This post is part of a
series of posts in the D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop
Challenge. The information in many of
these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it
is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of
time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.
Day 1: First
person who introduced you to
D&D. Which edition? Your first character?
If you have read the About Me area of my blog then you know
I give a lot of credit to my uncle David for jump-starting my journey into the
role-playing hobby by passing down his various A/D&D material to me. Specifically, I received the AD&D Players
Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Manual, and Deities & Demi-Gods (with the Cthulhu & Melnibonean
information even), and a Holmes Basic.
The funny thing about this is that I thought I was introducing him to
the hobby after hearing about it from a friend of mine only to find out that
David had been playing since the original set.
The person that introduced me to D&D was a friend of
mine named Dan Boston. We met in the
second grade after my family moved from Tulsa
to the very rural Oologah. Dan and I
were in the same second grade class and we were the odd ones out because we
were in to stuff like comic books, fantasy movies, B movies on cable, and other
stuff that did not line up with the “typical interests” at that time; there was
a third member to our group – Jamie King – but I can not recall whether or not
we were all in the same second grade class.
I have a strong suspicion that we were but that has honestly been lost
to the passage of time.
In short, Dan had three older brothers that were all gamers
of various sorts. They introduced him to
the game. Dan and I met because I
brought some super hero comic books for the reading table at school and he
picked one up. We started talking and
hanging out from then on. Eventually,
fantasy stuff was brought up and he told Jamie and me all about this great game
called Dungeons & Dragons. Of course,
we both wound up playing at his house some time and would continue on for years
to come.
I am not 100% sure of which edition I played at Dan’s
house. I believe it was probably
AD&D because I know there was some sort of feeling about “Basic is the kid’s
version” nonsense going on. Sure, it
made sense at the time but not at all now.
Plus, I remember his brother Steve talking up his own homebrew game – top secret information – that was “way
better than D&D” but I could not see any of the material because it might
somehow get leaked and someone else could beat them to the stores! I
actually did get to play “the game that must not be mentioned so no one can
steal the name” years later and it was fun and the world was definitely more flavorful
offerings with an insect-like humanoid race and a very interesting campaign
world; a heavy influence from stuff like Arduin. By the way, I was even told the actual name
of the game – Dragon Stalkers – but I still have yet to see it in the stores
from them or “someone else”.
I do not remember anything about my first character but I am
highly confident it was one of the fighter type classes. I understand the appeal of the magic-users
and the others but I always wanted to play the warrior. I was reading Conan books, watching the He-Man
cartoon, repeatedly borrowing the Excalibur movie from my uncle, and interested
in much more stuff that seemed to have a warrior type for the lead. I can not recall the exact details but I know
for a fact that D&D was like no other game I had ever played and I would
continue to play pretty solidly for the next decade.
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