TheRPGSite

Just like it says on the wrapper.

I was 12 years old, when I got the 1991 "black box" (https://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/setscans/basic91box.html) Basic D&D. I played through the solo adventure (each segment of the solo adventure taught a chapter of the core rulebook — best introductory product ever!) and in a couple of weeks I was drawing up, stocking and running my first dungeon. Good times.

12 exactly, game was run by my uncle for my birthday party.

8 years old.  My 12 year old brother and his friends drew me in with B/X.  The rest is history.

I got the Blue Box in '76, and still remember Dad wondering what I was working so hard on.

Despite not quite being 10, I did pretty well. The only major thing was I read the starting gold as 3d6 x 100, instead of x 10. But hey, so the fighters start with plate mail. ;)

1972, I am 16 years old.

"Gary's got this cool new game called Greyhawk.  You're a bunch of guys exploring an old abandoned wizard's castle full of monsters and treasure and stuff."

Somewhere between 10 and 12, I forget exactly, but probably closer to 10.  Picked up Moldvay at a Walgreen's :D

I dunno... 8-10 for a few BECMI oneshots at school, 12 when I started playing regularly (Last Unicorn Games Star Trek TNG, and then D&D 3.0.)

I was 11.

1984 Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying Game Basic Box.

First character I rolled was an Altered Human with Enhanced Senses, Gliding, Claws, Ranged Attack: Stunning, and Air Control

named Airwolf

I got Runequest 2 for my 13th birthday and then I had Basic D&D just before that Xmas (1982).

12, my sister brings me in as an extra player in her group because someone drops out.

Older brother introduced it to me by age 9-10. But then I was already digging through his fantasy & sci-fi book collection by then, so he thought it was better he introduce me than some stranger. Good idea, as what I saw didn't grab me at the time but removed any mystery in it and made related gateway products more attractive.

1984 and I was in the 11th grade at Herbert Hoover High School in Glendale, CA.  The game I played was 2e Gamma World.

10 years old. 1981. B/X D&D and Star Frontiers were the starting point.

Must have been my early twenties, like 21-23. GURPS fantasy ran by a friend of a friend.

Got the Moldvay Basic set for Christmas, aged 9. I still remember opening the wrapping paper and seeing the box cover and being immediately mesmerised.

Quote from: languagegeek;748186Got the Moldvay Basic set for Christmas, aged 9. I still remember opening the wrapping paper and seeing the box cover and being immediately mesmerised.

That was the LSD Otus used in his paints...

11 years old, 1983.  B/X D&D (though I think the Mentzer set was released almost right after I started) was the first game I played, Star Frontiers was the first game I bought.

10. 1980. My dad bought me the Holmes basic boxed set after reading an article about Gygax and D&D in People magazine (oh how he came to rue that impulse buy). I was struck with wonder and awe, but couldn't make heads or tails of the game system. A few weeks later I got my friend's older brother to teach me how to actually play.

I bought a copy of OD&D in early 1975 when I was 17. I did not get to actually play until that fall when I was in college (and 18), however.

I was 12. Christmas of '79 my parents gave me a copy of Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps which was my first "adult" board game. I was entranced by it and soon bought other AH games such as Midway, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Tactics II, etc. My friend RL had Panzer Blitz.
Then one day we were at a hobby store and he suggested we try this D&D stuff. I agreed and he bought the Basic red box. That was Summer of '80 sometime. We loved it and soon I bought my own copy along with Expert Rules, Greyhawk, a bunch of modules, Dragon Magazine and so on. Gamma World got a lotta play in the early days too.

It's amazing I didn't start earlier. I was always the kid in the neighborhood who had the most board games and could master any rule book.

15; same year I lost my virginity.

Coincidence?-;)

I was 16 or 17. The game was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st edition).

I remember my mother being horrified (she really fell for the whole D&D = Satan thing). But I assured her that it wasn't D&D and she was okay despite a bit of wariness. Luckily she never read the components necessary for the Daemonology and Necromancy spell lists.

We listened to a lot of heavy metal and goth music in those days. My first character was a Grim as Fuck Cleric of Morr. It was awesome.

12. I played in my brother's AD&D game. First time GMing I ran Gamma World.

11 or 12 played with my friend Zach in middle school. Made an elven ranger named Anson and played through dungeons ripped off from the Ultima video games.

12, my neighbour introduced me to a boardgame called Heroquest during the summer holidays(it had literally just been released about 3 weeks earlier)and the rest is history.  i joined the schools roleplaying group the next school term(playing 2nd edition i believe), i cant remember my first character though as the group was abit shit(they spent 3 sessions making characters because people kept not showing up) but i remember the dm broke his prized d100 the first session i played, it rolled off the table and shattered on the floor...the guys face was a mix of shock that the thing shattered so easily(from what i later learned most D100's tend to have a weird fault that make them shatter if dropped onto the weak part) and dismay at the fact he probably wouldnt find another anytime soon(turned out he had picked it up in the US that summer).

I was 16. It was an AD&D 2nd game, 11 years ago.

Well, I *picked* "college age," because I was in college in the fall of 1977, but I was a 17-year-old college freshman.  GMing OD&D with my younger brother as player.

The first time I got to play was a year later, in an EPT campaign.

Quote from: J.L. Duncan;748203Coincidence?-;)

Unquestionably.

I was 12, and the game was Basic D&D.  Good times.

When I was 9 my uncle bought my sister who was 11 The war of the Ring board game. Needless to say she had no interest in it at all. I however learnt the rules and spent the next year trying to find people to play it with me.
Anyway that caused me to read LotR and when I was 10 at a party my mum was throwing for her students who were just leaving college I was talking to this guy about D&D. He lent me his AD&D books for a couple of weeks and then for my 11th birthday I bought the Blue Book.
When I started grammar school a month later I started running Blue book at school, needless to say I had fuck all idea what I was doing never having seen anyone else play a game. I actually drew my first 'dungeon' out on A1 2cm graph paper and using minis like it was a board game.
But I had it sussed in a few weeks and switched to AD&D that Christmas.

I was 11, with the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks then FF RPG. Went straight to AD&D age 12 so didn't experience BX at the time, probably a shame.

I'd just started at a new school in 1985. I was 11. First day at school I made a new friend who told me about this amazing game his older brother was playing... so we proceeded to swipe his brother's B/X sets and learned how to play D&D while avoiding getting beaten up by the older brother. So many school math graph paper books sacrificed to our dungeon map imaginings. Ah, good times :)

Quote from: jibbajibba;748250When I was 9 my uncle bought my sister who was 11 The war of the Ring board game. Needless to say she had no interest in it at all. I however learnt the rules and spent the next year trying to find people to play it with me.

Heh, ironic -- I was just looking over my copy a couple days ago.  Heaven knows why I've held onto it all these years, because I've never actually found someone to play it with me ...

I was briefly roped into a Mage LARP in college, around 2005 or so, and while that was indeed quite brief I soon transitioned into tabletop. I was either 21 or 22, so I picked the Twenties category.

I was given Traveller Starter edn for my 12th birthday, but really got into gaming around 16 or so (WFRP1e and TMNT)

Late. I was already a grown up with a full time job and a mortgage. Everyone else I gamed with of course had been playing since their teens and had tons of war stories and a shared culture, mostly around playing AD&D, from which I felt excluded. Took me many years to get passed a sense of being an outsider in the hobby.  

I'm over that now, I've got plenty of war stories of my own but I still don't get AD&D.

I was 12, at secondary school, which is 11-18 in the UK.

I was 7 when my aunt forced my older cousin to let me and my older brother to play AD&D with his high school friends.  My brother and I quickly got the Basic D&D and Star Frontiers box sets.  By the time my brother reached Jr. High we were playing AD&D with our closest neighbors and continue sporadically to this day.

I was 8, my first game was Holmes D&D.
In 1980 my cousin and brother (at the time both 13 and already avid war/boardgamers of Avalon Hill and SPI stuff) needed an extra player to try a new kind of game from the USA.

Quote from: Ravenswing;748277Heh, ironic -- I was just looking over my copy a couple days ago.  Heaven knows why I've held onto it all these years, because I've never actually found someone to play it with me ...

Great, if flawed game :)
If You like enormous hex maps of middle earth its pretty hard to beat.

It was some point in the mid 80s, I think in third grade.

I want to say 1985 as the definitive year I got into gaming, with Marvel Super Heroes being the first, but I could be off by a year. I'll say I was 12.

Quote from: The Butcher;748155I was 12 years old, when I got the 1991 "black box" (https://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/setscans/basic91box.html) Basic D&D. I played through the solo adventure (each segment of the solo adventure taught a chapter of the core rulebook — best introductory product ever!) and in a couple of weeks I was drawing up, stocking and running my first dungeon. Good times.

Ditto.  I was 14, and intorduced my friends to the game.  A high school senior made me some photocopies of Mentzer Companion and Master to go with my "black box" after seeing us playing in the school bleachers.  Unfortunately, we never got to play together before he graduated.  I ended up ditching D&D for AD&D 2e a year later, but part of me wonders "what if" I had kept with the Mentzer line and/or Rules Cyclopedia.

1980. I was 10 years old and already a fan of Tolkien and Howard's Conan tales.

I was in middle school in 1977. I picked up the (blue box) Basic Set + got the MM later and introduced my two closest friends to the game.

I was 12 years old in 1981 and played a fighter named Lars at a Boy Scout campout AD&D game.

6th grade, whatever age I was at that point (11-12?).  Played some D&D, Gamma World (1st I think), and Ogre/Gev (to note that it is also my start in wargaming) in an after school group sponsored by a teacher who also played (but wasn't D/GM, that was a fellow student).  Made characters for but never played Top Secret with that group as well.  I'm pretty sure I was invited because I was already into historical and fantasy "stuff."

If 30 is ancient, what does being 49 make me...

Quote from: Tetsubo;748559If 30 is ancient, what does being 49 make me...

A great Wyrm.

First RPG experience was the fighting Fantasy books. I discovered them in a giftshop that had a stand with "The Wizard of Firetop Mountain" book on it.
That must of been perhaps 1983 or 1984, I can't remember exactly.
I was about 16 anyway.

A few months after that, LFGS opened in my area and a bunch of people I met there and I formed an RPG club and I bought ADnD, which I played.
The first actual RPG I ran was Stormbringer 1st Edition. The boxed set.

After a few months I also GM'd ADnD as well.

1997, when I was 15 years old. A few friends had D&D 2E in Hebrew, well out of print by then, including a proper PHB, a Monster Manual folder, and a photocopied DMG (it was somewhat difficult getting the actual book in peripehral Israel at that time, as the company publishing it locally went belly-up in the early-mid 1990's), as well as dice. My friends organized a game, which lasted only two sessions unfortunately, but I was hooked! And in a few months I DMed my own 2E campaign.

1978, I was thirteen, bought the blue box set at Hobby Lobby of all places....

I created my first character in 2000, to help test out GURPS 3e, which my flatmate had just picked it up, but we didn't actually end up playing. I first played in 2001 when I was 19, when my flatmates ran an All Flesh Must Be Eaten game. I started in earnest though two years later joining first a D&D 3.5e game with some friends from school, and quickly joined a Buffy game that lasted 7 years.

I was eight. But speaking to the poll choices... 30 is ancient?  LOL I'd murder the lot of you to be 30 again.

Quote from: spaceLem;748911I created my first character in 2000, to help test out GURPS 3e, which my flatmate had just picked it up, but we didn't actually end up playing. I first played in 2001 when I was 19...

Hmmmm.... First tossed a set of dice to play D&D about five years before you were born... was a full time GM ....four years before you were born. Old Geezer was playing D&D five years before me, however 1972 was the first time I started playing tabletop wargames... using 1/72 scale minis first because they were cheap and easily available. Got a box of 50 Airfix minis then for about a quarter... really! Now that same box is about $9. Didn't really get around to board wargames until 1974, but played one Avalon Hill game the summer of 73.

Two older gamer brothers and I was nine. It was a T&T homebrew. Holmes came shortly after.

We also played a lot of AH and SPI at the time. Before all that, it was floor games with toy soldiers, very Little Wars like, with dice for hits/kills and movement rates.

Dad liked history, books, toys - especially trains - and took us to a lot of fun movies. Gaming was fated to happen.

It was 1974 and I was 10 years old.

Always played lots of boardgames with my brothers and cousins growing up, and the rules were mostly abandoned in favor of making up new ones.

I was exposed to D&D in 2000 or so, I was at my grandmothers apartment and this airman and his wife were moving out of the upstairs apartment. The wife was large pregnant so the airman paid my cousin and myself ten bucks a piece to help him move some stuff out of the apartment. While I was helping I came across box after box of these books with badass fantasy art with all sorts of numbers strewn about and massive three ring binders full of homemade maps. He let me flip through a 2E monster manual and I have been hooked ever since.

I spent the next couple of years making up my own versions of how I figured D&D must have worked based on what little I could gleam from the manuals of Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale. I was always begging my brothers, cousins, and friends into letting me run these homemade monstrosities for them. About 2003 my step dad ran a whitebox game for some friends of mine and myself, shortly after one of my friends got the 3E core books and we ran a campaign for a year or so after.

I have branched into a few other games over the years, Traveller, Pendragon, Star Wars D20, etc.

Anyway that is the long version of how I discovered RPGs.

I like data, and this thread interests me a lot!

Here's the age, date and D&D edition or other RPG people started with, based on written replies to the thread.

I also extrapolated each persons current age where I could (please forgive me).

12, 1991, Black Box Basic (35)
12, no date or edition given
8, BX, no date given
10, 1976, Blue Box (47)
16, 1972, Gary's New Game (58)
10, Moldvay, no date given
11, 1984, Marvel Supers (41)
12, no date or edition given
9-10, no date or edition given
16, 1984, 2E Gamma World (46)
10, 1981, BX & Star Frontiers (43)
21-23, Gurps, no date given
9, Moldvay, no date given
11, 1983, BX (42)
10, 1980, Holmes (44)
17, 1975, OD&D (56)
13, 1980, Basic Red Box (47)
15, no date or edition given
16-17, Warhammer, no date
12, AD&D, no date given
11-12, no date or edition given
12, 2nd Edition, not date given
16, 2003, AD&D 2nd Edition (27)
17, 1977, OD&D (54)
12, Basic D&D, no date given
11, Blue Book, no date given
12, AD&D, no date given
11, 1985, BX (50)
21-22, no date or edition given
16, WFRP1e, TNNT, no date
12, no edition or date given
7, AD&D, no date given
8, 1980, Holmes (42)
8, 1980's, no edition given (40?)
12, 1985, Marvel Supers (41)
14, 1991, Mentzer (37)
10, 1980, no edition given (44)
13-14?, 1977, Blue Box (50?)
12, 1981, AD&D (45)
11-12?, D&D, Gamma World
16, 1984, AD&D (46)
15, 1997, AD&D 2E (32)
13, 1978, Blue Box (49)
19, 2001, All Flesh (32)
8, no date or edition given
??, 1974, OD&D
9, T&T, Holmes, no date
10, 1974, no edition given (50)

Here's Current Age and Edition:

58 (Geezer Anomaly!)
56 (OD&D)
54 (OD&D)
50, 50, 50 (BX, Blue Box)
49 (Blue Box)
47 (Blue Box, Basic Red Box)
46, 46 (Gamma, AD&D)
45 (AD&D, AD&D)
44, 44 (Holmes)
43 (BX, Star Frontiers)
42, 42 (BX, Holmes)
41, 41 (Marvel, Marvel)
40
37 (Mentzer)
36
35 (Black Box)
32, 32 (AD&D 2E, All Flesh)
27 (AD&D 2E)

52% are in their 40's
24% are in their 50's
20% are in their 30's
4% are in their 20's

According to the poll this far, 72% of players started playing when they were 13 or younger.

No one who responded, who's age i could extrapolate, is under 27.

76% are 40 plus.

Not sure what that data means... probably not much, since I was only able to mine 25 people for their current age (the poll itself has 129 respondents so far).

It's interesting to see age and edition though.

Two folks who are 41 that both started with Marvel Super Heroes is interesting. I assume that relates to the release, and strong marketing at the time.

Old Geezer is, of course, the anomaly.

Anyway, interesting stuff.

If I've made any mistakes, please forgive me... I'm doing this on my iPhone.

Quote from: Dunnagin;748977I like data, and this thread interests me a lot!
*snip*
Anyway, interesting stuff.

If I've made any mistakes, please forgive me... I'm doing this on my iPhone.

I think you missed or misread my post, quoted below.

Quote from: LibraryLass;748166I dunno... 8-10 for a few BECMI oneshots at school, 12 when I started playing regularly (Last Unicorn Games Star Trek TNG, and then D&D 3.0.)

In the effort of improving your data, I'm 23 now, those sporadic BECMI D&D games were in an after-school program circa 1999-2000, and I would have discovered D&D 3.0 and Last Unicorn Star Trek sometime in the 2002-03 school year though I can't be more specific than that.

Quote from: Dunnagin;748977I like data, and this thread interests me a lot!

Here's the age, date and D&D edition or other RPG people started with, based on written replies to the thread.

To help out: as mentioned upthread, started when I was 12, edition was AD&D 2E, current age is 31 (but very nearly 32... crap, it's my 20 year gaming anniversary coming up).

I responded to the poll but haven't posted. I got into the game when I was 9 years old. The first thing I played was AD&D. Didn't like the original covers or a bunch of the art even then. The first thing I owned was the Mentzer Basic D&D Red Box the year it came out, followed by the Mentzer Expert Blue Box early the next year. Somewhere in there, possibly before BECMI Basic, I also got hooked on Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. The Companion, Masters, and Marvel Super Heroes boxes all followed a couple years later.

I was either in the 4th or 5th grade when I got the Moldvay set. So somwhere around 9-10 years old.

Quote from: Kiero;748285I was 12, at secondary school, which is 11-18 in the UK.

Surely secondary is 11-16 and 17-18 is sixth form?

Anyway. I was 12, in 1984, and started with Marvel Super-Heroes (which I bought having never played RPGs before).

1988, I was introduced to "advanced" Marvel Super Heroes, at junior high (Grade 7). I've been playing them ever since, but I wasn't permitted to even talk about D&D while I was living at home. My parents bought into the whole D&D scare in the `80s.

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;7490311988, I was introduced to "advanced" Marvel Super Heroes, at junior high (Grade 7). I've been playing them ever since, but I wasn't permitted to even talk about D&D while I was living at home. My parents bought into the whole D&D scare in the `80s.

Did they ever apologise/feel silly about it when they came to their senses, or are they still superstitious about it?

Quote from: Warthur;749033Did they ever apologise/feel silly about it when they came to their senses, or are they still superstitious about it?

Mine never did. My mother is still against it. I just don't talk about RPGs around my mother.

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;749035Mine never did. My mother is still against it. I just don't talk about RPGs around my mother.

Hm, this seems like it's worth its own topic, lemme go post one.

Quote from: Warthur;749033Did they ever apologise/feel silly about it when they came to their senses, or are they still superstitious about it?

My father paid, I think, lip service to my mother's fears about the game. And he was the minister of a church. He was nervous about the casual use of demons as antagonists in a game (by virtue that you might want to know more about them, and knowledge of demons was inherently toxic). But that was a long time ago now, and he doesn't care nowadays at all.

My mom basically laughs it off and acts like her puritanical censorship was not a huge nuisance nightmare for me while I lived under the same roof. I could tell stories... So no, no real apologies. Or recognition that an entire industry was smeared by outright propaganda.

My first game was when I was 16 in 1998 or 1999, a 2nd Ed D&D game. But I only played the one game, and I don't consider that my real start in roleplaying games.

I didn't start playing sincerely until University, when I was 18, playing Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. My interest in 3rd Ed didn't last long, and I've slowly regressed in my interests to older and older versions of D&D, when I play D&D at all...but I have warm memories of those first forays into the Underdark.

//Panjumanju

Quote from: LibraryLass;748988I think you missed or misread my post, quoted below.




In the effort of improving your data, I'm 23 now, those sporadic BECMI D&D games were in an after-school program circa 1999-2000, and I would have discovered D&D 3.0 and Last Unicorn Star Trek sometime in the 2002-03 school year though I can't be more specific than that.

Yep, I messed up... sorry!

I'm going to give it 24hrs then update my posted data.

What I'd really love to find out if the entry age threshold has increased over the years. I assume it has, since I can't fathom an 8 to 12 year old picking up 3.5 and running with it... but that's conjecture... I'd love to see what the trend actually is.

I shall update again later.

If it's not a hassle, could people state:
Age you started playing RPGs
Year you started playing
D&D Edition or Other Game you started with

That would be keen

Quote from: Dunnagin;749109If it's not a hassle, could people state:
Age you started playing RPGs
Year you started playing
D&D Edition or Other Game you started with

Age: 13
Year: 1991 - The Minnesota Twins just won the World Series!!!
Edition: AD&D 1st Edition hand-me-downs with some AD&D 2nd Edition source books/adventures

Quote from: Dunnagin;749109If it's not a hassle, could people state:
Age you started playing RPGs
Year you started playing
D&D Edition or Other Game you started with

Age: 12
Year: 1979
Game: AD&D

Quote from: Dunnagin;749109If it's not a hassle, could people state:
Age you started playing RPGs
Year you started playing
D&D Edition or Other Game you started with

Age: 11
Year: 1984
Game: Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying Game Basic Set, and Battledroids (Battletech 1e)

Age you started playing RPGs: 12
Year you started playing: 1994
D&D Edition or Other Game you started with: AD&D 2E.

Age: 10 (12)
Year: 1987
Game: AD&D

I received the AD&D Monster Manual 1 from a friend. Not knowing what it was, I tried to create a game using the entries with poker chips and Monopoly dice. It eventually ended up buried in my toy box.

It wasn't until a few years later that I "discovered" the AD&D Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide in a comic book store. From there, I was sold on RPGs.

Discovered role playing games Mega (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_%28jeu_de_r%C3%B4le%29) : 1984  (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_%28jeu_de_r%C3%B4le%29)
Discovered Imazine (and learned about the existence of D&D) : 1985
First bought AD&D and CoC 3rd on the same day : 1985

Finally found people to play DSA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye) with (aged 21) : 1986

Quote from: Dunnagin;749109If it's not a hassle, could people state:
Age you started playing RPGs
Year you started playing
D&D Edition or Other Game you started with

That would be keen

Age: 21-22
Year: 1992/93
GURPS 3E (fantasy)

9 (47 today)
1976
t&t

Quote from: Dunnagin;748977I like data, and this thread interests me a lot!
Here's the age, date and D&D edition or other RPG people started with, based on written replies to the thread.

I also extrapolated each persons current age where I could (please forgive me).


11, 1985, BX (50)

I think this particular statistic may be me since I said I was 11 in 1985 and started out playing BX.

Not to be pedantic or anything but in the interest of more accurate data I'm 40 now, not 50 :)

Age: 12
Year: 1992
System: Red Box D&D then RC then AD&D2e

At 11 I had discovered Fighting Fantasy books; and by 12 I had started on D&D.

I had to wait until high school. They weren't invented until then!