Quote from: jeff37923I've got two:

Being on campouts in the Boy Scouts and playing AD&D and 0D&D in our tents or in a circle around a campfire with woods around us and critter sounds for background.

Same here for the Boy Scouts. Except it was during Winter Camping cooped up in cabins. My two favorite memories  are sitting in a bunk reading a fellow scout's AD&D manuals. Second playing AD&D 1st in a stone cabin perched on top of a cliff above Lake Erie in the dead of winter with three miles of ice stretching northwards., DMing by firelight. This occurred around 1980 or 1981.

I know in our area, NW Pennsylvania, scouting was an excellent place to meet fellow gamers. I remember going to the 1983 national jamboree and kicking myself for not bringing some of my books or dice as there was a mini gaming con going on there.

Mmm... I don't know what to say except I was an adult (21) and never a player when I started almost thirty years ago. I had one session as a player under my belt when I started running my first campaign, and have seldom played since - I'm almost always running. I guess I never had a defining play experience...

-clash

There are two.

My first game about 23 years ago when my thief stole a Ring of Regeneration from a sleeping wizard. That got me started.

The other was starting my RIFTS campaign on benches in the second floor of the Student Union about 10 years ago. I've gamed steadily since.

It kinda depends on the definition of early.

Earliest: getting the Red Box Basic for Christmas and running through the solo adventure in the front. Without this I wouldn't be a gamer.

First paradigm shift: Picking up Shadowrun first edition. I'd been playing for at least 5 years, and had did a little dipping into MSH, Gamma World, and Paranoia but the games were still almost entirely the same, just with different genres. SR gave me entirely different mechanics and a campaign setting I hadn't explored before.

Second paradigm shift: Playing Rolemaster 2e. I'd alsready been gaming over a decade when this happened, so it almost certainly isn't an "early" development thing, but it had a major impact on my gaming, pointing me more towards realism in both rules and cause & effect inside the game.

The earliest defining moment that I can recall was the bridge from mechanics to roleplaying.  I had only been playing RPGs for a month or so, and while playing a simple, almost non-sensical dungeon crawl in 1st edition AD&D, the DM described a passageway suddenly flooding with water and a cackling seahag riding a wave down the hallway toward us as we foundered in the rising water.  Okay, it made no sense in context, but it was the first real moment at which I had a real vision of the scene and could see what my character was doing, rather than simply responding to everything mechanistically.  I don't recall any dialogue being involved, but I knew what my character was thinking and doing rather than just how I was going to roll the dice.

Perhaps the more lasting defining moment, though, was my introduction to RuneQuest.  It seemed kind of hinky at first, but it addressed conflicts I'd been having with the AD&D system.  First, individual skills could develop independently, rather than groups of abilities levelling up simultaneously, whether they had been used or not.  Second, I could "multi-class" without penalty, because characters were built by skills chosen, not by rigid classes.  Third, I could play a centaur (or potentially any other "monster" in the book), which had always been my biggest wish from the moment I'd heard of D&D.  That pretty much set the standard for my style of roleplaying thereafter.

!i!

The Internet.

More specifically, the RPGnet free games directory, which is now gone.

I found it before I'd even had a chance to actualyl play yet, having heard about RPGs from a friend.

The concept sounded cool as hell, and so I hit the internet and started reading every last free RPG I could get my hands on.  I was the scourge of every computer lab printer in school.  

It was from that moment on that I just couldn't ever be a one-system guy.  There were too many cool games out there to ever stick with just one.  

An unfortunate period where I got stuck basically playing nothing but Rifts, with a GM who was clearly frustrated as fuck with the game but refused to learn anything else, that cemented in me the importance of trying new things.

It was my dissatisfaction with Rifts/Palladium that led to me discovering GURPS (the GM's copy, which he refused to learn because it was "too complicated" :rolleyes:), and then White Wolf's games, specifically a big LARP in the next town over, which was where I really got the opportunity to stretch my roleplaying chops finally.

Throwing out my first frustration for Roleplaying.

Me and a friend played using the Hole Blue Book edition. We didn't understand that there was a 3 book (plus supplements) D&D game out there. So we thought that the Blue Book was it and it expansion was AD&D.

My first adventure was making a magic user, going down the stairs in the Blue Book dungeon, turning right until the room with the skeleton. My one spell, magic missle didn't kill it. It hit me took half my hit points (2 points) So I parried using the blue book rule. I kept parrying for two rounds and realized I wasn't going to kill it that way. But it would get a free attack if I stop parrying I waffled for another round. Finally I stopping parrying, got hit, and died.

So my friend tried other classes and made our dungeons but the blue books went only to third level. Then the glorious day came in the fall when the Player's Handbook came out. Finally we got to see the high level stuff. We both chipped in half of the $15 cover price.

I got to take it home first and starting reading it. Then I got to the end. The I realized for all its high level goodies there was something missing....

A combat chart.

ARRRRGH! I let out my first scream of frustration due to a role-playing game.

I am vague on what happen that winter other than some people played D&D in the various winter boy scout camps we had. I never did catch on that there was a OD&D until much later when I picked up the OCE. I think I got the Monster Manual for Christmas.

I remember there was this kids book in my library that had b/w pictures and text of monsters from various legends and myths (including the catabolpeas (sp?)). I thought it was cool that the monster manual had stats for most of these creatures in that book and that the catabolpeas was one of them.

Finally in the next summer (1980) I got the DM's Guide for a huge $20 or $25 dollars. The first think I did was flip to the middle and sighed with relief that it had the precious combat tables.

Quote from: estarFinally in the next summer (1980) I got the DM's Guide for a huge $20 or $25 dollars.

Yeah, I recall my mother flipping out when she discovered how much I'd paid for my copy of the Player's Handbook ($16 in 1979-80, if I recall correctly).

!i!

I'd have to say it was our first actual group campaign using 1st ed. AD&D.  Before that it was just my brother, a friend, and I playing.  Our longest and most defining game started with Pools of Radiance in Forgotten Realms.  We were a really mixed up party that we all worked hard to make sense of.  A CN drow thief, a LE female drow fighter sent to destroy him, a LG half-ogre fighter raised by a paladin, a LG paladin facing alcoholism, and a NG half-elf fighter/mage each seeking to hide or redefine themselves in Phlan.  A lot of silly things happened but also a lot of cool things happened.  The female drow was given up to the GM to use as a villain and later the paladin was sent to Hell by her.  When my brother was married he painted a miniature of each of our characters that he handed out to us.  Nothing has really been able to live up to that experience since then.

The defining line for my childhood's end was the death of my grandfather in 1977. Before that I spent several consecutive summers at my grandparent cottages on the shores of Conneaut Lake. They rented out about a dozen and lived in one. After his death the place couldn't be kept up and so the cottages sold.

One thing about my summers at the lake, my grandparents had this weird way of getting me to do chores even things I hated like gardening. They gave me an allowance which I keep in this old chocolate power container that was sold as a bank. (the round time top was scored  to punch out a slot). My only real vice during the summers was buying 25 cent comics at the local amusement park. The rest was saved. For seven years I did this.

When the cottages were sold. I took the bank home and counted it. I had something like over $200 dollars in change in that bank. This funded my initial D&D expansion. $200 bought a LOT of product back then. I was drawn to Judges Guild because back then it offered the best bang for the buck.

I was able to continue to have some money for D&D when AT&T split. My other grandparents bought me 10 shares back in the sixties. When the split occurred there wasn't enough to give me a full share in all the Baby Bells so I got a $200 check instead for all the partial shares. That lasted until I got my first job.

My first defining moments were the D&D adventures run by a DM named Karen. She had a wild imagination, a quirky sense of humor, and a very loose grasp of the rules. She was definitely a "guidelines, not rules" DM. She started with old white box D&D, then we upgraded to AD&D. It really didn't matter that much. She made up most of it on the fly. I had a blast.

Of course, it could get frustrating. On the fly houserules took on a life of their own. Arbitrary rulings could rankle. Occasional "guest DMs" or pet NPCs (e.g. her boyfriend's characters) became a nuisance.

But when she was on, hoo boy. The second campaign she started always sticks with me as one of my favorite roleplaying experiences. Our motley party arrived at a walled town at dusk. The town guards warned us to get inside before sunset, because bad things happened after dark. We of course loitered to see what the bad things were, and how many experience points they were worth. To this day, our group motto is "No guts, no glory!" At moonrise, an eerie torchlit procession came our way, leading a comely young maid to the town sqare, and chaining her to a pillar there. Being heroic (or suckers for an old ploy), we decided to rescue the maiden. But she would have none of it. She had been chosen, and she must stay. Soon, we heard the beat of hooves. Hooded riders on horseback came to take the girl. A fight broke out. One of the riders grabbed the girl, threw her over his saddle, and rode off. I dragged another rider from his horse. I drew back his hood to find... a scarecrow! They were animated scarecrows. I vaulted into the saddle and rode off in pursuit. Just as I started to gain, a shadow blotted out the moon. A dragon swooped down, scooped up horse, rider, and maiden, and flew off to its mountain lair. Of course, we would have to rescue her.

That's when I knew I was hooked.

I wish I could remember all the details, but it was a game my friend Andy ran back when we were in high school. Original AD&D, and it was just the two of us. I had a couple characters as did he. And we had them all in a tavern that was kind of in the middle of nowhere. We were attacked by orcs and other monsters who had apparently decided to overrun the area. That first game was all about just surviving the initial wave of the war. What I remember most was I had a character hiding behind a table and someone was shooting at him through a window with a Crossbow. The door was locked, and someone was trying to get in. My character fired back with a crossbow of his own, but fumbled a bit. I remember I dropped something (I think it was the Crossbow) and Andy made my character waste time picking it up. Somehow that little detail just sealed the deal.

It was the notion that even with stakes being the ultimate kill-or-be-killed mechanical objects break and people trip, perhaps even more so, and that to kill the next guy my character would first have to do something as simple as tie his shoe. But he'd have to do it with an adrenailin (sp?) rush like nothing he'd ever had before. I could just imagine a character who had never fought before, filled with fight or flight to the point of shaking, trying desparately to control his small moter responses long enough to get a bolt nocked and control himself for that next shot. I could see him making a conscious effort to slow down and get his breathing under control, ...all the while knowing that he could die any second. And I could really feel the world crashing down around him when he fumbled that one shot. The urge to panick and charge would have been overwhelming, but still...

Anyway, it's a mood I have been trying to get into my intro games ever since. High level always has a different feel, but it's the days when the character is still a bit green that fascinate me the most. One reason my campaigns always seem to stop at low level.

I started roleplaying in the pretty typical way for a person of my age and background.  I remember being vaguely aware of D&D at a young age from the older neighbor down the street (who later gifted me with his entire Dragon collection when he moved out for college - thanks Jeff!).  

I was designing Dwarf cities when I was in 3rd grade, but I didn't really play D&D until I was in the 7th grade I think.  I was subjected to the pretty bog standard "Keep on the Borderlands" experiences, followed by others at Scout campouts, school cafeteria freeform Twilight 2000 games, etc.  But the early experience that defined how I saw roleplaying was a solo game that my best friend Monty ran for me at his house one weekend.

Gaming with Monty was almost always a solo experience, he was the natural GM and I was a better player than GM (still am I think) so it worked out perfectly.  We also were alone and I think that it broke down some barriers of embarrassment that might have been there had there been more people present - we were free to be imaginative in our play.  To this day I still like (almost prefer, in fact) solo gaming.

In any case, the specific game that I have in mind began as a riff on an old Dwarfstar boardgame that Monty had called "Barbarian Prince" (as an aside I recently had a nostalgic moment when I discovered that the game is available for free on the Internet here).  
For those not familiar with the game, the idea of "Barbarian Prince" is that you are a barbarian prince (natch) who is exiled by an evil overlord who killed your father and taken your rightful throne.  You wander around a generic fantasy kingdom, mostly at random, gathering followers and an army to march home and take the throne back.  

Ok, so far so good, and we decided that it would be cool to use this as a framework for an RPG.  But here is where it got interesting for me personally.  For some reason I decided that I didn't have to be the prince.  What if, I wondered, I were to play one of the prince's followers?  So was born one of the most entertaining games I've ever played.  I was the roguish fellow (conman might be too strong a word) who was the first person the rather gullible prince met on the road.  We used the boardgame mechanics to determine our travels and encounters, and it sort of developed into a comedy of errors as I worked behind the scenes to get the doofus teenage barbarian back on his throne, with a cushy position for me in the court of course...We even did the obligatory climatic mob scene confronting the evil overlord publicly with his crime, including my character moving from place to place in various disguises to whip up the crowd with "He's our real king!", "Down with the tyrant!", etc.

In the end, it was this experience that made me say wow, this roleplaying stuff is cool!  I could do anything I wanted with it, and it hasn't failed my imagination yet.


TGA

Quote from: Leo KnightBut when she was on, hoo boy. The second campaign she started always sticks with me as one of my favorite roleplaying experiences. Our motley party arrived at a walled town at dusk. The town guards warned us to get inside before sunset, because bad things happened after dark. We of course loitered to see what the bad things were, and how many experience points they were worth. To this day, our group motto is "No guts, no glory!" At moonrise, an eerie torchlit procession came our way, leading a comely young maid to the town sqare, and chaining her to a pillar there. Being heroic (or suckers for an old ploy), we decided to rescue the maiden. But she would have none of it. She had been chosen, and she must stay. Soon, we heard the beat of hooves. Hooded riders on horseback came to take the girl. A fight broke out. One of the riders grabbed the girl, threw her over his saddle, and rode off. I dragged another rider from his horse. I drew back his hood to find... a scarecrow! They were animated scarecrows. I vaulted into the saddle and rode off in pursuit. Just as I started to gain, a shadow blotted out the moon. A dragon swooped down, scooped up horse, rider, and maiden, and flew off to its mountain lair. Of course, we would have to rescue her.

P.S.  Damn that's cool!  You (and Karen) can consider this stolen for my next Halloween game!  

Guess mine is pretty dull...my defining moment was simply the day my older sister (15) came home from the store in 1980 with a copy of Dungeons & Dragons Basic set.  She had read about it in an article in Time magazine (I think it was) and thought it would be cool.  That night she read it and ran me through the Haunted Keep.  Right after that I sat down and wrote up a dungeon crawl and ran her through it, at age 12, having only played the game once, and not even having read through the rule book.

Now. To explain a bit more how this is defining, you have to understand the facts.  First, my sister was my "mentor".  She introduced me to everything that played a role in shaping who I became.  She was the reason I saw Star Wars, she was the one who practically forced me to learn to love reading (and recommended all the good books to me like The Lord of the Rings, Watership Down, the Chronicles of Prydain, and the Chronicles of Narnia), and she was the one who got me into my main passion, drawing.

I lived way out in the country, and we didn't have a lot of cash.  So, my main pastime for those young years was reading, drawing cartoons, and playing D&D with my sister.  We developed a tone and mood during those early adventures that would linger throughout my role playing "career".  Sort of a G-rated lighthearted sort of style that really defines how I write and run all my adventures to this day.

Thinking I should go back to being just a player....then people complaining when I said that . Not only did they like me better as a GM - but they liked my games better than other possible games around.

 That was me defining where I  thought "Holy crap, I might actually be good at this GM-ing thing!"

- Ed C.