RPGs for even longer than that, so I was definitely the type to enjoy pen-and-paper roleplaying games all along.

My first actual exposure was when I bought an InQuest magazine sometime in high school (probably in the 1997-98 period) for their price guides and card spoiler lists. It came with an insert that was a very simplified version of Vampire: the Masquerade. I thought vampires were cool, so I read through that and it sounded fun. I enlisted a friend and we made some characters, and our characters pretty much just walked around beating up thugs and being badasses. It seemed fun but we didn't have a very good idea what we were going. I bought the actual book for it not too long afterward, but somehow I never got a group going.

Then maybe a week or two after I started college, I discovered that a long-lost friend of mine from after-school day care in my grade school days was living across the hall. He had just gotten invited to try D&D for the first time, so I asked the DM if I could join too. I was hooked instantly, even though my character was terrible and I didn't have that firm a grasp of what I was doing. I've been playing now for going on 12 years, and while I go through periods of not wanting to play much, I don't see myself ever stopping completely.

[warty goblin]

The first pen and paper RPG I played was a horrible system I wrote myself at like twelve or thirteen. It was called Scavenger, and involved two players taking turns moving their characters around big overland maps until the other player told them they'd met a monster, said monster being selected by the other player from a terrain appropriate list. Combat was not a complex affair. The system consisted of rolling a six sided dice, adding a number based on the weapon and the character's strength and subtracting the enemy's armor with any positive difference as damage. The only decisions you had available were fight or run. Because many of the monstrosities that populated my monster lists were bedecked in massive amounts of armor, running was often a very wise course of action.

After the first player's turn had ended, the second moved their token until the first player decided it was time for steel-clad ratmen to try and disembowel them. Sicking the worst denizens of the lists on your buddy and watching them get chewed apart was great fun, tempered only by the certain knowledge that they would all too soon wreak revenge upon you. Curiously I had no rules for player cooperation, it was just you versus whatever your buddy felt like doing to you.

The nominal goal was to make it alive to one spot or another on the map, and there kill some particularly unfair monster. The real goal was to survive the map long enough to reach the shops that sold weapons with bonuses high enough to actually harm the tougher enemies.

[Deathkeeper]

I was interested for a while, but no one I knew played. Cut to my senior year of high school not too long ago, and somehow one of my very good friends got into a several month long PF campaign without me ever finding out. Halfway through the year, their party got wiped by necromancers. Their GM, one of our teachers, decided he would be too busy to start a new game with a son due in the spring, so my friend decided to take the GM seat, although interest by other people caused the younger players to make their own group, leaving my friend with only three people, so I volunteered (I don't remember if he actually asked me to play). I pulled in another friend of mine, one girl joined because the other group was full, and the former GM threw another of his students in to replace one who dropped out in the planning stage. So we had our first party of six! (Later we'd kill off the Cleric for being a huge jerk and replace him with another friend of mine, and the Monk ended up getting herself killed, so it ended up being a party of five, but that's less important.)
My first character(s) was just pulled from a short story I once wrote. Although I intended on the master and familiar as a pair, so the wait until level 7 to actually have the Sorcerer and the Pocket Dragon was a grueling one. One which I weathered!

[Lupus753]

My brother bought the three core books of Dungeons and Dragon 4e soon after it came out. I looked through them, hard an immensely hard time figuring out all the rules of tabletop games, had my brother explain them, and got very interested. I played once at a local hobby store, but I don't think I have the schedule for regular sessions. Maybe if I had friends who played tabletop rpgs...

[AddZable]

Hooo-boy the memories. In seventh grade (I was twelve at the time) I had my first role playing experience. I had recently gotten rather obsessed with dragons and ogres and orcs from various books. Even back then, I was reading rather thick novels that made my teachers mouths gape. So.. Yeah, bit of a nerd. I was frustrated though, as I did not have much money and was unable to buy all the books from the series' that I liked. SO I started writing my own endings. One fateful afternoon, one of our schools only darkly skinned kids (I live in South Africa, and my area was still slightly.. Racist, back then) was sitting next to me, reading over my shoulder. Reading my little story. We'd never spoken before then, but he was very outgoing and wanted to make my characters do stuff. I wasn't really happy with MY characters being controlled by someone else, so I allowed my new friend to create a character of his own design, and jump in to influence my story.

Within a week we had actually written a d6 based system so that neither of us could cheat. (Though it was basically rtd with modifiers.. So we pretty much did XD). The other guys, wondering why the nerdy goth kid and the even more nerdy, but not at all goth "darkie" (as they called him) were hanging out. Instead of being teased and bullied for it, as you might expect, we ended up getting about.. 4? I think? Other players to join in on our game. So yeah.. My first experience with roleplaying was dm'ing in worlds like lord of the rings. It was hilarious how out of hand things got.

Also.. Now that I think on it.. The ones who DIDN'T play probably didn't bully us because of the spikes I wore on my wrists and my tendancy to death stare anyone who even hinted that they didn't like tolkien. Heh.. I'm so glad I'm not that young anymore.

[Bladehunter217]

I started about eight years ago, a buddy of mine broke out some 3.5 books and told me to pick my favorite class. I made a Halfling rogue with some minor kleptomaniac tendencies, and I've been playing 3.5 as much as I could since. Now I've got a Halfling swashbuckler with some homicidal issues and too many explosives to be a good thing.

[Morph Bark]

I bought a DnD book because it had dragons in it.

Then I saw a friend had a basic box that we played a few times.

Because it was fun, I decided to ask for the Core books for Christmas, so I'd end up knowing what the previous DnD book I had bought had to offer, because I still didn't know what all the numbers meant!

That was in 2007. Shortly after I got my books they announced 4E, and I decided not to bother with it right after getting 3.5 books.

[Maxios]

My father, who played lots of D&D in the 80s and had a bunch of stuff for 2e, taught me how to play 2e when I was like..nine.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I picked up some 4e books at the local game shop about three years ago. Then I got Pathfinder, then 3.5, I played 3.5 a bit, I played 4e tiny bit, and now I play nothing, although I have Exalted 2e and FATE 3e, and am really hoping to play FATE at some point (or maybe GURPS, if the guy who DMs is willing to play that but won't play FATE. And is also willing to lend me his GURPS books, because there's no way I'm buying them).

[KillianHawkeye]

Let's see.....

There was Pendragon (similar to AD&D, played once), then Final Fantasy II on SNES, then AD&D 2nd Edition (bought the Player's Guide, played once or twice), then the HeroQuest boardgame (played a TON), more video game RPGs, Vampire the Masquerade/Werewolf the Apocalypse (own most of the books but never really played that much), and I finally really got into D&D again when I went to college and I've been playing various pen & paper games ever since.

[Winter_Wolf]

If you count games like cowboys & Indians, cops & robbers, or whatever spy vs. spy game, then about the age of four-five. Ultimate freeform RP, no rules 'cept as us kids made them up (new rules every time!), and somehow less rules lawyering and arguing of rules than with actual RPG rulesets! :smalltongue:

If we're only counting table-top RPG systems, then I was about, ehm, 8? Sure why not that sounds about right I guess. My very own money to buy my very own copy of the Red Box with Elmore's cover art. And a mishmash of AD&D 1st edition and 2nd edition stuff. Self taught and taught that mish-mash to my cousin.

[SiuiS]

Ah, memories.

When I was a little filly and the sun... No wait, that's a song. Okay. Starting over.


My parents had said "dungeons and dragons" often enough that I knew it existed. I knew it was bad. I knew is should stay away from it. At age six, I happened to ask my mother what it was, whee I could find it and why I Gould avoid it. I got mixed signals; te exact words are gone, but a definite sense of guilt. Thinking back, I think she use to play. Heh.

Then one day, I was in a used book store as I was wont to do, and I saw a monster manual (AD&D 1e). I aw fascinated. Here was a D&D, right in public! I read it right there on the floor, careful to be on the lookout for black magic and spells and anything that woul try and convince me to do anything immoral, because I was a good wee filly. I found nothing, and thought it curious. So I borrowed the book, and showed my mom. No objections. In fact, she was thrilled I was reading, so they rigged a situation were I sat at a bookstore as ad hoc daycare while she worked.

I also found some choose your own adventure D&D books. Between them and the monster manual, I crafted my own mental image of the D&D world, where monsters could strike for 3-12 damage and had an AC of 6 and thac0 of 4 and I had no idea what it meant but goodness it was authortative! And SiuiS arose, first as a fighting man who became a horse lord, then a paladin as I later learned such things to be. I was walking around outside, six, seven years old making swings an whooshing noises as talkin to myself and basically having a grand ol' ball. Made it all the way up to wizard, after a few more choose your owns.

And then my local arcade got in D&D, shadows over Mystara. And I played that a bit but never got very far. It cemented my inner form as a magic user, though, quite heartily. My magic missiles are, to this day, overlapping green energy orbs with trails.

And then I moved with my da. I was ten at this point, and had spent the last three years as everything from a knight to a knave, demon and angel, priest and necromancer, dragon and power ranger, kaiju and alien, predator, space marine and space colonist, voodoo demondragon to life-saving saint and world ending monstrosity. It was a good run but I was winding down into mundanity. School, school work and a different environment forced my head out of the clouds, my feet to the ground. Until I met an obscure cousin from a branch of the family I'd never seen before, who went camping with us and happened to ask, out of the blue if we wants to play Dungeons and Dragona to pass the time.

I had a fangirl spasm on the spot. Real, honest D&D?! Yes please!

Si we played our Orr structured game with rules, using a Gerry rigged system of d4+d6 somehow. And then weeks later, it turns out cousin needed a place in town to stay while he went to school. Complete with his stack of D&D books, and the ever-glorious "DMs only" section. I still think the Necromancer's Handbook is my favorite AD&D book ever.

And there, at the age of eleven, five years after first foray into my mental realms, I played a role-playing game legitimately, with like, rules and dice and a DM and everything. Rolled up a half-elf ranger beast rider kit with a h4x white tiger mount and fire lizard familiar and only half of any given rule set in action.


If you count games like cowboys & Indians, cops & robbers, or whatever spy vs. spy game, then about the age of four-five. Ultimate freeform RP, no rules 'cept as us kids made them up (new rules every time!), and somehow less rules lawyering and arguing of rules than with actual RPG rulesets! :smalltongue:

you had less rules lawyering?! I'm jealous.

[Krazzman]

Don't ask me why I thought a ninja needed a light machinegun...

Why wouldn't a ninja need a light machinegun?

On a more serious note it was around the age of 6 I got a Super Nintendo. Had some fun with games, Played Dark Waters with a friend and later played The Legend of Zelda with it. (The one that was remade for GBA as Four Swords, A Link to the Past if I remember correctly). And some Final Fantasy that I couldn't understand because of English (was in 2nd Grade then and well started learning english in 5th grade so...). With this friend I did quite many things together. Most of the time playing Final Fantasy 7 or 8, later 10 and 10-2, as well as playing them myself, later Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 and I started with Ragnarok Online as my first MMO. Roleplay? Dunno what that is. At least for this time.
Around 7th grade in "junior high/secondary school" I started listening to metal and somewhere later we were playing Yu-Gi-Oh the card game. Dropped it after a few in 9th or 10th grade and never looked back. Got bored with it.
Switching to the A-levels on another school and now in 11th grade I was most of the time bored or playing counter strike:source/ragnarok online. Somehow on the way to school for the first few days I met someone. This person was the son of a customer of the solarium my parents used to own. And although being 6 years older going to the school next door to mine (which shared the chemistry room it had with my school). Because both schools were schools for A-Levels and the schooling needed for apprenticeships. We began to talk and after adding him on ICQ we talked a few times. Nearly half a year later he asked If I wanted to join their group to play a roleplaying game called Shadowrun.
I said jeah, why not. And we started... I was some pregenerated pistolero adept/detective guy and we had fun. Next weekend I helped him renovating his room (his carpet was a real pain because of a sickness he had) and afterwards we started playing something called Dungeons and Dragons. Directly into a campaign. We started on level 6, advanced to level 12 and I was most of the time clueless... totally non-optimized. after this campaign broke down we basically played only one shots. With some breaks I still play although only me and my fiancée are from the starting group that played on the second weekend. In the meantime a lot of things happened... some of them I even vented on this very forum.

[joca4christ]

It's hard to really pinpoint when it started for me. Used to play cowboys and indians a lot as a kid. Does that count?

Later on, can't remember if it was when I was a teenager or when I was a young adult, I had a friend who was into the Werewolf game. I can remember one day where he tried to walk me through a solo adventure, and I thought it was kind of dumb. I think we only tried it once.

Then, in my mid-20s, I was living with a couple who played Vampire:The Masquerade. I went through the process of developing a pretty cool character, but never actually got around to playing it. The husband, however, did introduce me to the joys of Diablo and ADOM.

For awhile afterwards, I played EQ and Diablo 2, but never any table-top RPGs.

Fast forward to my 30s. Was working part-time at a Pizza Hut. One of my co-workers was into D&D. We got to talking about how it was different from video games because the only thing that really limited what you could do was your imagination, and of course, the roll of the dice. We got together a couple of other guys, I rolled up a cleric, and fell in love.

Downside is, I've never really had a steady group. After two sessions of gaming with the guy who introduced me, he moved away. I tried my hand at DMing (stupid cause I was brand new) and we ran a few sessions that way. We brought in an experienced player, who we coaxed into DMing.

Turns out, he was one of those "killer" DMs who say the game as us vs. him. We got thru one adventure, and started the Shackled City campaign, got thru the 1st chapter of that, and he quit. I tried my hand at running the game, and it quickly devolved for lack of commitment in the other players.

Have tried to start gaming sessions on and off over the last few years, but none of them have gelled. Wanna play so bad, but it doesn't look like it's in the cards. Instead, I read my books, and online resources, and go "Ah gee, it'd be cool to play this..."

And that's my sad story.. :)

[Printer's Devil]

I saw these guys playing D&D during lunch in the school cafeteria, ca. 1977, and was flabbergasted and enthralled. That Christmas, I got the dragon box D&D set, and off I went. D&D only lasted until I ran across SPI's DragonQuest (I was a wargamer geek before I became a RPG geek), which blew me away in ways D&D couldn't touch, and from there there were bouts of Wizard/Melee, V&V, Champions, RuneQuest, Star Trek, Toon...

[Tremayne7]

OMG! :smallbiggrin:

It was 1986 or 1987 and my good friend ran a mashed up version of D&D (we used the AD&D rules, combat from "Bushido" and stuff from "Arcanium"). We had to take a break for "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as we played on Sundays and we usually ordered dinner then. Our group was so big we took up the dinning room table and two card tables tacked on the end. All of us were in the SCA and most of us were the officers of our Barony (our G.O.D. [Games Operations Director] was the Baron. :smallwink:

I met my husband through that group as he ran a games store and had a great place in the back room to run a game. We then over the next several years played Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, HEROS Unlimited, Champions, and White Wolf's World of Darkness. We've had many GM's, many characters, and too many adventures to always remember. :smallsmile:

Currently I play online in a persistent world in NWN.

I've always felt that roleplayers are actors who have fun making up their own characters instead of playing characters written by someone else.

[Harugami]

The group needed a third player (they told me all I had to do was sit there and say heal) and I was the only person in the student lounge at that time so they lured me in with the promise of snack cakes and friendship

[Hiro Protagonest]

All of us were in the SCA and most of us were the officers of our Barony (our G.O.D. [Games Operations Director] was the Baron. :smallwink:

Baronies have Barons?

I dunno about this stuff, because I live in a Shire, and when we look for leadership, we basically ask one of two guys who've been around the longest (our heavy combat and fencing marshal, Lord Antol, and our archery marshal, Lord... Siegric? *googles* Sigeric). I think our seneschal does most of the real work.

Might also be kingdom differences.

[Tremayne7]

Baronies have Barons?

I dunno about this stuff, because I live in a Shire, and when we look for leadership, we basically ask one of two guys who've been around the longest (our heavy combat and fencing marshal, Lord Antol, and our archery marshal, Lord... Siegric? *googles* Sigeric). I think our seneschal does most of the real work.

Might also be kingdom differences.

It depends on the total number of paying members. I'm in Atlantia.

[Gitman00]

I was in my early twenties when my roommates booted me out of the house on short notice, and I moved in with a couple friends from work. It just so happened that these friends were starting a D&D 3.5 game the same weekend I moved in, and they invited me to join. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it turned out to be awesome. We played that game for... 3 years, I think? We never did finish the campaign, and we all moved out of state eventually. We still keep in touch and talk about starting it up again for old times' sake.

Incidentally, the GM was also the one who introduced me to OOTS.

[Minitroll]

I was in 4th grade and both my parents were avid gamers- my dad a DM for two campaigns, and my mom in one. So, with my first birthday I didn't invite everyone in my class too, I asked dad if we could play D&D. So me and four of my 4th grade friends got together and played a 3.5 game based on a dungeon from dungeon magazine (It should be noted my first character was a bard named Elan, as I had just gotten book 1 of OOTS) and so my love began.
Now, in 11th grade, I'm DMing 2 campaigns, playing in one, and I'm President of the SUPER HAPPY AWESOME NERDS THAT SIT AROUND ROLLING DICE AND FLIPPING CARDS club at school, where we play magic and D&D. Our official name is Dungeons & Dragons club, but I prefer my name for it. When we voted, it was a one vote victory for the simple club name over the epic one.
So close...

[Yora]

Baldur's Gate.

It was saturday and I was incredibly bored, so I went through my old gaming magazines looking for anything that got a really good review, and so I read the Baldur's Gate test that I never had bothered reading before. It sounded good, so I got on my bike for the 20 minute ride into town, and that game turned out to be really, really, REALLY good! And I knew it was based on some kind of dice game and called a "must have" for fans of that game, so after playing a couple of rpgs on my computer, I got myself the 3rd Edition rulebooks when they came out.

Though then looking back, it wasn't really such an entirely new thing. When I was a wee little kid we sometimes played The Sorcerer's Cave with our parents, which is kind of a tabletop dungeon-crawler, where you start with one guy and explore new caces, where often a monster would sit that you would either have to fight, or could get to join your party. And in the end, the winner was who made it back to the exit with the most loot. That must have been when I was 7 or so.

[Domino Quartz]

I began playing a sci-fi fantasy RPG with my brother as the GM when I was 13 years old. There were no pens, paper, or dice, so it was pretty much interactive storytelling. The name of my character in that RPG is where my username on this forum comes from.

[scurv]

1995 when I was at NATTC Millington tn. I was introduced to it by a friend i met at the ten by ten and we use to have some chaotic sessions

[Hamsandwich]

Back when it was not $60 a box I used to collect and paint a lot of skubhammer, so I was a regular at my local LFGS. I knew about RPGS I'd simply never played any. I asked the owner if he has a box that was not on the shelves and he went in the back to go get it, while I continued to browse. I picked up and flipped through a copy of Shadowrun and here we are.

[Scowling Dragon]

Well I wen't to computer camp for the summer, to learn robotic programming (Didn't like it) and found a bunch of guys making a podcast about D&D.

Played in a session. The rest was history. That was......Holy crap 5 years ago.

[Feytalist]

Probably Baldur's Gate as well.

Then some guy started talking about the actual pen and paper game, I asked if I could join, and that was that. Was still AD&D, too.

[Tsriel]

11 years ago, I was 19 and living on the streets and had been for awhile. Met this one guy at a local homeless shelter who was originally from out of town but had to be there to deal with some legal matter and didn't have anywhere else to go. Over the course of conversing, we discovered to be both consumate gamers. He was really excited about 3rd Ed D&D (which had just released) and couldn't wait to try it. I was amazed that games existed beyond typical board and video game formats (I grew up really sheltered...) and was eager to try it.

We ended up having a pretty solid group for a few months. It certainly was a welcomed distraction for all the hardships I was dealing with at the time. I finally got a job shortly after the group dissolved, but the memories and experiences got me hooked. I would go as far as to say that D&D helped me piece my life back together. :smallsmile:

[Negativethac0]

The really short version would be that around 20 years ago, my librarian-mother came home and handed me "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" saying; 'Read this, you'll love it!'

At that time I dismissed it and put it away because it 'looked odd'. I remember going on holiday later, for about a week, and I brought it along for fun. I ended up completing it three times or something, and then it kind of went on from there.
I remember how, after completing every Fighting Fantasy book, gathered my friends and we played through 'The Riddling Reaver'. It's such a strange adventure, but it will always hold a special place in my heart.

I also remember when we later got our hands on the AD&D books and none of us spoke English well enough to understand them, so we sort of just made a lot of it up and had a lot of help from our English teacher in school.

And, of course, Baldur's Gate *edit* and Eye of the Beholder

[Grindle]

When I was in ninth grade, my friend, whose whole family played D&D, started a 3.5 game with people from our high school. 4e had come out, but he didn't want to buy all the new books.