Quote from: SHARK on September 07, 2021, 11:21:38 AM

Quote from: Aglondir on September 07, 2021, 01:45:09 AM

Quote from: SHARK on September 07, 2021, 12:19:37 AM
I had some kind of beginner's set, which had a softcover book. It was white and turquoise blue, with a dragon on the cover. I recall the rules only went up to like, 3rd level.

Shark,

That's Holmes.

Here's a great site which explains the difference between Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer:

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/2089/what-are-the-differences-between-holmes-moldvay-and-mentzer-dd

Greetings!

Aglondir! Thank you. It was Holmes then! Well, yeah. See? I was 8 or 10 years old. I remember my mother taking me into our local game store--"Games People Play"--and bought the game for me. She also bought me a box of miniatures to go with it, an some extra dice. I loved that Holmes game! As a kid though, I never paid attention to the author. It was just D&D. Not too long later, the AD&D books came out. Everyone switched over to AD&D, but it was also a blending. The white and blue Holmes book was still useful, and remained a favourite of mine!

HOLMES! OOH RAH!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Shark,

Good memories, good times.  I bought my Holmes Box at a model railroad store. No gaming stores back then in our area.

More info on Holmes. Scroll to bottom. 1stLt USMC, Korea.

https://sites.google.com/site/zenopusarchives/home/holmes/j-eric-holmes-photo-gallery

The Expert Ruleset and an AD&D Players Handbook was how I started rolling in probably 82. When your game comes by way of elderly relatives getting advice from confused bookstore attendants you use what you get. I had asked for a Choose Your Own Adventure book and got these instead with assurances that they were 'much better'.

My Nana was right!

My first RPG was a GURPS homebrew and the DM was so horrible that it turned me off of GURPS and homebrew altogether for years. I ended up playing tabletop D&D only in 3rd edition and as fr as influencing my views, and at the time it felt good to have a system with solid rules to rely on - even if looking back now 3E was a whole mess on its own. At this point I don't really play D&D anymore, splitting my focus between year zero games and OSR games.

Good old red box. Got into it as a kid from being super keen on Fighting Fantasy books. Played a thief and character got killed within the first twenty minutes of exploring a pretty simple dungeon. Those were the days.

Quote from: Aglondir on September 07, 2021, 03:23:45 PM

Quote from: SHARK on September 07, 2021, 11:21:38 AM

Quote from: Aglondir on September 07, 2021, 01:45:09 AM

Quote from: SHARK on September 07, 2021, 12:19:37 AM
I had some kind of beginner's set, which had a softcover book. It was white and turquoise blue, with a dragon on the cover. I recall the rules only went up to like, 3rd level.

Shark,

That's Holmes.

Here's a great site which explains the difference between Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer:

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/2089/what-are-the-differences-between-holmes-moldvay-and-mentzer-dd

Greetings!

Aglondir! Thank you. It was Holmes then! Well, yeah. See? I was 8 or 10 years old. I remember my mother taking me into our local game store--"Games People Play"--and bought the game for me. She also bought me a box of miniatures to go with it, an some extra dice. I loved that Holmes game! As a kid though, I never paid attention to the author. It was just D&D. Not too long later, the AD&D books came out. Everyone switched over to AD&D, but it was also a blending. The white and blue Holmes book was still useful, and remained a favourite of mine!

HOLMES! OOH RAH!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Shark,

Good memories, good times.  I bought my Holmes Box at a model railroad store. No gaming stores back then in our area.

More info on Holmes. Scroll to bottom. 1stLt USMC, Korea.

https://sites.google.com/site/zenopusarchives/home/holmes/j-eric-holmes-photo-gallery

Greetings!

Hey Aglondir! OOH RAH indeed! I didn't realize that Holmes was so accomplished. A Marine officer, a Doctor (Neurologist?), professor, author, and speaker. Damn, you know? AND--a game designer. The guy was very talented.

I had so much fun with the Holmes book. I actually played with my parents! *Laughing* My mother played a savage barbarian Fighter, while my father played a pious and crusading Cleric. Such good times!

Soon, my parents bought me all of the AD&D books. I remember searching through the Monster Manual in total awe! The Dungeon Master's Guide...damn, that was like some combination of the Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings, and the Bible!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

My first D&D was a shiny red box of (Basic) D&D, circa Christmas of 1984, and I learned that everything was about dungeoneering. Didn't get into the Role play aspect until far later.

Not too long after, my dad brought home a Jack Chick tract, and things went badly.

I played B & X with modules and tried to make some AD&D modules work with it then in the spring of I think 1982 or 1983, I think was was 11 so 1983 is more likely I got on a bus and went to Hobby Store next to the Village Cinema which was a General Cinema with two screens, and I knew they had some D&D stuff so I bought the Dungeon Master\s Guide and the Monster Manual and some metal minis from Ral Parth and Rafm and Grenadier, and ordered the players handbook. I already had some gooney dice that came with a crayon to darken the carved numbers. I had seen the Basic Box at the Toybox Toy Store in Highland Mall but never bought it.

And that is how I went from a player to an owner. I got the B and X boxes for Christmas that year having checked them in the catalog along with a pellet gun which made them the nicer option.

I also got Traveller that year because I checked Space Opera and my Mom thought I had checked Traveller but it had people in frilled Star Wars helmets and hovering vehicles so I was happy.  I got into Gamma World 2nd Ed and Star Frontiers, and Top Secret later on and then even later Marvel Super Heroes and Someone who knew I liked the ElfQUest books bought me the Elf Quest Chaosium game and someone else I knew got the Dr Who rpg from FASA.   Then shortly after that I bought the CityTech box which led me into Battle tech. Star Fleet Battled happened sometime then too.

Mentzer's Basic and Expert sets.  Thought race as class was lame but loved the game otherwise. Older second cousin exposed me to AD&D 1E and I switched rather than getting more boxes.

How did it shape my views?  That there should be limits on number of playable Demi-humans or you wind up with ridiculousness. You can't expect to be constrained by written rules and maintain plausibility.

Quote from: DM_Curt on September 08, 2021, 08:01:12 PM
My first D&D was a shiny red box of (Basic) D&D, circa Christmas of 1984, and I learned that everything was about dungeoneering. Didn't get into the Role play aspect until far later.

Not too long after, my dad brought home a Jack Chick tract, and things went badly.

Greetings!

JACK CHICK!!!! Fucking hilarious! I used to love reading those silly tracts! "NO! B-B-Blackleaf!"

My friends and I used to roar with laughter reading those things.*

*(All of us were pretty solid church-going Christians, too. A mix of Catholics and Southern Baptists for sure!).

DM shows group the Succubus entry in Monster Manual...
Fighter Dorn--"I will bravely fling myself at the evil Succubus, and allow my companions to escape. Yes, yes. It's a tragedy that I am doomed to serve her for an eternity of wickedness..."

Our group was doomed to Hell for certain. *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Yeah the sadistic all female D&D group with their " you are dead so you can't be here and we can't hear you" nonsense is hilarious.

Real life DM is like " Shut up, nobody liked Blackleaf, nobody gives a shit, just roll up a new character so we can get the game going again. It's role play adventure not role play drama. "

Player 2 "Ha ha let's drag black leaf's remains over to that place where I thought I saw Carrion Crawler spore!"

DM : "This is a ruin used as a base by goblins. There is no carrion crawler. They goblins would either kill it or move out. That would be like a tiger in the hard ware section at SEARS. It makes no sense. This is rats and goblins and a couple of wild dogs. "

Player 2 " Oh so serious about your ree-uhhh-lisss-tiiiic dungeon!"

Player 1 : Ohhh Black leaf is dead! I'm dead! I'm dead! Ohhhh noooo"

DM: " We better call her mom. This isn't right at all. What the hell?"

Player 2: " She went all Tom Hanks on us."

DM: " Well I guess the goblins and poison gas win then. "

Player 2:  "I told you D&D is for babies and adults play Runequest."

I'm a Lutheran and our local pastor looked down on it but not because of any satanic nonsense, he just thought it was nerdy and a little anti-social like pinball and thought we should be going out for football or camping or leaning to drive a pickup with stick shift or building shelves out of lumber or maybe fishing. He thought we were wasting the best part of our lives on SMOFFY weirdo nerd nonsense and we'd probably come to regret it.

Dad was more "That's Satanic!" and I ended up having to retrieve my books from apartment complex dumpsters more than once.
Jack Chick ruined parent-teen relationships and I'm glad that grifter is rotting in a box.

He was more pissed off about Catholics than anyone else. That seems like what the largest section of his tracts go after. Especially the Pope and Jesuits. Oh well. Our own church's pamphlets were more about not letting fortune tellers or ouija boards ruin your life or coming under the sway of superstition. Basically the idea was that some people who look for such things can get so fooled by them that they develop all kind of complexes and problems and think they have spirits after them when really they fell under the power of some charlatan or something a charlatan mad to keep people enthralled. I remember the church being slightly angry about the vampire fad that sprung up again after Salem's Lot was on TV. Seems like they had just got rid of the old fad of the Universal Monsters and Stephen King somehow dug them up and dusted them off again.

I chose ADnD 1st ed, as that was the one I actually played with other people.

I did buy the Basic Red box DnD before that and read the rules, played the Solo game (Still feel bummed out Aleena died    ).

After a few years of playing ADnD (and many , many other RPGs) , I started playing Basic DnD with a friend and others for a bit, which was pretty fun. I remember playing a "Halfling" which was a race/Class combo in Basic DnD