How do you remember your "first"?

[Kiero]

The "tell us about your first gaming experience" thread is a hardy perennial, there's usually one every few months. I'm always forced to admit this: I remember very little beyond generalities about my first session, and equally little about the three years of weekly sessions of Red Box, then RC, then AD&D2e I played at school. This was 1992 to 1995, so not that long ago. But none of it seems anywhere near as memorable to me as other people's early gaming is to them.

I don't really remember much beyond the odd notable anecdote from that period at school, but my memory isn't generally bad. I could tell you in detail the sorts of things that happened in our gaming over the last couple of years with my present group. I remember the names of NPCs and places without having to check. So I don't think it's a simple memory issue, though that has the benefit of recency. I just seem to lack any primacy effect of something happening first.

I don't have any notes or anything from back then, are other people going back over notes/character sheets/whatever to refresh themselves? Or was their early stuff just so good that it sticks in the mind?

[Serpentine]

I remember it being baffling, mostly.

But as for the methods by which I remember it... It was no more than 6 years ago, basically.

[RebelRogue]

Apart from Fighting Fantasy books, mine was a D&D Basic Set Dungeon Crawl (a very large dungeon with some weird stuff in it - hard to recall), where I played an elf, I think. I remember some hilarious in hindsight-moments, like my friend who DMed somehow thought "Iron Rations" was an Iron bar (we were young, and non-native english-speakers)! I recall using it as a backup weapon against one of those living statues in which weapons could get stuck.

[ryzouken]

Well, my first D&D character was a rogue. Poor guy only had one hit point. Death by rat in the first 20 minutes of gameplay makes for an entertaining and easy to remember story.

While that character died that day, it wasn't the last time he saw the light of an adventuring day. Over the years, I've revamped him over and over again, rehauling him time and time again (but always making sure he was at least partially a rogue) to conform to many rulesets and so he's attained a de facto status of "playtest character." Anytime I try a new system, the first thing I do is dust off my latest notes on good ole Arc and see how I can make him work in the new system.

Next month marks the start of a Council of Thieves game which'll be my first play experience in the Pathfinder system. Arc will be returning in his ninth reincarnation with a total continuity reset and a batch of supporting cast members (my fellow players) including a pair of his siblings (who existed in older storyline, but only got NPC roles; I never had players willing to play blood siblings, probably due to high school politics). I'm actually really excited, both to play a Pathfinder character and to see what trouble Arc can get into in the city of Westcrown.

I still have that red book D&D char sheet though. Complete with its 1 Hp.

[Rezby]

I feel so young; I only started playing when I first got to high school some years back, and I had no idea wtf was going on, but I knew about D&D from Internets, so I joined the school club, and got handed a premade character sheet - a gnome blaster wizard. With my pushing of the DM, we got to level 7 (from like 3) in about a month or two. Then I had to quit club for 5 months, but when I got back, my group had not leveled up at all. So I remember that, and I also remember getting mauled terribly by a minotaur as after we cleared out a castle stable of monsters, we were looting the room, and I opened the door to what I thought was going to be like a storage closet or something, and instead it was just a bigger locked stable - for 2 minotaurs. Me, the level 7 blaster wizard. Fun times. Didn't have a fly spell prepared then, either.

[Ryu_Bonkosi]

My first campaign (3.5) was full of very funny things that were against the rules. I was a Half-Elf Ranger, nothing really special there. My brother was a Lawful Good blue half-dragon paladin that didn't have a LA adjustment and my friend was a halfling cleric that had Death Touch as a level one cleric spell due to his misreading of the book. Almost every encounter was solved by the Half-dragon grabbing and throwing the cleric with a death touch at the nearest enemy. A good time was had by all, but the game dissolved after about three straight days of playing and the DM running out of plot. This was a good four years ago, but the reference to "Cuddles" the cleric is still used every-time the four of us play together. Ah nostalgia.

[grimbold]

my friend lent me BECMI and then i bought 3.5 phb, it is imo the best way to start BECMI to 3.5 because BECMI lays out the groundwork of d&d.
but mostly those first sessions left me confused but with 1 brilliant anectdote
we were using premade characters for BECMI, i noticed in my characters pack was a 10 foot pole, we fell into a pit, and guess how we got out :) it has become a running joke in my group,
you have a problem?
10 foot pole!

[Morph Bark]

I remember my first campaign as being more well-prepared than my second or third, as I DM'd all of them. The first session was the players exploring a cavern filled with earth and fire elementals led by a wyrmling of some kind... I actually think it might have been a brass one, just ignoring the usual alignment of it. I don't remember much of that one, moreso of the second where my players (my two best friends and two brothers, the youngest which quit the next session) faught a bunch of gnolls and zombies in a graveyard, looted a lot of dirty underwear off the zombies, as well as an unholy symbol off the Gnoll cleric leader which was cursed and made the Paladin's nose grow 2 inches in length.

It is still a touchy subject for that player.

[Snake-Aes]

Hmm... I remember being flabbergasted. I was like 12, and the first adventure put us through a swamp, and my character (a priest) had an arm bitten off by a croc, which I eventually used to beat the croc to death.

[Kiero]

People seem to be misinterpreting the question. I'm not asking you about your first experience, but why it is you're able to remember it still.

Seems so far because for some people it wasn't that long ago.

[Snake-Aes]

People seem to be misinterpreting the question. I'm not asking you about your first experience, but why it is you're able to remember it still.

Seems so far because for some people it wasn't that long ago.

I remember it because I enjoyed it so much. It was 11 years ago.

[Morph Bark]

People seem to be misinterpreting the question. I'm not asking you about your first experience, but why it is you're able to remember it still.

Seems so far because for some people it wasn't that long ago.

Probably because of the Paladin's nose.

There've been lots of sessions in the past three years, but that thing is still very much memorable.

[Shademan]

oh sure, going trought the tutorial box was all fun and games, but when we were done with that, made our own characters and I took the seat of the GM with my own adventures in mind it was horrible.
damn players did not respect my authority!

I never forget betreyal like this!

[panaikhan]

I remember my first D&D experience, because the thief got killed by the first trap, and the party used his body to 'check for traps' from then on, by tying a rope to it and lobbing it in front of them down the corridors.

[Dsurion]

Well, I remember because it was... different. I grew up used to RPG's being Final Fantasy and such, and the freedom of D&D 3.5 was staggering by comparison. Any amount of DM railroading still felt free to me.

That and the entire thing was just different. My DM wasn't the kind of guy that would throw whatever monster of appropriate CR he could find at you, he made a world where everything had a place and made sense. (Or not, as I later learned, just a REALLY good impression. Turns out he only really prepped the home village and expanded as things popped into mind - during the game.) Even if the guy selling you mundane weapons was a six-foot talking white rabbit.

I think that's what geared a lot of my memory, it was so non-traditional. He also had colorful NPC's we met over the course of the whole two days we played with this guy that were hard to forget, like the guy wandering in the marketplace who'd try to get you to sell your loot, and always return after thinking a while with "Rice?" and hold up a bag of the stuff. His sense of humor was also something I don't think I could forget. When one of our guys wouldn't shut up during a description, he played the vindictive DM and said, "Will! You find yourself suddenly carted off by the previously friendly centaur. When you come back, the group finds the clothing by your arse tattered and bloody. You don't want to talk about it."

There was also his Wabbajack-like knife, but that explains itself, really.

Again, I'm sure a lot of it was shock value, and therefore hard to forget.

[Awnetu]

My first night of D&D was memorable all right.

I was playing a Human Monk, and I was also controlling my friends Dwarven Paladin (He was late that night), and we came up on a door. Being the huge fan of Diablo and Halo that I was, I figured the best approach was to kick the door down.

*rolls dice* 1.

Paladin breaks his foot.

Cleric fixes paladins foot.

um... ok, lets try that again.

*rolls dice* 1.

Paladin breaks foot again.

[BlckDv]

I remember my first D&D experience, because the thief got killed by the first trap, and the party used his body to 'check for traps' from then on, by tying a rope to it and lobbing it in front of them down the corridors.

This is exactly why I always endorse a halfling thief/rogue. Even after they die, it isn't that hard to pick them up and chuck them ahead of you down any corridor or roll them down stairs, even with a modest Strength score.

As for my first... I DM'd for literally years before I got to play in a game. I can recall the players from my first campaign as DM, and some of their PCs, but not the story... it was very much a "this week you run into.. This Monster" game, but then I was in elementary school.

The first time I was a player I recall very clearly, as it was an amazing display of DM bias/favoritism. My PC was arrested, stripped, and thrown in a jail in opening narration, while another player was "noticed by the king" and enrolled to train in a custom class the DM had made that got fighter HP and THAC0 and cleric spells. Three years of game time later (when his training was done) his PC finally asked them to free me from jail. I didn't go to a second session of that game. This was in either '86 or '87.

[Ormagoden]

People seem to be misinterpreting the question. I'm not asking you about your first experience, but why it is you're able to remember it still.

Seems so far because for some people it wasn't that long ago.

It was 19 years ago.
It was in an attic.
I remember it because it was fun...

I liked it before when people where answering the questions "wrong", It was less cardboardy.

[Aotrs Commander]

Fairly clearly, actually, for saying it was twenty years ago! My first "proper" roleplaying game was when I first went to the Rolls-Royce wargames club at the age of about ten (accompanied by my Dad). Up until then all I'd played was HeroQuest - and they were playing Rolemaster! On Middle-Earth, no less.

The party was attacking an Orc watchtower. I think that first session we (because I was a bit nervous, and plus, Rolemaster from heroQuest!) were playing a fighter who's player wasn't there that week. One event I clearly recall was the fighter shooting an Orc coming down the staircase and killing him. My Dad asked whether the Orc would fall off the staircase (which had no railings); I forget why (maybe there were some Orcs below, I forget). The GM said he'd give it a 50% chance and rolled the dice, and then said "I didn't say which 50%..." which my Dad thought was hilarious. (Looking back, though, I suspect that a lot of people here would find that highly offensive, rather than a good jest, but there you go!)

I ended up playing a Hobbit Alchemist, adopted from a player who'd more or less stopped coming (he turned up quite a bit later, but graciously let me carry on with his old character.) Which, this being Rolemaster, isn't nearly so exciting as it sounds. (He was a bit useless, and he'd have been even more so if he didn't have a magic shield with some Lofty Bridge (i.e teleportation) daily spells.) Dammit, I just realised forgot the character's name. Shame. It may yet to back to me...

I do viviedly remember my first open-ended roll, though. Same adventure. We were now in the depths of Mount Gundabad, on the mission of destroying the new Grond ram (I'm not sure where this was in relation to the time line, but I think it was prior to the War of the Ring). Anyway, we were taking a boat down an underground river when we got attacked by Orcs. Me, by this point already having figured out combat was not a good idea ('cos I sucked!) I wanted to run to the back of the boat. The GM said I needed a maneouver roll (on percentiles, this being Rolemaster). I rolled 00. Everyone looked a bit shocked. My ever-so-supportive Dad asked, smirking, if I'd fallen in the water... Then everyone explained that no, that was a 100, not zero (and an open-ended at that, which meant I got to roll again and add!) I didn't quite get a total high enough to stun everyone, but the GM said is was a beautiful move, and the Hobbit deftly sprinted to the back of the boat, without touching anyone. Good times...

[SigCorps]

Heh, it was 27 years ago and the basic set of rules, my cousins were in the back of the car on a long road trip and introduced me to D&D at the age of nine. I played a wizard. My oldest cousin was sitting on the floor of the back seat DM'ing and myself and my other cousin were up in the seat hanging on every word. It was a great time and I can still picture it. For me it opened up a whole realm of fun and friendship that lasts to this day. I can remember traversing all the basic book box sets, then on to AD&D, 2nd ed and 3.x and now 4, which I still have not played yet. For whatever reason D&D struck a cord deep within me and still has that same affect today. Wow talk about a trip down memory lane.

[Artanis]

My "first" was actually a rather bad experience. I had heard of a game of DnD (2e) that was about to start and joined up. My first session, the DM helped me make an archer-type (my favorite archetype), and then proceeded to give me a longsword on the first session. About the third session, he gave me a quiver of infinite arrows, but no bow.

My archer never got a bow. Even shops didn't have them.

It sucked so much that it scared me off of RPGs for five years.

[DanReiv]

Back in 1993.

Tatooine Manhunt for 1st ed SWD6, was introduced to it by a guy in my class (1st year of college) who was playing with a friend of his.

And it was awesome ! I've always wanted to give pen&paper a try but never really had the opportunity. I remember quite well how it felt cool springing off my favorite game of the moment (X-wing ofc !) for some "real" action.

I played a Smuggler, and played mostly smugglers in all our SW games (I've always found the "free" YT-1300 compelling )

Also, the DM had a filed D6 wild die that was doing way too much 6'. We ended up tossing it from the windows (15th floor) after a while

The two guys who introduced me to it are still some of my best friends and we still play with a now enlarged group of 5-7 regulars.

[Hat-Trick]

My first RPG experience was with Champions, as that is the system my father and his roleplaying friends use. I was like five or six, four maybe and didn't really appreciate the whole charade (short attention span I guess), but I remember that the figure had a gun, but the character didn't, but could grow in size (superhero game). It's hard to actually count that one, I remember it because I would get bored and run off to play with Legos, then be called back for my turn.

My first PROPER experience was Champions again, but I was playing a character that could summon creatures (more like illusions of creatures that could affect the world). That was fun. Such a fitting power for a young kid. Can never forget Micheal.

My first bout of Dnd was 3.5 and my DM was bastardizing the system. I didn't know this until I picked up the book at a store and bought it for myself. I was cool with it at the time, but eh, I would have enjoyed playing the game as designed. We were lvl 3 and fighting dragons, giants, and mindflayers, our casters got their spell levels level for level (3rd at three, 9th at nine). And almost all of the freedom the system provided almost never showed up. My fighter was assigned feats as the DM flipped through the books. Remembered for recentness and retrospective wrongness.

[Abies]

All I know is my first specific memory of playing D&D involves the DM's girlfriend's French exchange student excitedly exclaiming "I chop ze cow!" when announcing his intent to attack an enemy's mount (a horse).

Everyone at the table cracked up much to his chagrin. When we clarified the correct word was "horse", he exclaimed with equal exuberance "Then I chop ze whore!"

Good times circa 1992.

[Ajadea]

I remember just about all of it, because it was just awesome. Like five years ago, I rolled up a 4th level elf druid. We (all 8 of us, plus the veteran DM) were all n00bs and such, but hey, Druid. I wasn't sucking. Wolf Animal Companion, wielding a longsword and longbow, throwing fire at things. I was thinking Rule of Cool, not optimization.

So we all start in a tavern (And already I recognized the marks of a parody) in the town of Drun Kenork, which everyone promptly mispronounces as Drunken Orc, much to the DM's frustration. And there's this shady dude in the corner. So natch, we go talk to the shady dude in the corner.

He sends us on a quest to reclaim his stolen magical weapons from some kobolds in a mine. We walk out to the mine, and after a bit of secret-door-shenanigans, our elf rogue (we've got a halfling one too) finds the hidden mine entrance. We head in, paladin and fighter at the front, rogues protecting our sorcerers and wizard, and the human cleric and me in the back. Kobolds attack, we massacre them.

We find this huge mining operation going on, and there are ogre guards around mine carts full of precious minerals. One of the carts has a chest in it. We (rogue*2) sneak in, and yep, it's the weaponry, to be shipped off to a location unknown. Then one of the rogues fails his Hide check masterfully and a massacre begins. The paladin and fighter are really shining, taking down mook after mook as the spellcasters deal with the ogres. But the cleric and I are out of healing, the meat shields' hit points are in the Single Digits, so we clear out, taking the chest with us and running deeper in to the mine. Dead end. Kobolds and ogres are coming after us. The cleric's player says something along the lines of 'we need out. How fast can we make these mine carts go?'

So we all jump in two linked up mine carts, (fighter and pally in front, one rogue in each cart, sorcerers in the back, wizard in the front), throw the chest in, and the other spellcasters (cleric, sorcerer*2, wizard) help me use my 2 prepared produce flame spell to create magical rocket boosters attached to the mine cart. Magical rocket-powered mine cart. So we go shooting out of the mine at Insane Miles Per Hour, kobolds splat against the walls, and then I realize 'People, wait! If we land at this speed, we'll splat just like those kobolds we ran over!' Panic ensues.

I use Create Water right in front of us, removing all the surface tension so that we don't splat on the water. That slows us down a bit. Not enough. Our elf rogue gets the idea to use the two dead ogres in the mine cart as meat shock absorbers. The paladin, NG cleric, and LN wizard staart complaining, but I just help the rogue attach the ogres to the bottom of the cart (I'm CN, I care about my life more than their morals, kthx)

One of the sorcerer uses Spellcraft to cast feather fall to slow us down, and that, too, helps. And then we crash through a roof. It's the tavern we started the quest in. Blam! There's a crater in the floor, and the remains of the mine carts are in the center, along with us. Ogre meat is splattered everywhere. We are soaking wet, the barkeep is looking at us like he wants to murder us, and shady weapons dealer is very happy.

It was fun, but it was only a one-shot, sadly.

[AslanCross]

I remember mine because it wasn't too long ago. I started D&D about four years ago and have spent a great deal of time and money on it. I also have really good memory when it comes to anecdotes. I often remember random and seemingly trivial things I or someone on my family did 20 or so years ago.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I remembered because it was during the camp of a LARP game , besides it was 4 years ago, and I usually remember really useless* stuff....besides I think I still have the sheet for that barbarian.

[Another_Poet]

I played a really quirky character, encouraged by very lighthearted fellow players and a DM willing to bend the rules to let me play my concept (not that I understood what rules he was bending).

I probably dominated the table too much with a lot of loud and creative ideas for how to do things... having no idea how those were, or were not supported by rules.

My first session, I rolled hot. I had so many 17's and 19's that I almost never biffed any check or roll. Pure luck of course, but what a great intro. Now as a GM and experienced player I always want to see brand new RPGers succeed at something in their first session, and try to set it up that way so that they will, but if they roll a bunch of low numbers it can be nigh impossible. So I had a really great start and was doubly lucky that I rolled so well.

ap

[Benly]

I remember it because it was a family activity. My father had gotten into D&D very early in its lifespan, and he'd raised my sister and me on fantasy and science fiction, so my first D&D was essentially our family game night. We had two characters each (a thief and a magic-user for me, an elf and a fighter for my sister - this was back when elf was a character class) and we played through Castle Caldwell, Keep on the Borderlands, and Isle of Dread that I recall, plus some stuff from very early Dungeon - something involving wereboars, and one that on further research appears to have been adapted from "At The Spottle Parlor".

We stopped playing not long before 2E came out. A few years later, I saved up for my own rulebooks and started running games for my friends. :)

[Rezby]

my friend lent me BECMI and then i bought 3.5 phb, it is imo the best way to start BECMI to 3.5 because BECMI lays out the groundwork of d&d.
but mostly those first sessions left me confused but with 1 brilliant anectdote
we were using premade characters for BECMI, i noticed in my characters pack was a 10 foot pole, we fell into a pit, and guess how we got out :) it has become a running joke in my group,
you have a problem?
10 foot pole!

Drunken Master prestige class is proficient in 'improvised weaponry'. The book says things like chairs, tables, mugs of ale. It can also be interpreted to mean 30 ft poles. :D I think you can pull off a flurry of blows with your improvised weapon, too, since drunken master is really meant for monks to take.