As the title says? My D&D awakeneing happening in 1993 as one of my friend lent me some books. They were the 1E DMG, FF, MM, UA, OA but no PHB. By then I had played Phantasy Star on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis so I had a rough idea what classes and leveling meant and I had played Eye of the Beholder in 1992 on the Amiga.
Some of my frineds were interested in playing however and we dug up a red boxed set and the expert set from a friends older brothers closet. We did not really know aboiut htings like Gary being gone, TSRs setting things like that. Our 1st games were with Basic D&D later moving onto the Rules Cyclopedia in 1994.
In 1995 we upgraded to 2nd edition via mail order as in small town New Zealand we had no game store, the internet was rare (and unavailable to me). I started to get into fanatasy in a big way in 1992 and 1993 while reading David Edding, Raymond E Feist, and David Gemmel. Our library had limited options. Our group as a collective went nuts for D&D with the players each collecting different TSR game worlds and we had all of them in print by 1999 or so (Mystara, FR, DS, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Birthright, Red Steel, Krynn). If it had D&D on it we bought it we had most of the class ahnd books, players options, the spell compendiums etc. University, jobs and people moving broke up the collection however but I had a core group of 2-3 players to rebuild around once I moved. The last player from that group left last year (1998-2014 not to bad).
We also played 1E after playing 2E as one of our frineds older brother learned we were playing and offered to run 1E. They were a bit more gotcha than I was with things like traps that killed all of the party apart from 2.
3E era I had a decent job, living in a bigger city, partner who got into D&D as well I spent up large. I bought around 80 3E books, spent 5-10k on minis maybe more and the local games got around 5k of purchases from me and that excludes Amazon and Ebay purchases. Dragon Magazine at one point hit $27 an issue (about $20 USD). My longest suffering player atm is a newb she only started in 2002. SOme of the newer plauyers I have aquired skipped 3E and 4E but they played 2E briefly.
4E landed, bought the 3 core books and 3 years of DDI. Did not like went back to 3.5/Pathfinder/SWSE.
2012 Went back to 2E again, started buying clones (ACKS, C&C, Myth and Magic, Basic Fantasy). D&D was fun again. Sister dropped off 2E books from my hometown which spent 12 years in storage.
2014 bought OD&D boxed set, 1E books, PHB, DMG, MM, HotDQ, RoT and the Starter set. Had around a dozen players to draw on. Group fluctuates between 2 to 5 or 6 players.
The Downside. More or less permanent DM with a few one off type games for the most part or short camapigns. Only long term campaign lasting more than a few months was in 1994. Have not DMed 1st ed, played 4E as a player or played or DMed OD&D. I generally run 1E material with 2E or clones. D&D collection has close to 400 odd items around half of which are Dragon/Dungeon.
D&D the prequal.
As a child I had pick a path books, choose your own adventures and I read some of the TSR endless quest books. Thye were all simiar where you got to choose your path as such. They were not game books as such that came in 1989 or so when I read Shadow on the Sand book 5 of Joe Devers Lone Wolf books. In 1990 through to 1993 I got into Steve Jacksons FIghting Fantasy series and colelcte dhte Lone Wolf game books as well. Those game books, a rising interest in fantasy and the Eye of the Beholder compiuter game were my proto days of D&D I suppose.
26 years later I bought the Lone Wolf app for my smart phone and Joe Dever is still making a living from Lone Wolf. I also bought the Mongoose Publishing Lone Wolf RPGs PDFs but never got around to playing it.
Here's my story (copied from my intro thread):
pukunui wrote:
In about 1978 or '79 (I was about 10 years old), I went into New York City (a swanky Park Avenue Apartment) to a camp friend's sleep over party. That night, I was sitting in a huge comfy chair in his den. Everyone else was asleep. On the bookshelf, I saw a D&D Basic Boxed set. I pulled it down and started reading. It blew my mind. I stayed up all night reading it and trying to make sense of it.
A few years later, one of my friends actually taught me how to play and he got the DM he was playing with to invite me over.
I didn't know the DM at that time, and I wasn't sure if I had gone to the right house the night of the game. It was dark outside, and the inside of the house was dark as well. I was too frightened to knock on the door or ring the doorbell so I snuck into his back yard and looked up to the 2nd floor. I saw one window with lights on, so I thought that must be them. For about 10 minutes, I tried throwing small rocks up at the window to get someone's attention. They never heard me, so I crept away.
Well...eventually I got into the group and we had a great time playing for years in High School. I also played in another group and then over the years I played and started DMing. Through college I played a little, but I mostly kept playing with my friends during summers and vacations. That's when I started to DM. I kept our games going after college and even through young adulthood (by then it was 2e).
As 3e/3.5e came around, I was busy with career and marriage, but I managed to DM campaigns online using Open RPG and MapTools. I ran some sessions live, when my friends were around too. I also played in a game online with another DM who I only knew from Open RPG forums. In those days, we typed for our sessions, and I found that I could engage players and get them to interact with each other (through chat) in order to give myself a breather and develop more session flavor. I also found that when I played and typed, I felt much more in character and was able to feel more "in-character." It was a great experience, but we eventually went to audio (groupspeak).
Eventually we switched over to 4e and I ran my friends through another mini-campaign, mostly in person games when we had time. But I also ran some games using the RPGTO Gametable.
With D&D Next Playtest, I started to meet more people online (through this forum) and I played and DMd in a number of games and mini-campaigns. I really liked learning how others ran their games, and I loved experiencing different campaigns/adventures with different DMs and players.
With 5e, nearly every game I DM or play is online. Now I use Fantasy Grounds and Skype.
This is the compact distillation of over 30 years of D&D. Throughout this time, I also played other systems for fantasy, modern, Star Wars. Heck, I even played old TSR Gamma World (every version), Top Secret and Boot Hill. I also collected and studied a ton of games especially in my 20s and 30s.
I was in 9th grade, it was 1999, my friends Nate, Karl and I were hanging out at Karl's house. We were looking for something to do. Karl suggested Nate show me a game I might be interested in, so Nate whipped out the 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons books and told me to whip up some characters. We did point-buy. I made 4 characters that day. Dave, the Human Fighter, Timmy, the Halfling Rogue, Sephiroth the Half-Elf Fighter/Mage and Mikey Lou Steven Stevie Peter Whacker POS aka Nate, the Human Mage who had a split personality disorder, who had 18 Int yet 1 Str, but on a personality switch would go to 18 Str and 1 Int.
My first mission was some quest where I had to go against another team or two for some artifact item. I remember throwing the Halfling (I did all the classic things without knowing they were classic apparently) across this gap to hit this other character with a chair. Needless to say, I beat the other teams and won the items (which granted the character that held it Etherealness for 10 minutes a day).
From then on when we played, I joined the main group. My friend Karl was a Half-Dragon Ranger who was 7ft tall and a Pixie Rogue. My friend Elliot was an Elven Ranger. We had some fun quests, we traded off DMing once in a while, each having different campaigns (though I didn't DM then). Heck, I remember when Elliot DMed and had a Hill Giant join the group who crushed a bunch of Sprites up into a cup and offered it to the party saying, "Drink Sprite!"
Oh we laughed, the good old days. Now, I don't talk to those guys much, if at all. I miss those times!
When I was 16 I mail ordered the D&D red box through an ad I found on a comic book. Around the time I graduated from highschool I bought the 1e PHB, MM and DMG, but didnt really play until I enlisted in the USAF, where I played regularly on Saturdays. Around the time I was stationed in Japan (where I served under Desert Storm) I would play with a great group of guys regularly when we were not on deployment. This was probably the high point of my gaming. Once I finished my tour I returned to southern Cali and found a home game with a group of guys Im still friends with. Two friends got married and started families, another lives close to me, I got married and started my own family. I am now running a new 5e campaign and one of my friends been granted 'personal time' by his wife to join my group at my FLGS, another friend is starting a Pathfinder game in March that Im joining in. So yeah, we still play and in many ways I do credit 5e with bringing my friends and I together again.
I started with wargames - Avalon Hill and SPI - back in the early '70's. I met a guy in high school, when my family moved to NJ when I started 9th grade. He was a wargamer, up to that point I had no idea that such things existed. I was (and am) a history buff and I loved games of all kinds... cards, chess, Risk, Monopoly... etc.
Being involved with gaming, I hung around in game stores and was vaguely aware of RPG's starting up... but I wasn't really into them right at first. When I graduated from HS, I went to work at UPS, nights, while I was in college. At UPS I met another gamer who was into D&D... this would have been 1975-76 time frame. He got me and my other friends interested in RPG's. I had the White Box, all the supplements... then graduated to AD&D when it came out. Long before 2nd ed came around, I had gotten away from active gaming (the real world, yck... work, marriage, kids...)... but when the kids were old enough, I started them on gaming..,. including D&D... that was late 3rd timeframe, but mainly 3.5. I DM'd for them and a couple of their friends. At the time I liked 3.5 fairly well... but we were not involved with other gamers at all. Once they got old enough to play with 'adults' in a gamestore setting we started hanging out in the local shops. By then 4e was out and 3.5 was being replaced by Pathfinder. If you wanted to play a game those were your real choices.
4e was too foriegn to me... and we already had a huge investment in 3.5 books and supplements... so we made the jump to PF. It was OK.... but by then I was getting a little sick of the whole 3.5.5 system. We started playing more WoD than D&D/PF... Probably around 2010-11 I met some people who were playing 4e at the store that I got along with, so I finally gave 4e a shot. Once I got over the initial "system shock", I found that I really loved it... with my wargaming background the 'miniatures skirmish' aspect of 4e really appealed to me. So I started playing 4e. One of my sons liked it fairly well, but my daughter and younger son never really warmed up to it.. they stuck with PF and WoD.
I still really love 4e... I think it's still my favorite version of D&D overall...
Two of my kids have moved away, but one son is still around, and we play over at a couple of the local stores... We both really like 5th... he prefers it to all other editions. I love it's simplicity and how it harks back to the earlier versions of the game...
I started with AD&D when I was 10 in 1982. I was introduced to it at a friend's sleepover birthday party. I was hooked immediately. Pestered my father to take me to Toys R Us so I could buy the basic box set. (I didn't realize there was a difference between 1E and BECMI at the time.) Played through out junior high and high school. My friends and I passionately resisted 2E, claiming it was nothing more than a money grab.
I stopped playing as me and my friends dispersed to various colleges and got new priorities. In '95 I started playing 2E because I wanted to start a campaign and none of the new players had 1E books. It was just easier to get new books than share the few 1E books we had. Honestly, didn't notice much difference between the two versions. We played for a year or so before life intervened to send many of us on separate paths.
A few years later a girl at work found out I had a lot of DM experience and asked if I would run a Vampire (1E) campaign. As I had the hots for this girl, I said "Sure!". I still like the old Storyteller system the best. Played the best campaign I ever ran for several years that even included half the group relocating to another city 2 time zones away. Eventually that ran its course and I stopped role playing for 12 years.
During the time I played Vampire I wasn't paying attention to the rest of the industry (I was making video games so I was focused on that). I had no idea TSR had been bought by WotC or that 3E was out. Cut to a few months ago, some old friends posted their excitement about the impending release of the 5E DMG. I was surprised as I had no idea there was a 3E and 4E much less a 3.5E. Learning of the existence of a new version of D&D gave me an itch to play again. I asked a few friends, thinking they'd say they didn't have the time or weren't interested in it anymore. To a person, everyone said, "Yes, Let's play!"
The two of us that played 1E miss the feel of the old version. We prefer the idea that there's nothing particulary special about the PCs other than they have the gumption and daring to go out adventuring. Everything in the game seems so easy now. Still having a great time with it, though.
I was probably about 9 or 10 when I first heard about D&D (this would have been in 1981 or 1982). When I was about 11, a good friend of mine had me over to his house. His dad had bought the Red Box Basic Set 1 (1983 version), and he asked me if I wanted to play. I had been wanting to try it out, so I told him of course I wanted to play, so he helped me roll up my first character (I still have that character sheet and I've posted it here in the forums a couple of times in other threads).
I was amazed with the mystery of exploring and uncovering new passages and the idea that I could find monsters to fight against and then look for treasure.
My friend played as DM and started me out in a temple. The main room was very large and had an altar or something at the far end after walking in the entrance. To the right and left, there were doorways with curtains. I still remember the layout he drew on graph paper fairly well. I went through the curtain on the right and walked down a hallway that ran beside the main room. I found a secret door that led me to a lever of some sort that ended up opening a secret door back in the main room. When I had opened that door and gone back to the main altar room, I was greeted by monsters (although the type of monster is something I can't remember).
From that moment on, I was hooked. I also played some 2E AD&D during college in the early 90s. We didn't play often, but I do remember a couple of overnight sessions that ran from Friday evening into Saturday afternoon.
I got back into D&D when the playtest came out, somewhere around the 2nd or 3rd playtest packet. I've now introduced my kids and my sister-in-law's boyrfiriend to D&D, and I've DM'd Next/5E for some coworkers who used to play back during the AD&D days.
The last session I DM'd was this past Saturday using LMoP. The party (High Elf Ranger, High Elf Rogue, and High Elf Wizard) ended the session ready to go into Klarg's lair (I'll leave it at that to keep from giving out any spoilers for anyone who hasn't playted LMoP yet).
She was also completely ignorant of the controversy surrounding D&D at the time (though Mom wasn't - wich I learned caused a great fight between the adults after we kids had gone to bed AND resulted in Mom & Dad sitting up all night reading the books & trying the game!)....... __________________________________. Thus I've been playing (DMing) since Christmas 1980. First the Basic set, then Expert. For the first few years it was just myself, my brother, our cousin, & 1 friend. Then we found several others & the the game fully changed to 1e throughout the high school years. '89+: 2e & college, ever shifting gaming groups, & jobs & my focus began shifting to wargaming as I could now afford armies of minis &.... mid 90s-2k: stable jobs & gaming groups, ever less D&D, more White Wolf, more minis games. Oh, and MAGIC.... 2k-late '06: 99% pure minis games, AD&D 1e/RPGS only when at GenCon. '06 - some friends wanted to get a D&D game going agian. Ok, 3.5 it is.... '07: some other friends open a hobby/game store & my gaming splits more 50/50 between minis & RPGs with some boardgaming tossed in as well. '08-'10 - we give 4e a try. Determine it's not what we want. 2010-present: the fall of one hobby shop, the rise of another. My gaming is now about 1/3 minis (mostly Warhammer/40k, WWII, heroclix), 1/3 rpg (mostly 1e, PF, & now adding 5e) 1/3 boardgames (too numerous to list whats played. though {I} seem to have alot of space themed stuff in my own collection).
In 1982 I lived in Michigan. One day I went to a sleepover at a friend's house and saw this thin book on a shelf. I pulled it off and it had a red dragon, a unicorn and a few other creatures on the cover and was called The Monster Manual. Loving mythology, I recognized some of the creatures on the cover. I asked him about it and he said it was called Dungeons and Dragons. His mother wouldn't let him teach it to me unless my father said it was okay, and being religious, he said no. Fast forward a year and I moved out to California to live with my mother who asked me one day if there was anything I wanted her to buy for me to play with. So I said, Dungeons and Dragons. I talked my upstairs neighbor into playing and we had a blast. A few months later we had a group of 6 playing on a regular basis.
When 2e came out, we switched over to it and continued to have lots of fun. 2e is still my favorite edition for flavor and settings. When 3e came out, about half of us made the switch and it took me about a year and a half to talk the other half into switching over. 3e is still my favorite edition for pure character customization. When 4e came out, we all looked at it and about half of us tried it out. While it was fun, none of us liked it as much as 3e, so we stuck with the older edition. Now that 5e is out, it's looking promising. I am trying to talk the guys into trying it out and came a hair away from getting one of them to try it out at Orccon. I'll see if I have more luck next con.
CCS: My mother's friend told her she couldn't believe I was allowed to play D&D. My mom who must have heard me and my friends playing all the time wasn't particularly concerned. We were always talking about elves and the undead, not "the devil".
Orethalion: 1982 seems to have been a breakout year. I keep seeing it pop up but that might be observation bias as it's the year I started too.
I started in 1976, when a friend of mine at school bought in several of the original rules booklets and suggested we try out this "fun new game". The two of us who took it up rolled up characters - a Fighter and a Thief I believe - and hired some elven mercenaries to accompany us into a dungeon. The leves ran away when we encountered a swarm of stirges and we got bled to death. It was great.
Then a year or so later I bought Traveller and ran that, plus Runequest and sometimes B/X for the next ten years or so, with a few excursions into other systems.
So many people were about 10... seems there is something about that age.
Anyway, I am from NJ and I didn't realize what D&D actually was until I was almost 10. This had to be the summer of 1989. I remember because my older cousin first brought around 2nd edition and played with my older brother and his friends and he wouldn't let me play because I wasn't old enough yet according the Player's Handbook (ages 10 and up). Within a month or 2 though I turned 10 and we managed to get our hands on some books and started playing all the time.
I did watch the D&D cartoon when it was on though and I remember being fascinated by what I now know as the 1st edition Monster Manual when I was at a friends house a few years before. I also had my mom buy me a gazetteer from the series made for the Mystara campaign world that I think was about the Broken Lands, but I didn't really know what it was until years later.
1986: Two of my older brother's friends (23-years old), me, 13-years old, started a 1st Ed/AD&D campaign, me, a half-elf assassin and the other guy a Grey Elf Paladin/Ranger (yep, shows how much they went with limitations).
1989: I then assimilated 2nd Ed, I do not consider 2nd Ed a completely new edition (just like the 3.0/3.5/PF Debacle), apologies if that shocks some of you.
2000: Embraced 3rd Ed whole heartedly, but became frustrated with the math, "broken" many things, spells, a basic nightmare of crap at higher levels.
2008: Embraced 4th Ed wholeheartedly, realised after DMing about seven 6 to 8 hour sessions, that something had seriously derailed.
2010: So, went with tinkering with all editions to make my own dream edition (all editions have great stuff).
2012: 5th Ed was announced, well, I am thrilled (sort of like the 2.5 I always wanted), it gives me just the chassis to tweak like a back-alley interested person for converting, and getting the vibe of any previous edition.
Ranthalan wrote:
I started playing B/X in 1984 (I thinik), did alot of AD&D 1E, loved the simplicity of 2E when it came out. Loved having RC in one book (1989 I think), played alot of Mystara and loved Wrath of the Immortals. Did not like Specularum being renamed Mirros (or whatever), Played alot of 2E, loved Birthright, Ravenloft, Planescape. Played and loved several Greyhawk games. When 3E came out, Eberron was like wow, just cool. Had to dip back into RC and BECM alot when we wanted to run kingdoms, god I love the pathfandinder Kingmaker rules, way more elegant than BECM/RC kingdom rules. When 4E came out, I litterally cried, I was angry, hurt, and frustrated. Then Pathfinder came out, loved it, stil do, love their Alchemist, Witch, Magus, Gunslinger I like in concept but gamebreaking in my opinion. But boy was Pathfinder getting complicated especially with archetypes and feats. The streamlined basicness of 5E really appealed to me, hate concentration checks, but love the system overall. I want to do a PF Kingmaker conversion to 5E soon to play. My brother is DMing Ravenloft in 5E and has reworked the Grand Conjunction modules into something similar to a PF adventure path. He is DMing it at our local game shop, we are having a blast.
I enjoyed Dragonlance hated all the later changes. Hated the Time of Troubles in Forgotten Realms, I still DM some in FR before the Time of Troubles or as it never happened. Loved the originial pantheon, loved Netheril. Never got into Spelljammer (own all the books), Al-Qadim was a work of genius, Jakandor should have received a literary award, Council of Wyrms was interesting. My favorite is homebrew settings. I do a Moorecockian like Cosmology with and Incarnations of Immortality afterlife with Douglas Adams logistics, and keep a straight face. I have no love or taste for games that focus on combat, especially combat tactics. It is understanding the plot and the motivations of the PCs that are the important things to me. If a player has no wit outside combat or at least appreciation for wit then don't bother to show up. We are not playing a Magic the Gathering Strategy game (except on Tuesday night when we play Magic the Gathering and not D&D, or maybe heroclix instead).
I was eight, which would put it about 1999. I watched my dad play the Champions of Kyrnn on the computer (floppies, wow that's been a while)
After that I wanted to play as well. Set me up, showed me how to make characters and adjust stats, and where the strategy guide was. I'll admit straight up 18's in every stat, and I followed the strategy guide exactly, moving from room 1 to room 2 in order.
I stopped for two reasons... well one reason with two causes. I was bored, one because I'd cheated every time I played, but also because while my dad had other computer games none of them really worked (buggy or I couldn't get them to load) so after beating Kyrnn... 5 times? It wasn't fun anymore.
I still loved D&D though, the fantasy settings and concepts. I read a boatload of the Dragonlance and Forgotten realms novels (stopped because I ran into a large batch of terrible writing and just moved out of brand fantasy to other fantasy series). I even got the 3rd edition books for christmas one year.
I didn't actually get to play until I was in college a few years back. Just could never find a group or get anyone together for more than a single session, which was generally character creation. So I learned the rules and never got to apply them. Then I heard that a local college had a Roleplaying guild that was open to the public and I joined up. My first campaign was 4th edition Dark Sun, it was pretty great, but is losing it's luster the more I analyze it. Now I'm DMing for two seperate groups, one at the college and one among some friends.
I know it was summer, 1995, and I was with my grandmother on a trip visiting an aunt and some cousins.
My grandmother and I were in a Walden books while other family members shopped elsewhere in the mall, and I saw this book on the shelf with cover art depicting an Arnold-as-Conan looking fellow with an axe smashing through a door.
I'd never even heard of Dungeon & Dragons before, having grown up in a small enough town that the arrival of the first fast-food chain restaurant in town was the event of about a five-year stretch of time, but the art intrigued me. It looked like the sort of thing that I imagined while playing Final Fantasy video games, or watching the fantasy action films of the 1980s, both of which I greatly enjoyed.
When my grandmother had found the book she was looking for, she asked "Do you want anything?" and my answer was to quickly grab this book, which I had only had enough time to look at to realize was a game and was packed with cool art, and head to the cashier.
I found out that the one book was only one part, talked my grandmother into taking me back the next day so I could get the other core books and some dice, and spent that evening reading the entire Player's Handbook.
The next day, I read the Dungeon Master's Guide and flipped through the Monstrous Manual, building a brief adventure as I did (an ogre had kidnapped a princess, and there were orcs and goblins involved). Then I roped one of my cousins into playing, and I was hooked. About a week later I had a table full of players and my first (what I then viewed as ) long-term campaign underway, running numerous adventures for the enjoyably unoriginal party of halfling thief, human wizard, and more than half a dozen dwarves of various classes for the rest of the summer.
Since then I have DMed thousands of sessions, and been a player in dozens or maybe hundreds, of not just D&D but every game I have gotten my hands on - though only a dozen or so of them have kept my interest well enough to describe them as games which I play, rather than games that I tired out once.