Day 1: First Time in the Dungeon

First Person who introduced me to D&D. Which edition? First Character?

My very first real rpg experience was actually a ‘Gamma World’ game. Some neighborhood friend ran a quick game where I played a cross between a wolf and an octopus. This would have been around ’87 or so.

But the first person to introduce me to D&D was me Mum. Growing up, I loved to read (still do) and she fed me a constant stream of books, including Ronald Dahl, which quickly lead to Lewis then Tolkien. Working at card shop, she would bring home comic books by the dozen (remember when comics were cheap?) which introduced me to Marvel`s Asgard and Kirby`s Fourth World. Those comics also had some pretty bodacious ads.

There was a stationary store in a local mall that used to sell the old Red and Blue Box sets (remember when that used to happen) and I’d sneak away to read the back covers over and over again. It was a while (for a ten year old) before my Mum caught on, but on Christmas morning ‘84 there was a 4^thed Red Box box under the tree.

I spent a while playing by myself, running the introductory adventure with different characters, I even adapted the D&D ‘Choose Your Own Adventures’ I got from the local second-hand book store so that I could role some dice. It was a few years before I knew anyone else who played. 

I went through a bunch of characters in those solo days, but the character I always came back to was a Halfling I dubbed Darkberry. To this day in my games, the Darkberry clan occupies a reputation in the Shires somewhat akin to that of the Black Donnelleys.