I dunno how you'd classify my story...

I was maybe 12 years old and around at a friends place and looking for something to do when I came across his D&D boxed set.  I asked him what it was.  

"It's some game."  He responded.  "But it doesn't seem to have a board.  I've never really played it."

"Well, I'm pretty bored... why don't we give it a go?"

And the rest is history.  So it was his game, but my initiative.  Between him, myself and another buddy, we worked things out.  Not always the right way, mind you... but we worked things out eventually

I picked "wandered into a game store and picked up a book" though that's only sort-of true. When I was a young child, I'd spend a lot of time over at a Portuguese woman's house, and her teenage son played [what I now realise was] D&D. I didn't really understand what was going on, and I didn't play, so it was confusing. Later on, I got taken into a book store in the US that carried game books, and insisted they buy me one - Palladium's TMNT game (I was somewhere between seven and nine, and the Ninja Turtles were the coolest thing ever). I was under the impression that it was a comic book, but I ended up sorting out in short order that it wasn't, and I was absolutely amazed at how it all worked.

Things spiraled from there, and sometime around age 10ish, I played a semi-freeform game loosely based on the D&D Cyclopedia with some school chums for a year. I was a fighter named "John" notable mainly for fighting a swarm of vicious polygons and becoming a were-bear. We all "cheated" tremendously and had great fun. I was one of the two main drivers in forming the group, the other being the DM, who had been told that D&D was a tool of Satan and was therefore intensely fascinated with it, since he had been interested in Satanism since about age six or so (well, that's the earliest I recall him expressing an interest in it). I've played off and on since then, and finally, towards the end of university, I found a stable group I could stick with.

A friend of mine into D&D told me I could play Star Wars or Star Trek with D&D.

One day, at Sears, I convinced my mom to buy me the Moldvay D&D Basic Set.

My friend then refused to play with me because I had "Basic" and not AD&D.  He never did explain how I was supposed to play Star Wars or Star Trek with it.

Do polls bump themselves every time someone votes? I've opened this thread at least five times today and it's always been Gabriel's post.

Because there are covers of the internets which still do not have this story crammed into them, I will relate it anew:

December 31, 1987.  I had recently returned from living in Mexico for 6 years, and had no idea what RPGS were.  None at all.  But Waldenbooks had these two books on the shelf, and they drew my eye for three good reasons:

• They were some sort of game that engaged your creativity;
• They said Star Wars on the cover; and
  
• Together they cost thirty bucks, amount which was burning a hole in my pocket that very damn minute.
  

Aaaaaand the hook was set.

I said "something else".

My folks were both SF and fantasy fans (Mom into Tolkien and Heavy Metal magazine, Dad into any movie with swordfighting), which got me into stuff like Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior.  I discovered Choose Your Own Adventure books at the school library and proceeded to consume them like so much white cheddar popcorn.

I asked for HeroQuest for my ninth birthday because it had a crazy-big barbarian on the cover.  I got it and played it like mad.  I got into Lone Wolf around that time.

I spent the next Christmas break beating Final Fantasy II with my best friend.  Then he asked his folks for the big box set of D&D that was at Toys R Us that year.

There's no single point of infection in there, no older brothers or comic shop owners who dropped me headfirst into the hobby.  There is, however, a long series of interrelated events that pushed me towards gaming

"Something Else"

I first played an RPG at the age of seven.  I played a samurai in a game of Bushido my cousin was showing myself and his younger sister (who was thin, maybe 16)...as well as using us for stand in since only one of his friends could come over.

Said friend looked exactly like Jesus on the cross to me in 1989.  I later that week watched them play D&D, there were about 5 people at the table, but Jesus ran the game...so my first memory of D&D has Jesus as the DM.

Also, when I was 11 or 12, I bought Prime Directive because I was into Star Trek and singlehandedly introduced every single friend I've had since to RPGs.  Some of them have since become hardcore gamers, some have moved on from begin hardcore gamers, and some never played more than once.

I had 9 years, and a cousin of mine allowed me to play D&D with his group after two weeks of constant pestering. I had read a D&D ad in the back of a D&D gamebook, and was a big fan of the D&D animated series. I started with the FF books right at that time.

I put in for "Invited by another gamer," since that's roughly what happened. . .when I was 12 or 13 a cool older kid took me over to his house after school and played a game with me. I had heard about roleplaying, oddly enough, not through Him, but through my Baptist Preacher dad who preached the Satanic evils of D&D. Since D&D was strictly verboten, the Cool Older Kid (COK) ran Marvel Super-Heroes. I was Spider-man, and I beat up Doc Ock. I went home giddy and raving about the whole thing to my brothers and friends. We started out making up our own RPG, a freeform Transformers-derived mindless robot slugfest, until one friend got copies of bot MSH and Middle Earth Roleplaying, and things took off from there.

Peace,
-Joel

It was 1983 or 1984, which means I was 13 or 14. I was on a church trip to Denton, Texas. The kids in our youth group stayed with the families of kids in the youth group of the church we were visiting. My host had been playing AD&D with his older brother for a little while. These kids had Greyhawk, and they'd taken the hexes on the map and blown them up *by hand* and expanded on the terrain features. They had cool miniatures. We stayed up until four in the morning talking about all the adventures they'd had. I learned words like Tiamat and Beholder. I was blown away!

I begged my mom for D&D, and she got me the basic set, which I then tried to inflict upon my brother on a camping trip. We didn't really know what we were doing. In fact, I don't think I really figured out D&D until late Jr. High, when I met up with some other RPGers, who had also tried to figure out things on their own. We put our heads together and were soon powergaming with the best of them

My brother played D&D and Cthuhlu with his mates in our front room and I hassled him ebnough to let me play. From then on got really into it and ended up GMing for them a couple of years later. never looked back really.

Now need to find a new gaming group since the move and start again.

Thanks
Frank