-Year (if you're brave)

In 1978, I watched my older brother and his friends play D&D. In 1979 I was invited to the table.

-System/Setting

Basic D&D; boxed set with the blue covered manual, the In Search of the Unknown module, and those chit things that were in place of dice.

-What Character You Played (or if you GM'd)

My main character was a halfling fighter. His name was Lefto (taken from the book).

-Notable Events

I got to play, man! That was enough.

-Highlight

Our battle against a Cockatrice.

-Lowlight

A henchman got turned to stone.

-The overall perception you had afterwards

This game is great. After watching for over a year, it lived up to the expectation when I played.

OT:
It's interesting how long most posters are already playing; with entry in '98 I'm by far the newest kid on the block in this thread, and that is still almost 10 years of gaming.

Quote from: SkyrockOT:
It's interesting how long most posters are already playing; with entry in '98 I'm by far the newest kid on the block in this thread, and that is still almost 10 years of gaming.

And Geezer hasn't posted yet, unless I missed it. While we're about the same age*, he's been playing since Gary Gygax's basement. I'm just Johnny Newcomer to him.

-clash

* He may be a year or two older, but at our age, it doesn't matter. Because of the hardening of the arteries, we can't count that high.

Quote-Year (if you're brave)

1983.  I was 7 and my aunt forced my cousin to let my brother and I play with him and his football friends.  

Quote-System/Setting

AD&D

Quote-What Character You Played (or if you GM'd)

Halfling fighter named Titan the Small.

Quote-Notable Events

Titan rode a mini-mammoth as a mount.  He eventually built an entire stronghold to halfling scale.  

Quote-Highlight

Getting to play with my cousin that was 10 years my elder.  I don't recall much of the details except being told when to roll dice.  

Quote-Lowlight

Only getting to play every once in a while until I got the Red Box and my brother got Star Frontiers.  

Quote-The overall perception you had afterwards

My first perception was this is what the cool kids were doing.  It definitely perked our interest in sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, etc...  My brother and I eventually gathered our neighbors who were closer to our own age to play.  Still my best friends from back home to this day.

-Year: probably 1976-77

-System/Setting: Original D&D plus supplements (or at least Greyhawk); implied D&D fantasy setting

-What Character You Played: a hobbit thief, then a dwarf fighter (possibly cleric, even though that would have stretched the rules)

-Notable Events: The thief joined the party right after a fight where another character got killed by a giant slug's acid spit. Thief got to kill a couple giant spiders using burning oil, but died from splash-back next time he tried it. Party left the dungeon and was preparing an expedition from a town into some swamps; an altercation led to a local being "Sleep-ed", which caused some grumbling among the townspeople.

-Highlight: see above. This was all new, and exciting because I'd just recently read The Hobbit (and maybe some of LotR); here was a way to "virtually" (though we didn't have that word) experience similar adventures.

-Lowlight: the game stopped before we could go into the swamps.

-The overall perception you had afterwards: It was fun and interesting, I wanted more and I think I was able to borrow the game and look at it for a while. But the people I played it with weren't the friends I usually did stuff with (they were older), so I didn't return to the game until maybe a year or so later, after my friends and I had started playing board wargames. I do remember thinking--at some point, not sure when--that the game ought to be more faithful to Middle Earth, but somehow, fairly early on, I decided that was the wrong way to go.

Quote from: Malleus ArianorumYear and system: '84, GURPS medieval homebrew.

I think you must be off by a year or so: the first iteration of anything from GURPS proper was Man to Man (the combat system), which was published in '85. The full-on RPG appeared in '86. Unless maybe you were playing The Fantasy Trip.

Quote from: Zachary The FirstSo, what was your first gaming experience like?  Around the lunch table in junior high or right after college?  D&D or TMNT?  Sheer awesomeness or pure lameness.  Was graph paper involved at any time?

Please provide:

-Year (if you're brave)
-System/Setting
-What Character You Played (or if you GM'd)
-Notable Events
-Highlight
-Lowlight
-The overall perception you had afterwards

Year: 1979
System/Setting: AD&D 1st edition, setting unknown (it was a dungeon but I don't know if there was a world attached or not)
What Character You Played: A fighter, name long forgotten
Notable Events: Killed a gelatinous cube with burning oil; got dragged off and tortured by goblins; my friend Tom's character ran out of the dungeon and spiked the door shut so the other characters could not escape.
Highlight: Killing the Cube my first-ever D&D monster kill
Lowlight: None really.
Overall perception you had afterwards: that RPGs were fun and I wanted to play more.

Allen

Quote from: SkyrockOT:
It's interesting how long most posters are already playing; with entry in '98 I'm by far the newest kid on the block in this thread, and that is still almost 10 years of gaming.

eh. If i let my kids on this site, they'd give you a figure of less than a couple years.

Year: 1977, High school.

System: Original D&D "White Box" Edition.

Setting: Generic dungeon, with neighboring generic supply depot/ town.

Character: An elf fighter, no name.

Notable events: The DM ran each player seperately, alone. I encountered another player who had been paralysed by a monster.

Highlight: The DM nudged me, and with an evil gleam in his eye said, "Take his stuff!" Words to live by.

Lowlight: I was too naive to register anything but wonder.

Overall perception: My imagination was completely captured. I spent the next several days drawing sketches of my character, trying to figure out what his armor and weapons looked like, etc. I felt a little guilty about rolling that poor hobbit for his stuff, though. Only a little.

Damn, a lot of lucky people with good first time experiences. I played D&D here and there for YEARS before getting my first really fun adventure, the IDEA of RPing really sucked my in but it took years for actual practice to come anywhere near the concept of what was possible...

Think I was in either 8th or 9th grade.. Heard of some guys the next school system over who were playing D&D. Played one time with them...wasn't real impressed with the game ....and the group. (for reasons I will only mention in a PM)

The next year the DM of that group? - I heard that his best friend was 1 of the 3 from his School that were killed in the Who Concert tragedy.


When I was freshman in High School...different part of town, there was a gaming club there. I tried TRAVELLER (around 1979),and have been playing RPGs ever since.

Couple of years later I switched to being a GM - been one almost ever since.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Zachary The FirstSo, what was your first gaming experience like?  Around the lunch table in junior high or right after college?  D&D or TMNT?  Sheer awesomeness or pure lameness.  Was graph paper involved at any time?

Please provide:

-Year (if you're brave)
-System/Setting
-What Character You Played (or if you GM'd)
-Notable Events
-Highlight
-Lowlight
-The overall perception you had afterwards

Hey, can an admin fix the title, by the way?  I fat-fingered "survey" in the original title there. :deflated:

Technically, my first gaming experience was solo stuff playing choose-your-own adventure type books.

But beyond that, it was when a kid I knew in school brought a D&D box set, and we played during lunch-hour.  We played through a dungeon that was included in the game, and had no idea how the rules work, doing just about everything wrong. My overall perception was that it was awesome; and I got my own set very shortly thereafter.

I can't even remember what class I played. I might have been an Elf.

RPGPundit

Year: 1983 or 1984, I believe.  Early years of engineering school, anyway.

System/Setting: AD&D vanilla

What Character You Played: Keridwen the half-elf magic user.  I wanted to play a bard because I'd been overdosing on Celtic legends, and something elf-y because I'd been overdosing on LotR.  I didn't know about character classes but someone explained about multi-classing, which seemed like a really clunky way to get to someday play the character I wanted.  

Notable Events: Found a use for all that extra graph paper we engineering students carried around.

Highlight: Met several guys with great senses of humour.

Lowlight: Why does it take umpteen years before I can play the character I'm interested in?

The overall perception you had afterwards: "This isn't quite what I was hoping for, but let's stick with it for a few weeks and see if I start to really like it."

Rescued by: Traveller, Star Trek, and James Bond 007

-Year (if you're brave): 1990-1991

-System/Setting: AD&D 2ed, homebrew

-What Character You Played (or if you GM'd): Not sure what the name was but it was a ranger (IIRC), I had just read LotR and thought Aragorn was cool.

-Notable Events:Not real sure what the plot was or what all we did, too long ago.

-Highlight: At one point we got deep into a dungeon and the GM opened the MM and showed us a Beholder and said "You see this". I could only see the pic and read the first couple letters of the name. I said "Be...fucking what? That thing is wicked cool!". I was the new player in a long running game.

-Lowlight: None

-The overall perception you had afterwards:Better than SNES and more fun than comics!

-Year (if you're brave)

1986

-System/Setting

Red Box D&D.

-What Character You Played (or if you GM'd)

Fighter.  Big, strong and dumb.  

-Notable Events
-Highlight
-Lowlight
-The overall perception you had afterwards

My first gaming experience was pretty limited.  It started with just myself and the GM playing short scenarios.  We expanded the group when we got to high school and found other geeks to join in, and by 1989 we had a proper game going.

We mostly played during our lunch break.  Occasionally, we'd get together and play after school, too.  The DM was a mean bastard, but he rarely actually killed any characters.  On one occasion, we thought we had lost the party halfling when his unconscious body was dragged off by giant fire beetles.  For the rest of the week, the halfling's player sat in the corner looking dejected about his dead character.  He kept reading through the rules, deciding what his new character would be, all the while waiting for the next appropriate opportunity to re-join the party.  

But it was all an act.

In reality, he and the DM were secretly meeting after school each day and roleplaying his heroic escape from the fire beetle lair.  Eventually, he managed to drag his beaten and battered body back into town and straight to the nearest inn.

I remember being absolutely blown away by the whole concept... firstly, that the DM would actively keep such a secret from all of us, and secondly that the DM and a player would collude to create a fantastic story.  I know it probably seems like a simple thing, but we were a bunch of neophyte roleplayers who didn't have much of a concept of in-character and out-of-character knowledge.  It completely blew my mind that there was stuff going on in the game world that we didn't know about!!!.  And it even involved another player.

If there was a point that I was "hooked", that might have been it.