I saw a few guys I like do this on Google+, so why not?
I've posted about this before, but here it is again.
My first RPG was back in 1981. To keep it short, I'd seen my uncle's D&D books and I was fascinated by them. I convinced my mom to get me the D&D Basic Set for Christmas.
A couple of kids of a person she knew played the game, so they got to babysit me one morning and run me through B1 The Keep on the Borderlands. The older brother originally wanted to run me through his own adventure, but his mom told him to show me how to play with the game I brought - for which I'm eternally grateful.
My elf, Goldleaf, and the DM's brother went up to the gnoll caves and inside. I'd read the module but couldn't figure out how to match the maps to the text key. We fought some gnolls, ran from more, and eventually ended up in the chief's room. There we blocked the door behind us and killed the chief.
After that, we found our way to the wight, shot him up with some silver arrows to no avail, and then ran.
I made it back, the DM showed me how to read the map key and match it to the text, and I was off.
Those guys also owned the DMG (which I was fascinated by) and the Fiend Folio, which mesmerized me to the point that I bought it as soon as I could - before the Monster Manual, even.
I owe my first misunderstandings of D&D to those guys, too. They played AD&D, and converted me on the spot from a D&D Basic Elf to a F/M-U/T, and had me roll for spells known. They told me I could cast each one once at 1st level, and I did. They also let me keep my HP roll from being an elf, which led to a total and systematic misunderstanding by me about how multi-class HP worked, too.
But all in all, they taught me to play. I'd later play in my uncle's game, too - same guy I gave the PHB back to not all that long ago.
And naturally, I incorporated this experience into my current DF game!
My first tabletop RPG experience went like so:
ReplyDeleteIt was a game with two cousins (our respective moms were sisters) and one of my aunts as the DM. We each made 2 PCs in 3rd Edition D&D, but our ability scores were derived with 1d10+10 and we were given a lot of leeway in simply choosing our starting equipment and being allowed to invent our races as desired.
My cousin Elizabeth made an elf paladin; I don't remember her second character.
My cousin Alex first made a cat-man wizard with a longsword, a longbow, and chainmail; when he made his half-dragon cleric, his mom told him that this character could only start with robes and a staff, probably because he took so much expensive stuff for the first character.
My main character was a halfling-sized bat-winged paladin, formerly apprenticed to a wizard, equipped with only some basic clothes and a shortsword. My second character was a human barbarian with half-plate armor, but poorly armed (a dagger and a sickle instead of something beefy).
We went through a room of the dungeon in the back of the Player's Hand Book, smashed a few skeletons, went into the next room, and encountered a dragon. She declared the dragon's AC to be 4 so we'd actually have a chance to not get toasted, and upon success we made of with a hoard of loot (including a cursed item that turned the half-dragon cleric into a snake, a pair of boots that granted the elf paladin a wish which she unwittingly used to gain the power of flight, and a key).