As I do every year, I mark the new year by recalling December 31, 1981, when I created my first character, Persimmon the Elf, for Basic D&D. I had gotten the magenta boxed set for Christmas. My best friend created Kanda the Dwarf and my brother's character was Gorrdon the Fighter. Still have the old green character sheets with them.
So how about you? Do you remember your first character?
Some fighter whose name I forget. Was in 8th grade, my buddy stayed over the night and ran the dungeon from the Mentzer red box for my brother and me. He played a chaotic dwarf DMPC and got mad when I kept winning the combats easily so he had a dragon show up randomly which my fighter killed in two rounds. After that we pretty much played almost every day during lunch, before school, and the weekends.
I remember making a small 4e party, somewhat incorrectly, that I think I didn't use in play until months afterwards. At which point, I finally got some family members on board to game with me, and play the characters. (Part of the deal was that they didn't want to have to make their own and do the design from the ground up, and I was happy to have my meh builds see use.) Was fun, but definitely not a prolonged campaign or the like. I got the three core books for that edition during Christmas, and I want to say that the gaming was in the summer, so it would've been sometime within that range, but closer to Christmas, that I finished up character creation.
I don't as much love 4e now, but I'll forever be grateful and nostalgic towards it for being my first proper TTRPG/D&D experience. :)
My first character was Black Morgul the thief, Magenta Basic. He died during his first adventure after opening the first door he came up to. No saving throw, no damage, just opened the door and was dead.
The DM hated the game and left to go play Red Rover with his friends. Left the box at my house, never came back for it, and so I kept it.
It was sometime in December, and I had just turned 10. I was hanging out in the basement with my parents and stumbled across my Dad's old AD&D 2e books. So my Dad busted em out and we made my first character. Jake, the human Fighter (at the time I thought Jake was a really cool name for some reason).
I still have the character, he was 5th level. We still play D&D together to this day, and in fact he plays alongside my friends from high school and since Thanksgiving he's be running Isle of Dread for me 1 on 1.
A Noble character for WFRP 1e, whose name I fully recall, but will save you all the cringe (I was 11.) I was instantly hooked, and picked up a copy of WFRP as soon as I could, and read it cover to cover regularly.
After about 3 years of a GM that ran about a game every 2-3 months, I bought several RPGs* to GM myself, and have been battling being a forever GM for over 30 years ;D
* Werewolf The Apocalypse, Call Of Cthulhu, Marvel FASERIP, Champions.
I first played a Fighter, and then a Fighter / Magic User; because I was jealous of the other Fighter / Magic User, and the Cleric. It was so easy for Fighters to struggle, when facing evil magic users. I wanted greater magic resistance, and the ability to Dispel Magic.
I don't remember my first character. This would have been around 45 years ago now. Jesus fucking Christ, that was 45 years ago.
My first experience with "roleplaying" was the Joe Dever Lone Wolf books, so that'd make my first character the "Lone Wolf" himself. Going for real roleplaying games, then if memory serves, the first character I played was the half-orc barbarian out of the 3.0 starter set. Couldn't say what the first character I made was, but it was probably a ranger.
My first character death was a fighter who's name I cannot remember. The DM was running red box.
I do remember something funny though, Crowded House's song "Dont dream it's over" was playing at the radio at the same time. Found it kind of funny.
Quote from: Persimmon on December 31, 2023, 11:31:22 AM
So how about you? Do you remember your first character?
My first character was a Cleric, and it was the summer of 1981.
My older brother invited me to go with him to a session of Dungeons & Dragons. I didn't know what that was, but from his description it sounded interesting. We rolled up characters shortly after arriving, and when I rolled an 18 Wisdom it was declared that "you're the cleric". I didn't know what a "cleric" was...
For the next few hours, we explored a dungeon, fled from some troglodytes, and at the end of the session I found a staff of healing and levelled. The experience blew me away, and that winter I saw D&D and Star Frontiers boxed sets in the Sears (or Montgomery Ward?) catalog and begged my mother to get them for me for Christmas. She did, and that got my gaming hobby underway.
I don't remember my first character exactly. I know it was late December, 1980, B/X. I remember we had a fighter, cleric, thief, elf, and wizard in the party, but no clue which one I played. That's because I was focused on understanding what the GM was doing, since he was showing me how to run a game at the same time. I ran my first game a month later, and remember that vividly. TPK in about an hour. Everyone was excited to roll up new characters and try again.
Unfortunately, no, I do not recall my first character. But, I do fondly recall some memorable characters. We played Moldvay/Cook B/X. Rolled 3d6 down the line. I loved magic-users, so if I could wing it I did. I rolled an 18 on strength for that character......don't remember his intelligence, but he was a magic-user damnit :D