The how you got into D&D thread

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 4:45 pm

I had an experience pretty similar to Kaelik's, who can repost his if he wants to. I started my D&D kick in early 2001, which puts me outside the 5-year window I guess but you're going to hear this story anyway.

I fucking loved the Baldur's Gate games and I was also on a huge Realms of Arkania kick at the time. However, D&D-based cRPGs were getting on my nerves at the time (hey, they were based on 2nd Edition) and while Final Fantasy did leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling--especially FFX--and I wanted to immerse myself in it more.

So while I was going to Hastings to pick up some FoxTrot books, I noticed the 3rd Edition D&D books. And these things kicked my little ass and made me beg for my momma. I mean, this book had it going on. Glossy, well-detailed cover, kickass art (what was up with the belly-ring sorcerer, though? Whatever), full color--even the little corners of the pages--and lots of tools to whet the imagination.

I picked up one of these things, but realized that playing D&D in my hometime would make you a social pariah, so I went online. I played at a few MU*s for awhile and hung out at the WotC until I discovered Nifty by way of Josh Kablack and, well, here I am.

I definitely think there's a lesson in here somewhere. People want to engage their imaginations and pretend to be Lago Afronova: Keyblade Knight of the Forgotten Realms, and video james can only go so far. D&D released some whupass cRPGs and caught me on the rebound with its awesome tabletop game books. I believe that I would've had a similar story had I played Neverwinter Nights, too, which I did a few months after getting into 3rd.

Or let's go back to the Iron Man and Spider-Man movies. You'll have a hard time convincing me that a not-insignificant number of people decided to pick up a comic book for the first time after seeing this movie. And then they read stories of Iron Man putting people in concentration camps. Lame to the lame power.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 4:53 pm

My dad bought the Basic D&D set for my brother and I in 1981 (? I think) and from there I got into AD&D/Champions/V&V/etc. I went to a nerd school, so there were other kids interested in RPGs. I took a break after some 2E games in college, then got interested in 3E when it came out and started playing PbEM/PbP games. The end.

violence in the media · Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:02 pm

I got started playing D&D back in '85 or '86. One of the kids in the neighborhood had a mishmash of books from 1e and the Basic edition and, while we had no real idea WTF we were doing, we played anyway. When he moved, we tried to reconstruct the rules as best we could and kept playing until we actually found the box sets at a hobby book store in the mall.

From there, I got into 2e in '89 and played that until I went to college, after which I played off-and-on for some years (doing more gaming via Vampire LARPs) until 3e came out. That was the holy grail of awesome, as it made D&D cool and exciting again and appeared to address a lot of the gripes people had with 2e by eliminating a lot of the arbitrary restrictions (no dwarf magic users, no wizards with swords, humans can't multiclass, etc).

4e, however, has prettly much killed my enthusiasm for D&D again.

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp · Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:12 pm

My mother played D&D in college and thus had the old 1st edition game books and really old chainmail accessory books. One day I decided to play a game with my friend and mom, and from then on I invited my other friends and we (my friends and I, not mom) played 1st edition D&D weekly. I'm not sure how close to the rules we were, but we enjoyed it a lot.

Eventually my friend saw some shiny new 2nd edition books and bought them and wanted to use them. He noted that in 2nd edition the Paladin only needed 2000 xp to level to 2nd whereas in my 1st edition book they needed 2250 xp (I believe). Anyway, I was jealous of this and gave him a free set of brand new 1st edition books as a gift (to keep him on the 1st edition gravy train).

For awhile, me and my friends played a hybrid of 1st+2nd until we eventually pretty much just played 2nd edition. My friend bought a ridiculous # of books for 2nd edition and I bought a few. We all had lots of fun. I can remember discussions of my friend wanting to play as an illithid since he just bought the Illithiad book, and me not wanting him to. I also remember these big fights we'd get into about the rules and how my friend wanted to play as a Barbarian Monk and my other friend didn't want to let him be that. I played a Vampire Fighter, Flame Knight, Fighter/Cleric/Mage, son of Bane Fighter, another human Fighter, an Asian Fighter who wielded a Huge Nodachi Sword (1d100 damage against large creatures) during that time period with my friends.

Eventually I moved away, didn't play D&D for awhile. 3rd edition came out and I bought all the Core Books+Psionics book for it and then found a group to play with. During my third edition days I played a Fighter/Monk/Barbarian/Ranger/Duelist/Bladesinger/Arcane Duelist/ Mystic Wanderer in order to get a really great AC.

Eventually I went to college and found another group of people to play with and played as an Incantatrix, Cleric, Fighter/Barbarian/Warshaper Feral Orc.

I play 4e ocassionally with friends and when I do it's usually a Wizard or Ranger.

I played Baldur's Gate and enjoyed it a lot. Neverwinter Nights extremely disappointed me and I haven't bought another D&D type game since.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:24 pm

Someone in the Shadowrun-Group asked if I wanted to play D&D (3rd - shortly before 3.5 came out).

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:36 pm

Started playing in... 3rd grade? That would be 1985 I guess. A friend of my brother's had it and we had a blast doing 1e Oriental Adventures.

My dad got my brother and I the Red Box soon after, as well as ADnD, and somehow DC Heroes too. My dad actually ran a game or two for my brother and I and it was a hoot, but there was no way he was down for running it as often as we wanted to play it.

I never stopped playing; my brother stopped in late high school.

I still remember going through the 1e ADnD books and having trouble sleeping at night because I was too fucking young to go through massive tomes of tables and bullshit and my brain fucking exploded from it. I'm okay now though.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:43 pm

My husband really wanted the 3.0 books for Christmas right after they came out. I bought the PHB (I don't recall if the DMG and MM were even in print yet) and spent the next two weeks in tears while I tried to figure out how on earth to make a character (I was trying to be all cool and stuff by giving him my character sheet as a sign I'd try to play).

The first game ended up totally messed up because I didn't have any of the base preconceptions that come with D&D - the biggest ones being that if you play an elf, you're supposed to be snotty at everyone else (that's why all the other PCs are snotty at you), and if you're an elf and you've spotted an orc, you're supposed to kill it on site because it's Evil. The belief that people with access to Prestidigitation would also be inherently clean, and that worlds with magic in them would indeed have toilet paper didn't help, either.

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp · Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:44 pm

mean_liar wrote:Started playing in... 3rd grade? That would be 1985 I guess. A friend of my brother's had it and we had a blast doing 1e Oriental Adventures.

My dad got my brother and I the Red Box soon after, as well as ADnD, and somehow DC Heroes too. My dad actually ran a game or two for my brother and I and it was a hoot, but there was no way he was down for running it as often as we wanted to play it.

I never stopped playing; my brother stopped in late high school.

I still remember going through the 1e ADnD books and having trouble sleeping at night because I was too fucking young to go through massive tomes of tables and bullshit and my brain fucking exploded from it. I'm okay now though.

Ah man, I loved those tables. I mean we never actually used them except for rolling random treasure and gem values and seeing what it took to hit someone.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:56 pm

(I'm probably the youngest person on the Den)

I was a massive jackass to a lot of people during middle school. For some reason, after I started High School I became friends with one of the people I used to be a massive jackass to during MS (we went to different high schools). During the summer after freshman year, I had nothing to do and ended up hanging with him a lot. We played a variety of games (Risk, video games, racing on bikes, etc). Eventually he got me to try 3.5. That was probably around 2006. If fell in love with the game. For unrelated reasons, we've drifted apart since then.

Falgund · Post by **Falgund** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 6:07 pm

I started playing choose-your-adventure books in ~86, which lead me to "The Dark Eye" adventure books. Then, at the middle school (junior high?) I met people playing The Dark Eye as a real TTRPG, and entered one of those groups (in ~89). At that time, I still did not ever heard of DnD, we played Star Wars RPG, Paranoia, Pendragon, MERP/Rolemaster and some others I don't recall.

My first encounter with DnD was in high school (~91) at my school game club, and then I only played a few sessions (I don't even recall which edition it was). We continued playing Star Wars, Rolemaster, In Nomine (French version, much more a parody than the US one) and some systems we (badly) designed ourselves.

I really got into DnD only during prep school/engineering school/military service (~94-99), with multiple campaigns using ADD2 with the players' options series (my prefered setting being Planescape). But at the same time I was still playing a mishmash of other RPGs, such as Toons, In Nomine, Rolemaster, Talislanta, Warhammer, Star Wars, etc ...

Then came the job, much less time for playing, and DnD third edition, and since then I play only DnD 3/3.5 and oWod (and more and more infrequently... less than once every two months at the moment).

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 6:45 pm

Started playing with the AD&D 2E books around 91... and my first experience was with the Dragonlance CS. Not the main one, but on that other continent that doesn't get mentioned in any of the books and where minotaur was a playable race. I was 11, my friend was 11, and we did not have a firm handle on the rules, mostly just rolling dice and giving successes to high rolls. We slowly grew to a larger group, and shortly after I was missing the X-Men animated series to walk down to the library every Saturday so we could play in one of their study rooms. We played in FR, in Dragonlance, in Ravenloft, and Dark Sun. Lots of fond memories of that time, even if we weren't really using half the rules.

Course, then I moved out of state, had to find a new group, and had some dry spells for a while as a result. Eventually I found a solid group of friends who played, and mostly split time between AD&D 2E skills and powers (none of us were particularly interested in abusing it) and 2E Star Wars (the d6 one from defunct WEG). There was a Rifts phase, and a Battletech phase where we took over a few tables in a pizzeria, a short Mechwarrior phase, and even played some Toon with my little brother in here as well.

Continued playing DnD into college, and was in a long running 2E campaign when 3.0 came out. We bought the books, but didn't try to convert the characters over because the entire party was multi or dual classed and they suffered badly in the transition. It was just some short playing until some bullshit plot failure resulted in all of the players quitting. After that we started up some more serious 3.0 games and have been playing that (3.x) on and off ever since, with a few 2E Star Wars games tossed in on occasion (as friends have wanted to run them).

Lich-Loved · Post by **Lich-Loved** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 6:52 pm

I was in the 7th grade in 1979 when I played my first Basic Set D&D game. Some guys in my class were playing and it just became a huge addiction for my younger brother and I. I bought my first box set and picked up the old Chainmail rules for background info and played regularly after that. I got my 1st edition books on my birthday in 1980. I continued to play off and on through high school, during which time I collected Dungeon and Dragon mags (I have some very low-numbered issues) and bought one of the (now) rare 1st printings of Deities and Demigods with the later-removed Cthulhu mythos.

I met plenty of fellow gamers in college and we switched to 2e when it came out and played the hell out of it for days on end. Real life took over after university, though, plus a move soon after to Gamer Hell (backwoods sticks of TN), so I was away from the hobby for 7 or so years. 10 or so years ago I moved back to my hometown area and got very lucky, finding a gaming group that was my age or older that had been playing weekly since they all went to high school together (yes 20+ years of weekly games). I took over as DM for that group about 8 years ago and am very lucky to have a very dedicated group of 6 with a waiting list that plays every week. I moved those guys to 3e and then 3.5 when it came out, steered them away from 4e, and am now preparing them for a new game (my homebrew).

imperialspectre · Post by **imperialspectre** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:03 pm

I picked up NWN on a couple friends' recommendation late in high school, and immediately decided that as fun as it was, having a game that wasn't already programmed into a computer would be infinitely better. After that, it was just a matter of getting back from college long enough to meet up with the same friends and score the 3.5 core books. Since I was reading OOTS (and picking up material from the GITP boards) at the same time, it didn't take long to figure out that casters were gods and beatsticks were FUBAR.

A while later, I saw Races of War on the WOTC boards and realized it fixed a lot of the problems I'd seen in the game. Since then, my group has been gradually compiling a bastardization of 3.5, Tome, and homebrewed remakes of core classes that the Tomes didn't get to. It seems to be meeting most of what we need at the moment.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:22 pm

I started in 1999 with pirated SSI games (the Gold Box series, Eye of the Beholder etc) and a CD full of random pirated material. It had playable 1e, chapters from 2e books, playable Darksun, fragments of Leiber's Swords, a really weird Dragonlance sourcebook and some Planescape awesomeness. Most of the stuff lacked headings, so I had a hard time distinguishing between 1e and 2e. I fell in love with Darksun templars, and I still try to get away with playing one whenever I can. Then Planescape: Torment came out, everyone got a better idea of what Planescape was and we started playing that. I missed my end-of-the-year school party while chatting about the game.

I placed an order for 2e books at the MtG shop in 1999 and called them every week, then every month, and in 2002 they got 3e in stock so I bought that instead. Also, a guy whose father worked for the phone company managed to download a metric fuckton of pirated rulebooks and novels (he had free dialup), and transferring them to my computer on floppy disks was a nightmare. I applied for a card but failed because underage b& / unemployed.

We played D&D with adhoc fixes (a.k.a. DM takes pity on my character and I get a new Ex (Ex)) but it got stale eventually. After almost three years of GURPS and Shadowrun I dragged the group back to D&D when I discovered the Tomes and bought an Exalted sourcebook (Abyssal Exalted = Darksun Templars). I don't plan to buy or play 4e (maybe some loose minis but that's it).

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:22 pm

TarkisFlux wrote:...and mostly split time between AD&D 2E skills and powers (none of us were particularly interested in abusing it).

You have missed the point of that glorious, epic book. It is still a small dream of mine to play a totally twinked-out Skills and Powers/Combat and Tactics/whatever 2e game with a Taladas Minotaur.

And here you are, casually tossing out that yes, you played just that, and it was no big deal.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:32 pm

mean_liar wrote:
TarkisFlux wrote:...and mostly split time between AD&D 2E skills and powers (none of us were particularly interested in abusing it).
You have missed the point of that glorious, epic book. It is still a small dream of mine to play a totally twinked-out Skills and Powers/Combat and Tactics/whatever 2e game with a Taladas Minotaur.

And here you are, casually tossing out that yes, you played just that, and it was no big deal.

Don't get me wrong, I optimized with it, a lot, I just didn't take it farther than my group would tollerate... though I'm sure I did some things they didn't notice...

And I never actually played a Taladas minotaur, and by the time I picked up S&P I wasn't living anywhere near my friend with the setting. So I only ever did some of the separate pieces of the thing you want, not the actual thing itself. It could still be awesome and live up to your not-at-all-inflated-over-time dreams ml...

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:36 pm

Before I even played video games outside the occasional Mario, I would play variations on Cops & Robbers (such as superheroes/wizards with a single power/spell) alot with my friends.

Back in '94 I was semi-interested in comic books, so my Dad brought me to a store to get something within reason for a birthday present. However, I was already iffy on the whole collecting comics idea because of the cost (pre-high school and all that), so I saw this nifty looking box called D&D which I thought was a board game.

I didn't want to upset my dad by giving the gift back when I found out it wasn't what I wanted, so I sat down and started reading it and brought my friends over; using that strange red filing folder thing. We played it a lot, and I eventually got the Monster Manual and the Player's Handbook while a friend got the DMG, and we played the same adventure we could afford at least a dozen times.

It got worse from there

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:43 pm

SO in 1995, when I was still in India, a friend of mine came over hurriedly to school telling us all that he had relations from abroad who had come over. Now this was interesting to a degree but not that great because most us had some relatives who had now settled out of India. I went to a school called K.V.D.R.D.O -- the first two would have to be translated as central school (a federal school) the rest -- Defense Research & Development Organization.

We were all the sons and daughters of Scientists and army men and the like. Well, I was the son of a postal employee who apparently knew that postal employees were also allowed to go to Federal schools since they were Federal workers.

But, I digress. the school mostly catered to scientists who worked in the enclave of the DRDO complex so many of these people had seen family from out of the nation. But when these people came back, they brought gifts galore. This was maybe a guilty complex? We still do this when we go back. It's funny. I laugh when I see my parents and sisters shop for days and weeks before going back. I mean most of this is made in India.

---

Rants and digressions aside -- The friend who came in told us about a big box of toys that had just came in for HIM. Now we were impressed. Everyone sidled forward and surrounded him but the bell rang and we had to rush to assembly. We went to his house that day and we found out that most of the toys were cool but one of them was a ratty box in some kind of plastic cover.

I thought it was a board game. but when I went in. it was three books the size of my monthly or bi-weekly books that my mother used to get me. Mind I was only 10 at this time? The Avalon hill rules weren't in there though. I discovered these only after I came to america.
We didn't have the chainmail rules. I put it down for a bit. Not back in the box. I'm a klutz like that. Somebody else picked it up and decided to start decipher the math. Fucking one-upper. India is always like that. Competition. Days went by and we couldn't figure out what to do. But I made up some of my own idiotic games by with it by reading all three books. I used chess pieces as miniatures and the atlas as the adventure and we would just try to flick pieces across the table and measure it with long rulers and see how far it went from such and such number. Depending on who did it. They would get such and such arbitrary movement. Battles were fought by clashing this way several hundred times.

I came to America in 97. I still didn't have a D&d book as I had long grown tired of it. how many times could you flick a chess piece across a chess board or into Pakistan (yes, the underworld, indoctrination -- what a bitch) without getting board) and my friend was a jackass who wouldn't give it away. My first year here was scary. My day at school, I wore what would be called tight tight bicycle shorts (this was okay in India) to school. Imagine my surprise when people stared and pointed. I got into fights and I wore even more strange things like floodwaters.

Few more years later I came across the Red Box and AD&D and a group at high school and things changed. same time. I spent nights just playing with the numbers and reading the books. I would go to class horrendously asleep. I walked into pillars with a AD&D supplement in hand in school. But it was okay. I was known as the class clown.

College, I began 3.0.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:21 pm

I was young, and bored. My friend had the base 3e set. The end.

koz · Post by **koz** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:52 pm

I was a regular player of 40k, and later MtG, at my FLGS (which I no longer go to, for various reasons). A friend and co-gamer once brought his (bright and new) 3.5 books, and said 'Hey, let's play DnD today!'. I knew a bit about it, and this was the beginning of the end for me, as I asked 'OK, who's DMing?' I haven't really stopped fulfilling that role since...

It involved me learning the rulebook in about an hour and thinking of the setting over lunch. Let's just say that game didn't last long, and involved a lot of mind flayers. However, a group of us did end up gaming for many years, and only my moving to Japan (some FIVE years later) ended the group cohesion. Never really been the same since, but that's likely because I really discovered the Tomes when I was in Japan, which raised my gaming standards significantly.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:05 pm

If we count only DnD proper, then I started playing around 1995. It was AD&D 2E. I assume. As there was no chance to buy DnD books where I live, we used a rather vague mess of rules and tables, lifted from the Internet by those few who had access to it, and often copyed by hand. I quit DnD in favor of various WoD games in 2002 or so, then, ironically returned to running/playing 3.X thanks to 4E launch, which prompted me to take a look back.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:34 am

I had always heard about it growing up, but the only group I knew was my friend's brother, and they didn't want younger kids in it, being the cool teens/adults. So I went all the way through school without having an opportunity.

Then I joined the military, and somewhere along the way, I looked up a gaming group at the local store. And get thrown into Temple of Elemental Evil with my very first character, a spike chain wielding monk. Yeah. It turned out about par for the course with monks, but I enjoyed it somehow. From there the group shifted along the way, people came and went, and then I went, on my third deployment.

I was lucky enough that a few of the guys were players, and got together a Shackled City campaign that lasted all 15 months and then some. Now I'm back stateside, got another group together and trying to get into the swing of things again.

Kinda fuzzy on the dates, but I'm guessing I got into playing around '04 or '05. So there you are, someone who just started playing within the last 5 years. And two of my players over there had never played before that, we had an introduction game at the local college while I was home, and now my friend is running Shackled City for four brand new players as well.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:25 am

When i was around 8 or 10 my brother had the red box set and i played an elf in adventures he made, later we each created parties and ran adventures for each other. by the time i was 12 i was running a variety of dnd games for friends and had formed a largish d&d club at school with about 1/4 of the boys in my grade participating -for some reason no girls joined =-(

dunno where my brother picked it up from but that was my introduction to d&d.

violence in the media · Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:26 am

FatR wrote:If we count only DnD proper, then I started playing around 1995. It was AD&D 2E. I assume. As there was no chance to buy DnD books where I live, we used a rather vague mess of rules and tables, lifted from the Internet by those few who had access to it, and often copyed by hand. I quit DnD in favor of various WoD games in 2002 or so, then, ironically returned to running/playing 3.X thanks to 4E launch, which prompted me to take a look back.

I remember that we had one particularly screwy decision regarding Armor Class. For some reason that remains inexplicable to this day, we decided that an AC better than -10 shifted you into the magical realm of color-coded AC. People seriously had Armor Classes of half-black, full-black, and plaid. I think plaid AC involved your character wearing a kilt, but I'm not positive. I have no other explanation for this other than we were between the ages of 8 and 10, and someone was clearly dosing the water supply.

I thought that might amuse you guys.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:54 am

Around '99 or 2K, I had played a bit on the Skubhammer Fantasy MUD, and was a total addict for the Discworld MUD. I played collected 40K (SPESS MEHRINS) and FB (Undead), and even had started collecting Inquisitor stuff (I wanted to make a Sailor Moon themed group of Arbites).

Then I saw an ad somewhere for PlaybyWeb, and checked it out. I mostly played freeforms, though I did start up a game that was basically "Warhammer Fantasy Battle: play a single Hero/Lord, investigate ancient ruins, kick the door down, stab the inhabitants in the face and take their belongings. In a sack."

Recognise that style of game?

Yeah, it didn't take long after that to join D&D games - 2 and 3E. This would be late 2K, early '01. For quite some time I simply said "This is the kind of character I want to play." and described it to the DM and they'd make a character sheet. Within a year I still had only a vague grasp of 2E rules, but knew 3E well enough to run rules-lite games (meaning: no AoO, no grappling, no sundering, no disarming, core only, final destination), as much as I wanted to make the Savage Species rules work.

'03 I moved to Melbourne and actually found a group. Several in fact. It really didn't take me long to figure out the rules, as I had books to look over, and people to teach the game to me.