I started playing tabletop games when I was a young kid - boardgames like Monopoly and Buccaneer, Spy Ring, Risk, Cluedo ("Clue" for the Americans) and a host of others. Each Christmas, me, my brother and my sisters would eagerly sneak a peek at the pile of presents under the tree looking for the tell-tale shape of a new board game. It was a wonderful part of my childhood and the best part of Christmas.

For my sixteenth birthday, my sister gave me the Monster Manual for a new game called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. She didn't realise that there were other essential parts to the game, but for me it didn't matter - she had set me headlong on a course that I have followed (on and off) for the rest of my life. I loved that game and quickly sought out the rest of the bits I needed - the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. Initially I bought a copy of the original boxed set of Basic D&D and made a start on that but then, as pocket money allowed, I upgraded to the AD&D rules.

Roll forward 35 years and here I am now, eagerly awaiting the release of the new DMG for 5th Edition. It's like a homecoming for me. 4th Edition was just too radically different a game for me to ever get enthusiastic about, but 5th Edition is so much like the original game that I could conceivably pick up my old campaign and start running it again.

Anyway, enough of the sentimental gibberings of an old geek. Here's some pictures...













These are a mixture of re-purposed GW figures and Red Box Games minis. Click the thumbnail to biggify the image.

_________________
Dagster

When I was 12 in the 70's, my brother came home from college over Christmas break. He taught me a game he learned there, something called Dungeons and Dragons. He whipped up a scenario with no books. We raided all the board games for d6's and used those. It was mind blowing to my 12 year old self. For Christmas that year I got several D&D books & modules It was a turning point in my life towards geekdom.

For the next 15 years I played D&D as much as I could. It was my last D&D group that stumbled into Wargaming when my players had amassed armies and we needed a way for them to fight. I turned away from D&D then for the next 20 years, but I still bought D&D products to read.

With the release of the new edition I am diving back in. I have the PHB and soon as I can I will pick up the MM and I will kick off a campaign. I will also eventually get the DMG. Maybe for Christmas, that would be fitting.

_________________
Xintao

Great story Xintao, thanks for sharing. I wonder if others here have a tale to tell about their D&D origins.

Please share.

(Oh and I edited the title to make it more appropriate for a discussion topic)

_________________
Dagster

I am only 23 but I already count 10 years being an active D&D player. Proud of successfully completed famous competitive adventures like "temple of Elemental Evil", "Tomb of Horrors", "A paladin in Hell" and "The Watcher's Keep". Playing and really trying of making the perfect wizard. But I have no special story than a "sad" one (at least for this forum).

Returning 10 years back I was a teenager that back then, was the years I started to play Lotr Sbg and all that stuff. I lived in a small city that there was no official shop for this and the only way to get minis was the BgiME magazine. I had no money to buy many magazines and had a company of other two people that played. So it was really difficult. But right then, I learned from another company about dnd. The idea of p&p rpg opened so many possibilities in my mind. Doing fantasy stuff without cost. All in all, it wasthe reasonesthat I abandoned the Lotr Hobby for about 9 years I moved before 5 years to the capital city of greece, where luckily (but after 4 years) I found a really great Lotr sbg community.

_________________
Conversation/Ideas over painting etc, can check here:
http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=29455

As a kid I really enjoyed those 'choose your own adventure' books. Every few pages the stories had questions with several options taking you to other different pages, and depending on the decisions you made the adventure changed accordingly (sometimes ending in death!). Those books were my initial introduction to role play I guess. I enjoyed Heroquest immensely which was limited but involved a dungeon master and other players controlling the other characters. It wasn't until I met my future wife that I started with D&D. Her two brothers were really into second edition and invited me into the group. Good times were had by all but eventually as we grew older and had kids it became harder to get everyone together at the same time for long periods and the fellowship disbanded and fizzled out sadly. But then came the LotR movies and this great range of figures which encapsulated my attention completely.

_________________
You don't have to be great to start. But you do have to start to be great.

Not really an origin story but...
Over the past couple of weeks I've had growing interest in RPGs, i just like the idea of complete freedom for whatever setting you want. I've read through the DnD starter book and that brought me to Pathfinder. I prefer it, it has more classes and races that i can get behind. I'm currently trying to spark some interest withing my wargaming group but I'd appreciate some advice on how to get going if you could spare it.

_________________

Well, Role Playing Games are all about telling stories. You set the scene with your adventure but it's the players that actually tell the story itself, with they way they react to the situations you present to them.

I would suggest you read through the rulebooks (and Pathfinder is an excellent system - good choice) and then try creating a few characters - you don't need to keep them, but it gives you a better understanding of how the rules work to build a character - which is the central part of the game. Then use those characters in a couple of test combat encounters. Just them and a couple of monsters. Maybe even get some players to help you. Doing this gives you a good feel for the flow of the game and ideas on how to handle the combat (which is a major aspect of a campaign).

Setting up a campaign is a big task, so I recommend starting small and just doing a 'delve' at first - 3 or 4 linked encounters that can be played through in a single session and give everyone a taste for the game and a chance to learn how it all works. If that goes well then you can start to expand on the storyline and build up a campaign storyline.

Maybe look at buying an adventure module and playing that. They are usually very well prepared, heavily playtested, and a lot of fun. Plus they often have story hooks that you can use to build your own follow-up adventures.

Above all, have fun. It's a very different game to a tactical wargame, since everyone is cooperating to solve a common problem. There is no winner or loser, just a bunch of friends gathered around and having a good time and telling a story or two.

_________________
Dagster

Great thread, started in 1982 playing D&D 2nd edition at school, then a couple of years later started on RuneQuest at College, weekly games at a friends who's Dad ran a big Hotel, we used to get to use a meeting room and at one stage had about 20 players!

Now looking for a local game of D&D with the new rules, from what i have read people are agreeing with you Dagorlad, brilliant and back to the good old days.

_________________
Harfoots-The first of the Hobbit people to cross over the Misty Mountains and enter Eriador.

For me it was...uhm, when I was about 11 or so. A family friend who travelled to the US a lot came back telling stories of this craze there. It's this game they play that turns everyone into Satanists and cult members...so I thought of Gavin. She bought me not D+D but the Advanced Fighting Fantasy game. I played it a few times, but it wasn't until later that year or the next someone introduced me to actual D+D. I got the red box from someone, maybe for Christmas. (For those who know that that means, it was the BECMI red box) I remember being very clever by photocopying the pre generated character sheet and then typex-ing out the details so it gave me a really nice, full sized character sheet. Someone also bought me a Dragonlance module, which led me to collecting those things. Which led me to AD+D which led me to...well, as it turns out, someone bought me the MERP red box around the same time.

That put me onto the path of gaming, properly. Also collecting Middle-earth things. Eventually Mithril.

Looking back, I'd say that I never really liked AD+D. MERP, despite its peculiarities, is a better system than AD+D. Basic D+D (ie BECMI) was a far better presented product with a few eccentricities. (Products such as Dragonlance, though for AD+D had the same production values as the BECMI rulebooks, for example.)

I started seriously replaying D+D a few years ago in Vancouver. I got a lot of the 4th Edition "essentials" products, though I haven't played much since I went back to university. I ended up grabbing a lot of things in the dying days of the line, on sale and such.

If I play 5E, it will be its "basic" line (the currently PDF only stripped down version of the rules), probably using the battlemaps and such I have accumulated. Not sure when this will happen, though...

_________________
Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

I got into AD&D only after going to the university and joining the RPG club there, but before that I played MERP with my friends and even before that HeroQuest and those choose-your-own-adventure books by Steve Jackson Games. MERP was still the one true RPG for me for twenty years.

We finished our latest five-year campaign this spring and before starting a new one in Middle-earth (using the new One Ring rules), I decided that I wanted something different for a change. I picked the Swords&Wizardry game, which is a re-write of the 1st edition D&D rules and now we've had a lot of fun with that. It's available free at http://www.swordsandwizardry.com and I can fully recommend it for anyone wanting to try out D&D before committing financially.

I actually got into this LotR SBG hobby through role playing games because I wanted miniatures for MERP and was immediately hooked when I saw the Fellowship box Aragorn.

-- Pasi

I actually took an alternative route to get into D&D. I was about 13 years old or so and i had started reading books from the Forgotten Realms setting, and enjoying the works of the authors that wrote for it. R.A. Salvatore really appealed to me at the time. I never actually played the D&D game until I was 19. At that point i was already loving the lore, the setting, and just the way stories played out, as most of the authors based their written characters and such on in game experiences (i think, correct me if I'm wrong).

Now im 20 and still really fresh to the D&D scene! but with the group ive been with so far its been really enjoyable, and im looking into picking up 5th edition and trying my hand at DMing and crafting a unique story!

Here's my story (very summarised):
My dad's half of the family has always been into LotR and role playing games. Ever since I was a young child my blind dad would read me the hobbit, watch the lotr with me etc. At about the age of 10 he found some of his old D'n'D friends and we started playing 3.5. I got some of my school friends into it and really enjoyed it. Our campaign progressed until we were all about level 8-10, then stopped. I had played a ranger.
Soon after that my friends got me into this hobby and I've been in it for about a year and it's great. The community is awesome, the hobby is fun and the games/tournaments are exciting.

_________________
Don't click on this link!!!!
http://www.mindistortion.tv/iwantyoursoul/?i_am=Gen Giddings

Hmm I was into RPGs for a looong time. I started in about 1981, reading about D&D in some Sunday supplement of a newspaper my parents got at the time. It sounded intriguing, and by Christmas the Basic D&D box set was being unwrapped and devoured, and the following Christmas I had progresses to AD&D. Initially, it was just played with close family, and after a few years I joined a local club that played on Sunday evenings.

Things took off when I started the Sixth Form and we formed a small group who played every lunch time for 40 minutes, and from then on we were always playing once or twice a week.

We generally avoided or heavily adapted scenarios as those eraly ones were more about hack, slay and treasure gather than character devlopment, and often wanted to railroad the party down certain pathlines. That isn't to say I didnt manage to unleash the Tomb of Horrors on the unsuspecting bunch once

So we played D&D, AD&D, 2nd Edition AD&D, and in the latter years 3rd Edition which I still favour (despite the good things I have heard about Pathfinder). In addition I always had a huge soft spot for Runequest, even if the chances to play it were few. We also for years had a regular series of campaigns of Call of Cthulhu. And had stints playing/Dming Traveller/MegaTraveller, Gamma World, Paranoia, MERP (of course!).

My favourites: RQ (I love the hit location concept), Call of Cthulhu, and my favourite AD&D setting to DM was Al-Qadim.

But my interest started to wane about 10 years ago, some internecine politics (as can only happen between long term friends playing since school age) as well as a feeling for a need for a change of direction lead me morre to wargaming. I had always been interested in the idea of wargaming, but it always seemed a difficult thing to get into, But BGIME changed that with a vengeance and I haven't looked back since.

Well, maybe a little.... I am going to run a short Call of Cthulhu campaign set in Innsmouth for my Brother and sons over Christmas... looking forward to it It's been a while...

_________________
A second Edition for The War of the Ring:http://wessexcodex.wordpress.com

Taking the War in Middle earth to a new level!

I started by sculpting a d&d wizard for a friend of mine.

_________________
In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

When i was 8 my junior school ordered a load of Grail Quest books, a choose your own adventure style book. I loved them. This lead me to start buying Fighting Fantasy books from Games Workshop, they were very popular at our school. I used to live near Games Workshop, me and some friends would ride to the warehouse and find bags full of dice, and pots of paint. Doesn't seem much, but at the time it was amazing.

For Christmas 1985 my favourite gift was a boardgame called Talisman. I had a game with an older cousin of mine and next day he introduced me to MERP. It blew my mind. A group of friends quickly started a roleplay group and we tried almost every roleplay game on the market. We actually weren't keen on AD&D, the game seemed too combat orientated for our tastes. Merp was our main rpg for a long time. That group dissipated with every leaving for college

I then worked for various miniatures companies in Nottingham (games workshop, Harlequin, warlord) After i left Harlequin a friend i'd met there contacted me about a rp group, so i joined. They were involved in a planescape 2nd ed AD&D campaign. It wasn't going very well. 3rd edition had just come out, and i was keen to try GMing again.........Everyone loved it, and i haven't looked back since. I now have 5th edition, i love it.