How did you get started?

[EccentricCircle]

So i've been learning fifth edition D&D, as I guess quite a lot of people here are currently doing. Looking at the starter set has got me comparing it to the starter set I started with when I first got interested in RPGs. I've been thinking about what makes a good starter set and how to explain things to new players.

So how did you first learn to play Roleplaying Games? Were you taught by someone else or did you pick up the books and go from there? I'm wondering which is more prevalent and how the various ways people learn the games influence their playing style.

I wasn't taught to play the game, but learned from the books, and this has left me with quite a chaotic good GMing style. I didn't start in a game where Rules and Written were law, so have always been more than happy to improvise and not get boged down in the books. But I can imagine it going the other way just as easily if someone is learning from scratch gets more reliant on the rules as a result.

So what is your story, and how has it led to where you are now?

[Inevitability]

I am not sure, but I believe it all started here, with OOTS. I was looking around on TV Tropes when I came across this:

The Order of the Stick here. The title of that day's strip is, "Technically, the 'Fish' Version is a Subset of This One."
Belkar: 'Solve a man's problems with violence, help him for a day. Teach a man to solve his problems with violence, help him for a lifetime!'

So I took a look at the page (I know, I'm a horrible person) and became interested in the comic. A couple days later, I found out it was based on D&D. This led to me becoming interested in the game and teaching it to myself with the help of several online resources.

[lytokk]

Learning how to play role playing games, or how to role play?

The technical bit about playing table top RPGs I learned from a DM. My first DM taught me a lot about the game. The technical details, and what a problem player is (ie: me). He introduced me to the game, and if I ever saw him again I'd thank him. Then the DM in me would well up and slap him in the face for all the house rules he drove into me citing those were the rules of the game. Still trying to sort them out.

How to role play is a little different. I learned how to role play when running in two separate games, on complete opposite ends of the alignment scale. I had a LG paladin in one game, and a CE ninja in another. The simple act of having to differentiate between the two characters' personalities and play them both in games got it ingrained in my mind about how to play alignments and how to play a role.
I suppose a second step to my learning to RP was in a NWN server. 4 different games per week, and I played the same LG fighter in each of them. It was no surprise when I became the highest level person on the server, which led to the retirement of said character. Playing that character that much really let me step into the personality of the character. Granted, it was the same exact personality as the LG paladin in the first part. Same name too.

OOOR, how to play an RPG, woulda been final fantasy 4/2 on my super nintendo. That one did a good job at resource management and such.

[DontEatRawHagis]

I had the Red Dwarf RPG and a new friend of mine watched the same show and played DND and was like, that looks sweet.

Her and I GMed tandem and proceded to pick up a group of 8+ people. Now we are down to her, her husband, I, and 3-4 friends.

[SimonMoon6]

I was around 12, so this must've been about 1981. An adult friend (a "big brother" from the organization "Big Brothers/Big Sisters") had been introduced to D&D, so he introduced "us" as well ("us" in this case being me and my sister). We went through module B1. I didn't understand everything. Heck, I couldn't even spell "chaotic" (as I had never encountered that word before). But I was hooked.

For my next birthday, I got the AD&D books, and I got my mom to make my birthday cake with an image of a beholder on it (though she gave it 13 eyestalks since I was turning 13).

[Jay R]

My college roommate was a wargamer - mostly Napoleonics and WW2, which didn't really interest me. But then one day he brought home a copy of Metagaming's Stellar Conquest. This was different; this was science fiction. So I started playing it.

A couple of weeks later he brought home this weird new game called Dungeons and Dragons, composed of three small pamphlets and five dice. The dice interested me far more than the game; I knew what the platonic solids were. I played the game once, and wasn't all that impressed. But by the second game, we had the first game supplement (Greyhawk) which introduced paladins and thieves, and made the combat system playable.

[Bulhakov]

The first small steps for me were the Talisman board game and the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

The first big step was at summer camp after the first year of high school a friend tried to sell me the idea of fantasy rpg though with no rulebooks and a very simplified system similar to Warhammer. All I remember was that I played a dwarf, another friend an elf archer, and we got hired in a tavern to investigate a missing caravan.

[draken50]

Started with Baldur's Gate. Then I played with a friend of a friend. Loved the imagination and the potential. All told I think I only played about 6 sessions, with like 3 different characters.

Once I moved, I got the 3.5 books, but it took a while to start. I eventually formed a group and tried to dm... and ran a crap game for a few sessions. Rinse and repeat with a few familiar faces from time to time, but mostly different players. Each game I'd go to run would be just a bit better than the last but still short lived. Made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I'm sure I'll make plenty more, but I think I've found my feet as a GM.

[Velaryon]

For my next birthday, I got the AD&D books, and I got my mom to make my birthday cake with an image of a beholder on it (though she gave it 13 eyestalks since I was turning 13).

That's awesome! You don't have a picture of the cake by any chance, do you?

My very first exposure to the idea of roleplaying was a little insert booklet of Vampire: the Masquerade that came with an issue of InQuest magazine I bought for the price guide on Magic cards back in 1997. I was 14 or so at the time, and for various reasons I never got to really try the game out (beyond a one-night session with myself and a friend where we mostly did lots of combat anyway).

I didn't really get into roleplaying games until college, when some new friends I had made were talking about starting a game and I asked if I could join. 3e was pretty new at the time, and several of the players were AD&D vets, so they mixed up rules a lot of the time. I was encouraged to come up with my character concept first and not worry about the rules until I knew what I wanted to play, while being gently warned away from spellcasters because they might be too complex for someone first starting the game. I liked the idea of a swordsman who fought based on speed and agility, and what I ended up with was a mostly non-functional half-elf Fighter with the Spring Attack feat chain, crummy stats, and who needed an artifact granting him regeneration 5 in order to survive any fight with a monster of about CR 5 or higher.

From them I got a lot of rules variants and misunderstandings that it took me years to learn weren't the way the game is actually played. Some of the bigger rules they either changed or simply got wrong were:

1. Rogues can only sneak attack once per round (some of them still think this).
2. Critical fumbles on attacks are a normal part of the rules.
3. If you start taking levels in a prestige class, you have to complete the class before you can take levels in anything else (no idea where they got this from).
4. You can get bonus XP for good roleplaying, but not if you roll your social skills. Literally, the DM took asking to roll your Diplomacy skill to mean that you weren't roleplaying and he would not listen if you tried to tell him you were trying to roleplay and roll your skill.

It took me years to break some of the bad habits they bred into me. It was still a fun game though.

[Jordan Cat]

D&D was something I knew about from general pop culture osmosis, and would have liked to play if anyone around was into that kinda thing.

Then I found OOTS and that increased my wish to play very much Looking around the forum led me to Pathfinder, which then told me about Pathfinder Society, which I learned had a group at my Local Gaming Shop that I never knew about.

Been playing almost a year now. A lot less then most folks here, but I've been enjoying it immensely.

[Rainman3769]

It was the summer of 1997, I was 13 and my grandma had bought me and my cousins this "weird" board game she saw while out shopping called "Hero Quest" We LOVED all the miniatures and set pieces and how one of us got to play against the other two. We played that game daily for weeks, it comepletely dominated that summer for us and we still talk about how much fun it was to this day.

A few years later one of my friends wanted us all to give that weird nerd game, Dungeons and Dragons, a try. I took one look at the art style of the 3.0 PHB and my wonderful memories of Hero Quest came rushing back. Without another word I said I was in. Been playing on and off ever since.

[sktarq]

My 7th Birthday. A friend had heard of DnD, even watched a game....so we started "playing" right there and then. Only later did we discover dice (we used "pick a number" and however far it was from the number in the DM's head was your roll) and rules etc. This was late in the "1e" rules. Actually using the books for more than just inspiration waited for 2e.

[LibraryOgre]

My first couple games blur in my memory, where I'm not sure which was which. We played at the house of my Senior Patrol Leader, Andy Nuxoll, on Yong-san Base, Seoul, South Korea. This would be about '89 or '90. I don't remember most of the other players, just my brother, Mike, and Andy's younger brother, Luke.

I was given two characters... a fighter and a magic-user. I cannot tell you for certain which edition it was. In one adventure (I suspect it was my first), we were fighting xvarts in a large cave, and my magic-user's sleep spell knocked out more of our party than it did the xvarts due to poor placement. I learned from that.

In what I believe was my second game, we were going through a dungeon of some sort... there were frequent doors, and it became a bit of a joke that EVERY TIME we opened a door, a flying dagger would attack and immediately get smacked down.

After that, my mom found my character sheets and forbade me to play. Didn't play again until we got to Louisiana and could play non-D&D RPGs, and effectively hide the D&D stuff. Soon thereafter, I started designing games, mostly using the ubiquitous d6s and based on After the Bomb or similar stuff.

[Krazzman]

First year in doing my A-Levels.
Had chemic class in another school due to shared schoolrooms.
The the son of a customer of my parents solarium sitting there.
Talk to him and add him on ICQ.
Talk and write some more.
Get invited to game.
See guy I knew distantly from tae-kwon-do there.
Play shadow run.
Next weekend meeting again.
Playing dnd.
Never really got pointers or advice. Got called power gamer a lot.

Yeah that's about it for me.

[GoblinGilmartin]

I originally thought my intro to roleplaying happened in early highschool. I simply wanted to learn how to play. I downloaded the books and read through with my best friend. We played just the two of us, me dming and GMPCing (even back then I realized it wouldn't be fair if my gmpc could solve everything by himself). Our first session ever is now referred to as "The Kool-Aid Man Game". It involved a monk, a stone wall, and Enlarge Person.

After thinking about it for a while, my real introduction happened in elementary school. A friend of mine was really into the Deltora Quest Books, and at the time I didn't even know that they existed, but on the bus home after school he would run me through a sort of CYOA with myself in the main character's shoes. I still remember how much it engaged my imagination at the time.

[mythmonster2]

My circle of friends in middle school played AD&D and invited me to play in one of their dad's campaign, based on LotR. However, it was very much a murderhobo and railroady game, but none of us really cared at the time. I really started roleplaying in late high school and early college, when I found other groups.

[Sajiri]

I am still learning I think :p I already knew about D&D and such since I loved playing Baldur's Gate when I was 11 or so and it first came out, but it wasnt until 3? 4? years ago when I was living overseas with my now husband that I actually started looking into the tabletop game. I was at home one day bored while he was at work and started going through his d&d books on the shelf trying to entertain myself. I was really only opening it up to look at the pictures, but ended up reading it for the next few hours until he got home. Then each day he went to work I'd pick up one of his books and just read it all day until he got back.

Was maybe another year though before I actually got to play in a game, reading about playing and actually playing are very different things

[SimonMoon6]

That's awesome! You don't have a picture of the cake by any chance, do you?

I do somewhere... unfortunately, I just moved, so it's somewhere in a box... in a room full of nothing but boxes. And I'm not sure exactly where it is, even if everything was unpacked.

After that, my mom found my character sheets and forbade me to play. Didn't play again until we got to Louisiana and could play non-D&D RPGs, and effectively hide the D&D stuff.

Ooh, ooh, I've got a "forbidden to play" story too!

I was in high school. My mom had already been somewhat wary of D&D after all the bad press it had. Then, my mom joined a cult. Seriously. And one of the priests (who became her only friend in the world) was convinced that there were many things wrong with D&D. His kids had the AD&D (1st edition since that's all there was then) books, but he had taken a black marker to the books and scratched through anything vaguely heretical, like all the demon and devil entries in the Monster Manual and so forth.

So, they had a special sit-down time with me where they tried to convince me that D&D was bad. But I was a sensible person and could counter their arguments. I even mentioned that what they were suggesting was tantamount to a book-burning, and the priest's wife laughed at the idea of a book burning, though concerned about the bad press that might bring.

So, regardless, I was "banned" from playing D&D. But... I could talk to my friends over the phone, and we could "sort of" play D&D that way. And then I went to college and she had no control over what I did after that.

[Nagash]

My stepdad tought me to play when I was 8ish, like 23 years ago.

I had been assigned to read the lord of the rings and mentioned to him that I was really liking it even though it wasnt what i usually read and he said that if i liked that I might like this game he played every week. So I gave it a try. It was a very adult game, Rated at least R, lol but I loved it and it got me hooked so I started running my own games for my friends in the neighborhood

[Earthwalker]

Reading this thread I have found it much more entertaining pretending the posts are speachs from people in a support group.

Kind of like

"Yeah Talisman was my gate way board game. It was good for a while but I just needed a bigger hit and so I soon started buying DnD books"

"My friends and family tried to get me to stop but I just couldn't give it up."

"I got into pathfinder from a pusher at my local game shop, it was good at first, they let me play for free. But then I soon needed to buy some books so I knew how it worked. As the weeks went by I needed more and more books."

Any way my first experiance with role playing was in college and playing 1e DnD. OMG I was such a rubbish GM. Soon I bought some modules and that helped give me some idea how things could go. Then soon after that switched to RuneQuest. I think I started playing properly at university, where I didn't have to GM and learned how it could be done correctly.

Oddly now I am back to running Shadowrun and DnD with Runequest no longer used.

[Jay R]

Reading this thread I have found it much more entertaining pretending the posts are speachs from people in a support group.

"Hi. I'm Jay, and I'm a role-player."

[Seto]

I got into roleplaying when I was twelve, on an Internet PbP full-rp (no crunch) Naruto-based forum.

One of my friends introduced me (and other friends) to Tabletop RPgames (namely D&D 3.5) three years and a half ago, because he liked it, wanted to teach us and we were interested. Then I found the manuals online and did a lot of reading, while continuing to have sessions with them.

[Amphetryon]

"Hi. I'm Jay, and I'm a role-player."

*everyone, in unison* "Hi, Jay."

[YossarianLives]

It all started about 6 years ago when I was house-sitting for a friend. It was 2008 so I suppose 4e had just come out. I knew nothing about d&d at the time. Anyway I read through there collection of 4e books. I mostly looked at the pictures and flavour text. However I suddenly had urge to play d&d. To go on a ADVENTURE! It was about 2 years before I actually found a group to play with (I play with the same one to this day) When we started out we had NO idea how to play. Thinking back it was actually really hilarious how little we knew. We all made characters using ths character generator. http://www.pathguy.com/cg35.htm We basically messed around had some fun and tried to figure out how spells worked.

We had a lot of fun

About a year ago we actually read through the SRD and now know how to play.

[calam]

I always liked roleplaying videogames games as well as card games like Magic: the gathering so you can say that I was already on that path. My dad even tried to encourage me into getting into it but I somehow thought that I could somehow become more geeky and socially awkward than someone who plays Magic in the cafeteria.

My sister got into the game first but at that point I still didn't want to play although it got me curious. I started reading about it (which is how I found Order of the Stick). By the time I started playing Neverwinter nights 2 I knew it was too late for me and decided to jump into D&D for real.

I first started playing D&D as a Dungeon Master despite that I never played a tabletop game before. This went as successfully as someone who never roleplayed before and the campaign crashed and burned pretty quickly. It's been about four years since then, I was the DM a couple more times but I only got to be a player last Summer

[Mastikator]

I was 16 and a friend of mine invited the gang to play, we said "sure" and our circle of friends became a gaming group.

[WrathMage]

The first small steps for me were the Talisman board game and the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Ah see these are the two tools which got me into RPGs too! I used to borrow a lot of Choose Your Own Adveture books from the library and loved them.
Then later when I was 13 I got hold of the Star Wars roleplaying game (West End Games D6) in about 1994, and went from there, running it mostly rather than playing. I eventually moved on to VtM, and D&D right about the time 3.0 debuted. Still plugging away running stuff 20 years later, and hope to be for at least 20 years more.

[Forrestfire]

When 3.0 came out, my dad saw the starter box (the orange one) and decided to pick it up and introduce me and my siblings to D&D. We all enjoyed it, and I ended up spending most or all of my birthday and Christmas money on D&D books, spending lots of time reading them cover to cover, and eventually taking part in forum discussions. Fourteen years later, my exposure to the game has shaped my life, my media preferences, and a lot of my exposure to various other nerdy things.

While I didn't have a group to play with most of the time, I made a lot of characters when I was little, to the point where sometimes I still find old sheets stashed away in moving boxes or cabinets.

[DireSickFish]

D&D for me started with BG2. I remember sitting on the floor of the wallmart reading the box over and over absolutely enthralled. Then I read fantasy books which lead me to R.A. Salvatore. I mentioned him to a kid in one of my classes in high school and swiftly got invited to play/host a game of D&D. I played a druid with a snake animal companion named Bob. We both died to an Umbarhulk.

Before all that I played some Hero Quest. I had a cousin who knew about RPG's and we'd play some sessions up north or in car rides. We used playing cards for randomization and the spell cards from Hero Quest as the spell casting power. It's weird to me now that my first RPG's were all home-brew free form stuff.

[Wytwyld]

My dad taught us first edition when brother (5), sister (3) and I (7) were kids, with our mom playing to give some guidance as to how to play.

Fun times, but we quickly had to move to an easier system. We ended up playing Hero's Quest.