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Post by Admin Pete on Jan 26, 2015 23:40:55 GMT -5
How old were you when you first played D&D? What decade was it? Which D&D was it? Where did you live? Tell us about you when you started playing D&D.
I started playing OD&D in 1975 in college in a small college town, I was straight off the farm and everything was new to me. It was hard to believe that it was barely a year and a half old. It was awesome!
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Jan 27, 2015 5:32:29 GMT -5
I started playing D&D in the fall of 1980 so I was 8 or 9 depending on the exact day; do not recall that part. It was a mish-mash of Holmes/AD&D. I met two of my oldest friends through D&D.
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 27, 2015 18:01:38 GMT -5
I started playing, if you can call it that, just about exactly at 10 years of age. I had a friend who had all the 1e core books and he would DM and chase my character around with vampires and stuff. That was about that.
So I choose the 10 and under category when I voted.
But for reals, I gotta say, I've only started playing D&D this past year and half as I have returned to it as an adult.
It is so great to play it with all the knowledge and maturity (relatively speaking, I suppose) of adulthood!
it was not a game designed by or for kids. Returning to it as an adult has given me a perfect hobby.
I am grateful for G&A and for all you guys!
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Post by Admin Pete on Jan 27, 2015 22:47:59 GMT -5
I figure that anything you like and 20 or 30 or 40 or more years later you still like it, that is something universal in appeal.
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Post by Necromancer on Jan 28, 2015 5:00:24 GMT -5
I recieved my first RPG as a Christmas gift from my parents in '84, if I recall correctly. That would make me 10 (and a half!). It wasn't D&D though, it was the Swedish BRP game Drakar & Demoner (translates into "Dragons & Demons") but since it's abbreviated the same way it may count anyway!?
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Post by finarvyn on Jan 30, 2015 11:12:07 GMT -5
I started playing OD&D in 1975 in college in a small college town, I was straight off the farm and everything was new to me. It was hard to believe that it was barely a year and a half old. It was awesome! My story is similar. I grew up in a small college town and my best friend at the time was the son of a history professor, so he was trouncing me in miniatures games and wargames for a couple years when he got the white box for Christmas of 1975. We played it as an extension of chainmail, but one where you moved away from the battlefield and into the dungeon and the wilderness. Totally a new experience, yet familiar terminology to things we'd played before. My "crowning achievement" is probably a decade or so ago when my mother finally admitted that D&D was a long-term passion for me and not just a passing fad. She had warned me in the 1970's not to sink too much money into rulebooks and modules and stuff because I would soon move on to another hobby. It took about 30 years for her to admit she was wrong, but admit she did.
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Post by Mr Darke on Feb 2, 2015 22:21:32 GMT -5
My exposure came at about 89 or so with 2e AD&D and then Mentzer. I was hooked from day one and wished I had discovered the hobby sooner.
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Post by tetramorph on Feb 3, 2015 15:04:16 GMT -5
Mr Darke, yeah, me too. I wish I had been playing this a lot longer. I've got a lot of catching up to do!
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Post by Von on Feb 11, 2015 2:19:04 GMT -5
I first encountered D&D at an age somewhat less than ten. However, being a) British and b) a child of the Eighties, my road into roleplaying began with Fighting Fantasy and Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. D&D remained on the periphery of my awareness but I didn't actually sit down and play it as itself until I was about twenty.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2015 8:29:05 GMT -5
I started gaming with RPGs in the 90s, but only got into D&D in the early/mid- 2000s through first edition and OD&D. Prior to that I played D&D exactly twice: a session of 2e in 1999 where we never got around to leaving town, and a session in 2000 where some friends wanted me to run the 3e D&D Adventure Game for them (I think we got through the first mission & a half in one session). After putting events together in my head, it had to be in July or August 2005 that I first picked up the PHB and DMG in a library book sale (50¢ each), and by March 2006 I was playing OD&D. I could've sworn I started a year earlier than that, but I guess not. Either way, that puts me toward the end of my bachelor's programme at university when I began playing.
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Post by ffilz on Feb 19, 2015 16:50:42 GMT -5
In fall of 1977 (I was 14), my best friend received the Holmes Basic D&D set for his birthday. I lived in a suburb of Boston. Earlier that year (or possibly the year before), I had purchased Tractics at a hobby store. While making my purchase I remember also looking at D&D, and rejecting the game because it seemed too abstract. I had been playing wargames since I was 9 or 10 or so, when I purchased Tactics II at a yard sale (I recall that was one of three times in my life when a seller had to check if my purchase was ok for my age - the first was purchasing When Eight Bells Toll (cementing my love of Alastair Maclean), and another was some years later when purchasing a US Army handbook on camouflage). Somewhere between purchasing Tactics II and when I was 10 or 11, I discovered Little Wars at the library. In 1976, we moved from one suburb to another, and in the new library, I discovered Donald Featherstone's books, solidly cementing my interest in miniatures gaming (I finally softened on D&D when I learned it COULD be played with miniatures).
Frank
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Post by cadriel on Feb 19, 2015 17:26:55 GMT -5
I started playing in 1994, when I was 13. I lived in a small town in southern New Jersey, on the fringe of the Pine Barrens. I moved that year, and in 1993 I had bought the "New Easy to Master" boxed set but not gotten anybody to play with me. I had the boxed set for over a year before I had friends who actually played D&D. I ran a dungeon at the end of 1994, and then started running AD&D in the winter / spring of 1995. By the next fall I had a full table, and was running games most weekends until after I graduated high school in 1999.
The inciting event was when a friend in 6th grade (this would have been spring of 1993) loaned me Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first Dragonlance book. I devoured it and the next two sequels, and I remember reading Dragons of Winter Night and getting the AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook right around the time I went to my cousin's wedding in Texas. I read Dragons of Spring Dawning when I got home, and then my friend was loaning me Elric of Melniboné, which would stick with me a lot longer. But I didn't understand AD&D or how to play it, or where to get monsters from. So I got the big board game boxed set that summer or fall, and taught myself the game with the "Dragon Cards." I used them to basically solo play several characters, and then I bought a module called "The Rage of the Rakasta" that was also adaptable to solo play. It took me a while to "get" the concept of roleplaying, but those cards actually helped.
The '90s were a weird time to get into D&D. The game was falling apart, but with so many books and supplements and boxed sets it was impossible to keep track of all of them. TSR was producing way too much product, and we would go into the Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby in the mall and find remaindered boxed sets on sale for $5. We really ran the gamut of what TSR produced very, very quickly when I look back on it. I didn't run any modules - the ones they did at the time were awful - but I did use pre-generated settings very heavily.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Feb 20, 2015 9:32:12 GMT -5
I was pretty old as things went then, 15. But other than my school friends everyone else was a few years older.
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Post by makofan on Feb 20, 2015 10:42:43 GMT -5
1978, I was 13, living in Waterloo Ontario (now known as home of Blackberry). My high school had home rooms by alphabet, so you would have Grades 9-12 in one homeroom. I had joined the chess club, and the club president was in my home room. He invited me to play this new game, along with some friends, and Lappoy the Unexpected died in the caverns of Quasqueton after crawling inside a Bag of Devouring. I was hooked, my Dad got me a copy of Holmes, and I have been DMing ever since
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Post by The Archivist on Mar 4, 2015 22:04:29 GMT -5
I started playing when I was 30, just as I was becoming one of those people, I lost a bet so I tried AD&D had some fun and then lurked few places and found 0E, but never joined anywhere till here.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2015 2:45:04 GMT -5
I started playing when I was 30, just as I was becoming one of those people, I lost a bet so I tried AD&D had some fun and then lurked few places and found 0E, but never joined anywhere till here. I wonder how many players can claim to have gotten into D&D through a bet. Not many, I'm sure.
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Post by Admin Pete on Mar 5, 2015 8:30:33 GMT -5
I started playing when I was 30, just as I was becoming one of those people, I lost a bet so I tried AD&D had some fun and then lurked few places and found 0E, but never joined anywhere till here. I wonder how many players can claim to have gotten into D&D through a bet. Not many, I'm sure. So Archivist, can you tell us about the bet?
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Post by Bartholmew Quarrels on Mar 5, 2015 13:01:03 GMT -5
I checked to see what my kids were playing with their friends and bought a copy for myself, I was 38 at the time.
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Post by Admin Pete on Mar 9, 2015 19:24:56 GMT -5
Wow, I was not expecting to get that many hits at the older end of the spectrum, cool thing though!
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Post by jmccann on Apr 4, 2015 23:51:52 GMT -5
I started playing in 1978 at the age of 13. We played a mix of Holmes and AD&D as the books came out plus the LBBs for the levels higher than 3.
My group had been playing AH and SPI games for a while before learning D&D, so I have always had a bit more of a simulationist mindset than many.
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Post by scottanderson on Apr 5, 2015 0:21:41 GMT -5
We never really made any distinction between basic and advanced rules until maybe 1989. 2e coming out sort of woke us up to the idea that there were several different rule sets.
We just made up stuff we thought was fun- lots of Frankenstein versus TIE fighters and stuff. It was good times.
When did we start? My mom got it from her weird sister, and she taught me when I was 8. Maybe 1984. I told the story in the foreword of TH Precis.
Dirk the Lawful Fighter was my first PC, like the guy from that video game. he was a scaredy cat, as it turns out. He only adventured til level 3. He didn't like to open doors, so there was a lot he missed I presume.
The Mentzer dungeon rust monster literally ate his sword.
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Post by bestialwarlust on Apr 6, 2015 18:56:00 GMT -5
I was 10 when I started with the Moldvay box set.
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Post by merctime on May 2, 2015 15:52:27 GMT -5
Um... Can there be a "Can't remember" option for fuzzy-heads such as myself?
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Post by Admin Pete on Oct 25, 2016 21:36:42 GMT -5
Sending this up for a fresh look also.
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Post by Necromancer on Oct 26, 2016 6:28:54 GMT -5
I recieved my first RPG as a Christmas gift from my parents in '84, if I recall correctly. That would make me 10 (and a half!). It wasn't D&D though, it was the Swedish BRP game Drakar & Demoner (translates into "Dragons & Demons") but since it's abbreviated the same way it may count anyway!? After engaging in some personal RPG archaeology, I've come to realize that it was Christmas 1985, and that would make me 11, which would mean I'd have to change my vote to... eh... absolutely the same. Hmm. Oh nevermind. Move along, nothing to see here...
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Post by Mighty Darci on Oct 26, 2016 7:52:48 GMT -5
My dad started me out playing D&D when I was 4, that is how he taught me to count and to read. As of the current vote 22 of 36 started at 17 years old or younger.
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Post by erisred on Nov 2, 2016 23:10:46 GMT -5
It was late 1974, I was 23 and there was only one version of D&D.
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Post by dizzysaxophone on Nov 10, 2016 13:48:12 GMT -5
2007, I was 17. It was the basic game box for D&D 3.5. None of my friends had ever played. We went to a game store for my friend to buy axis & allies. He decided it was too expensive and this box caught my eye. I really didn't know anything about D&D except that I had a few acquantinces that played, and obviously the 80's devil game stuff. I was into video games already and enjoyed RPGs so thought it'd be a nice experiment at the least. I ran that for a few years before some really beat up used 1e books appeared at my game store near my university. They felt like artifacts to me so I picked them up. I found the RFI podcast shortly afterward, and fell in love with TSR era D&D. Ran first for awhile, then mostly OD&D and B/X or their clones.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2016 17:07:32 GMT -5
Great story dizzysaxophone . I have a similar background, in that I discovered TSR-era D&D first and only became aware of the OSR later, as a result of my growing interest. I like hearing these sorts of stories, because they confirm my own experience, which is the opposite of the usual description I see online: that the OSR is essentially a wave of real and imagined nostalgia, powered either by rose-tinted glasses or the current 'cool factor' of taking new gear and glossing it up in a superficially retro package. But boards like these show that a significant number of us are of the 'new school' generation, and thus don't have the same rose-tinted glasses; and we weren't brought to early D&D because of the OSR's retrogear, but it was the other way around.
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Ronin84
Traveler
Playing Shelby Lockwood: Rimward Traveller Group
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Post by Ronin84 on Nov 15, 2016 19:04:51 GMT -5
I was 13 when I began, 14 when I started running my own games...
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