What are your first memories of DND??

[Jenara]

I was thinking about this Blog, and the "first quest" article from Dragon Popped into my head, all those editors and writers posting about their "First Time".

So I was wondering what your first experience of playing an DND game was like, now for some of you it might be tough remembering, but want you to go back as far as you can...

Who got you into the game, what character did you play, was it good (or if it wasn't then why did you carry on?) All that stuff, I'll post mine later if you need some help starting!!

[Cole]

Ohhh that's wayyy back for me 1985 was my first D&D experience. A classmate name Christian Erstad introduced me to the game. (Never seen or heard of him since then). He was the DM and I made my first PC named Faloth the Unholy. We played 1E (my preferred edition) and Faloth was a magic-user.

I can't remember to much of that game, but I was the weakest party member and I do remember some sort of bigfoot encounter where many of the party members were killed off. Lucky there was like 9 of us playing.

The game lead me into D&D as a whole and I was invited to play in a large D&D tourney consisting of over 150 players, with over 20 tables. The games would go on each weekend for over 6 months and eventually would break down into the last surviving player at each table would move onto the next round.

The last table consisted of 8 players or so, I can't quite remember.... but with that said, the game lasted all night and the finale was a blue dragon encounter where my mage (now 12th level) survived as the tourney winner!

and I was pronounced Dungeon Master!

I officially hosted the next tourney and ran a game at the next tourney, to hopefully partake in the next naming of a DM.

Unfortunately anyone can DM nowadays.... I HAD TO EARN IT!

[Crimson-Kobold]

Ohhh that's wayyy back for me 1985 was my first D&D experience. A classmate name Christian Erstad introduced me to the game. (Never seen or heard of him since then). He was the DM and I made my first PC named Faloth the Unholy. We played 1E (my preferred edition) and Faloth was a magic-user.

You're making me feel young

I was just a wee lad then, of 3 years old

My first time? Hrm. Don't really remember too well. But thats ok, my first DM wasn't super great at instructing the rules and the such. Didn't really get too into D&D again until I would say the late 90's, during high school. Prior to that, I was playing a fair bit of Heavy Gear. Fun little game, but prone to exploiting.

[Stik]

We heard about D&D from a schoolmate back in fall of 1979. We started to play, but what we started with was a far cry from the actual game. I wasn't until Christmas of '79 when my best friend and I each got the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set under the tree and we started playing in earnest. We still play D&D together on occasion to this day.

The Basic Set we got didn't come with dice, so we started off playing with little cardboard chits in paper cups and sent away for dice. And yes, I still have my first set of dice (although the d8 went missing somewhere along the way).

You might recall that the Basic set only covered up to level 3. At the time we thought that to progress beyond level 3 you had to play Advanced D&D, so we soon bought the Player's Handbook and DM's Guide.

[Cole]

The Basic Set we got didn't come with dice, so we started off playing with little cardboard chits in paper cups and sent away for dice. And yes, I still have my first set of dice (although the d8 went missing somewhere along the way).

WoW and I thought we had it rough good fun, good times!

[Jenara]

So i started this, only fair I should contribute!

I started gaming in 1990, i think, a friend of mine's cousin played so he bought the phb (2nd ed) we all happily made these characters... I made an elven fighter with a bow who's name was... Umm Legolas (look i bet most of you have done it) he was renamed at a later date! (I was reading LOTR and at the time there were NO strong female role models... and the film didn't really help).

So we had these characters and we went around Krynn (we were reading the chonicles at the time, where my love began)... BUT no one was DM...

Guess who ended up buying The DMG? thats right.. me.

I played it how i saw it and we had fun... oh it wasn't right i know that now.. but it was fun...

We even tried some modules, i got to be Laurana.. Ice wall, (dragons ice, thanoi were buggers) Oh fun.

This carried on for a while untill school ended abd i joined a real group, and i ended up DMing again.

That was fun though.

[Wizard_of_Wumbo]

i consider myself to have 2 first times. Allow me to explain...

i am fairly young so my first experience was when the teaser box for third edition came out, i was probably seven, maybe eight years old on the day that me and my mother walked into our freindly local comic book store to get me a little something to occupy my time. We bought me a cheap comic when the very nice salswoman behind the counter handed me a poster that was advertising some miniatures that were used for D&D, intantly i asked what this was and she explained that it was for a game called dungons and dragons and that thy were also selling a little starter set box for people who would like to try the game...needless to say my mom purchased said boxed set which was priced at only 14.99...that night my mom dungeon masered short adventures for me and my sister, i was hooked ever since

sadly i never got to play with that box set again...

my second and more formal first time playing this amazing game was in the winter of 2007 i think, me and my buddy david were staying at the house of my current best-friend and forum member Bryanttheswordsman. He asked us if we wanted to play some dungeons and dragons...my eyes lit up wth joy as i yelled "hell yeah!" he threw his second edition books at me, i looked upon them in bewilderment...it didnt look like dungeons and dragons...eventually i grasped the concept of editions and such and we got down to playing,

my first character ever made was syvren the green haired druid, whoes animal companion was a baby silver dragon that thought it was a dog...

we fought drug smuggling pirates and i think some skeletons along with falling prey to a devious teleportation trap, we also met a samurai who had been turned to stone because of his lover or something like that.

it was a great night

[greenknight]

Ohhh that's wayyy back for me 1985 was my first D&D experience.

I started around then too. First with the red box and the "Keep on the Borderlands" module, then a bit later with AD&D. Back then it was just me and the DM, so I had to create an entire party of characters. The DM had just finished reading Lord of the Rings, so I got my first experience of a DMPC as well back then - a custom character styled on Gandalf, with powers far greater than any of my puny 1st level guys. Not long after that, I had my very first divine character when one of my characters got to level 3 and performed so many good deeds he became one of the Gods.

I don't really remember too much roleplaying back then. I just kept going back to the first set of caves (the kobold lair) trying to clear it out to establish a base. But each time I returned to the town, the DM re-populated the caves with a more powerful group of foes. It got to the point where the DMPC sealed off the cave with a Wall spell (Wall of Iron I think, but I'm not sure after all these years).

Yeah, we were doing it all wrong, but we had some fun, and that's the main thing. It got me interested in the game, and eventually I formed my own gaming group and created my own modules. I still made mistakes, but I tried hard and eventually got better. Even though I do almost everything differently now, I don't regret those early games one bit.

[BryantTheSwordsman]

My first time was when I was only eleven years old. My friends Dad is as old as Cole and he held a Campaign for me, his son, and a Neighbor kid. I was so excited because I loved RPGs at the time. My first PC, and I will never forget him, was a Mage by name of Dragoon Korge. I played him from level one to three (this Dm used a slow leveling up process). I also recall he was the only one to make it all the way. He had befriend an elf princess, acquired a staff of the magi, lost his left arm to a dark god (got back mysteriously), and by the end he was invisible and flying forever and a magic dead zone. He was a lot and I have recreated him dozens of times. Most of PCs know are relatives, ancestor or descendant, of him and carry his blood in his veins.

[Tempest]

Cole wrote:
Ohhh that's wayyy back for me 1985 was my first D&D experience.


I started around then too.

Good lord you guys are old. I wasn't even born yet. (1986)

My first experience was with 2nd edition. I started playing my sophomore year of high school with some guys from the boy scouts. I created an elven ranger who got screwed over more ways then... well, let me tell you about a few of them.

I got robed by highwaymen for starting a fire at night near a road.

I got in a fistfight with a dwarf outside a bar, and after I lost I was left unconscious behind a bar where I was robbed again.

I was thrown off a cliff by an exploding fireball, and when I tried to save myself by stabbing my knife into the cliff (one of my few possessions at the time) the blade snapped in half. When I got near the bottom of the cliff, the moronic wizard that had blown me off the cliff put feather fall on me till I landed safely. Why didn't he do that before my knife broke?

Despite all the bad things that happened to me in my first session, I have been playing ever since (probably seven years now)

[Rankhar_Zenthis]

Slapstick D&D Tempest, I love it

[Stik]

The Basic Set we got didn't come with dice, so we started off playing with little cardboard chits in paper cups and sent away for dice. And yes, I still have my first set of dice (although the d8 went missing somewhere along the way).

WoW and I thought we had it rough good fun, good times!

You know, it wasn't until I read your quote of my post that I realized that I sound like one of The Four Yorkshiremen.

[Ismaels-Legacy]

I hate to say it, but I started out playing GURPS since one of my friends had all the books. After that I picked up all the 1ed stuff at a flea market for a total of $5 for the lot. My friends played with that for several years until I eventually picked up the 2ed monster manual. Since then, we've played 3.5ed as well, but have yet to venture into 4ed.

My first time for D&D came when I ran a campaign for a group of level 1 characters. A Horde of Kobolds had burrowed into the local lord's storehouse and had stolen some bags of spices and the lord put a bounty on the Kobolds and a reward for the bags of spice. Now, I'm the oldest of all my friends so when I told them the premise, they snickered and said, "So we're going after salt?" Of course they eventually moved on to "Noooo, we're going after the Lord's special spices!"

Anyway, they delve into this cave and start poking around. They find that things aren't as simple as following a path to the next chamber and they begin walking in circles until the stumble upon a skeleton of some large quadruped. It looked as if it had died lying down, since all it's legs were tucked under it's body, with the exception of one leg that was forcefully stretched forward, pointing to a blank section of wall.

Eventually, they figured out that it was a clue and they all went into the hidden chamber and started kicking ass and taking names. They grossly underestimated the number of kobolds, though, and being level 1, they overestimated the number of HP they had! After the cleric died, they all decided to flee, with the Paladin covering the rest of the group on the way out.

The paladin died when a small kobold ran him down, jumped into the air, and struck him on the butt (Closest thing he could reach). That player was NOT happy! LOL

[greenknight]

The paladin died when a small kobold ran him down, jumped into the air, and struck him on the butt (Closest thing he could reach). That player was NOT happy! LOL

Perfectly understandable. No Paladin likes having a stick up his butt. Oh wait...

[Crimson-Kobold]

The paladin died when a small kobold ran him down, jumped into the air, and struck him on the butt (Closest thing he could reach). That player was NOT happy! LOL

Perfectly understandable. No Paladin likes having a stick up his butt. Oh wait...

I see wat u did der

Speaking of slapstick, my first DM was...a bit strange at times. For one thing, he fostered in me a great hatred for Kender. Since they ALWAYS stole my stuff, and if you tried to fight back against them, they'd run to their Titan friends.