My older brothers, Joe and Jim.  I still remember the shopping trip from Saratoga to Albany to get the four core AD&D books (it meant the Basic and Expert books were mine!), hearing Jim's excited recounting of the githyanki mythos from FF, etc.

Joe and Jim were stuck babysitting me on holidays and summers as both of my parents worked, so they had to drag me along to their games.  In order to shut me up, they eventually let me run one of the party's henchmen.  From there it was all over.

I was perusing a catalog of a books and games my mother got in the mail in autumn 83, looking for what I would ask for Christmas. D&D Basic was in there and I didn't really understand what the game was. I thought it would be some kind of sophisticated boardgame, something like Risk but with nice figurines and a fantasy background. At first when I opened the wraper I was disappointed. What? No figurines? But then the funny looking dice caught my attention and I started reading. I guess the text was really good at conveying what the game was about because my friends and I played soon after without any tutoring.

My friend's neighbor steve (who was a year ahead of us in school) talked us into playing some science fiction RPG (to this day don't know what it was) in about 3rd grade.

I was actually the last to join in. My friend Greg kept talking about some game Steve had them playing that sounded like a video game or board game or something. Whatever it was, he said it was tons of fun. When I showed up at Steve's, I cringed when I saw the dice, papers and pencils. Looked like homework, not fun. Once things started I had a complete change of heard. I was hooked on the concept the moment I played.

He then later transitioned us into D&D.

Had to stop 5th through 6th grade, because my mother had concerns. But resumed in 7th. Been playing ever since.

Not a person, but the magazine rack of my local railway station - which had a mag with a barbarian type rescuing a scantilly clad maiden on the cover.

Welcome to White Dwarf and subsequently RPGs.

So, the railway station introduced me.

Myself, I would imagine. I saw some kids playing it at school in the playground and pestered them until one gave me their old Basic rulebook.

Seanchai

Some of my crewmates when I was in the Navy back in 1980

They kept telling me about it, and my response was "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard"

Then, one weekend I tried it. . .  been hooked since.  

I think I knew of them from visits to The Last Grenadier in L.A.... but really had no clue how they differed from boardgames/wargames (I was into miniatures long before the games they were meant for).
Some friends in High School introduced me more formally... a family with 5 boys, 1 girl and no TV set... all the kids read a lot and were very imaginative... getting invited to that first game was like entering a secret garden. I'd be surprised if any of them play anymore... which is sad.

Age 11, in the schoolyard. A mate was clutching some grubby homemade character sheet. I asked what it was and he asked me if I wanted to have a game. Only he and a small group of older metal heads played at the time - by the end of the week (or so it seemed) it all went viral.

I was 9, and my cousin Luis from Barcelona was studying at my hometown. I was into Choose your own adventure books (and the D&D ones, at that), and he saw them and told me that he and his peeps played Red Box D&D.

Then I pestered him until he let me into his group of 17 year old boys and girls

This was more than 25 years ago. Fuck, time flies when you have fun

Quote from: Nightfall;463729This guy:

:worship:
:rotfl:

..."Chainmail" 3ed. was my entry drug. Saw at bookstore and bought with my allowance. I think I was 10 or 11. Just found it interesting.
Then "Holmes" D&D Blue book.

:hmm:
Thinking back...seems I mucked about with "Blackmoore" and "Eldritch..." supp. before BD&D though I did not have the 3 basic books or Greyhawk!
First actual group play was BD&D.

I fell bass-ackwards into the hobby. I got a copy of the 1e Monster Manual, thinking that it was to fantasy monsters what the Terran Trade Authority books were to sci-fi stuff: a fictional "manual" of stats. I had no idea what Dungeons & Dragons was at the time, and only put 2 and 2 together after hearing friends talk about this weird game that had the mysterious stats I'd read about in the Monster Manual.

I don't know how I learned about them. It wasn't a person though, maybe t.v. or something. I do know that I bought my first stuff at Toys-R-Us. The Mentzer Basic and Expert sets with the original gray box of the Forgotten Realms. When my uncle found out that I bought those he gave me his old 1st Edition PHB, his set of dice, and a campaign log accessory.

That would be my parents, though I don't think they fully realized what they were unleashing on my sister and myself:

One find weekend in 1980 my folks took my sister (age 7) and myself (age 9) to a Kaybee Toys (or similar establishment that has long since gone out of business). Encouraged us to pick something up that was going to occupy our time and still look constructive....my sister grabbed "Dungeon" and I grabbed the Otus Red Box. Proceeded to pester my dad from around August through October to teach us how to play, as the Red Box seemed utterly cryptic (but my dad did try) while my sister and I quickly figured out Dungeon. In retrospect, we might have "figured it out" a bit more quickly if my dad had just handed the book over to us, but I think he buried it somewhere in his "to do" stack and there it remained until....

Then, on a business trip with my folks in October to Santa Fe, NM (they were professional artists) I wandered into a local privately owned toy and hobby shop off the Governor's Plaza and the gal who owned the place sold me a copy of Gamma World. Went back to my folks' show/event and picked a quiet corner, rapidly figured out what and how the game worked, then cornered my sister and her friends, made them roll up GW characters, and proceded to explore a post-apocalypse dungeon devised from the Hilton Hotel floorplans where we were staying, then an abandoned nuclear missile silo, and ended with a TPK involving the nuke going off. Good stuff.

As soon as I got home I grabbed the Red Box and proceded to run the Caves of Chaos, using pushpins on the map to track everyone's positions while mercilessly grinding my sister and her friends' characters through the TPK mill. I think by session two or three I realized that it was going to be a lot more fun for everyone, self included, if death wasn't the terminus of every game.

It kinda depends. Back in the mid/late '70's a friend of mine and I had gotten into the old Squad Leader game. In the back of the book was a "Create your own campaign" rules section. In those rules were a "Create Your Own Leader" rules in which you made a new Leader chit and added it to the setup. We were roleplaying and didn't know it at the time

For D&D, it was Gary Gygax! I was visiting my Mom in Charlottesville, Va and we used to watch independent Channel 20 from D.C. There was one of those goofy independent movie/weird stuff shows, the host's on air name was "Captain 20!" and he hosted movies and had different weird stuff on from time to time. One guest he had on was the G-Man himself! He was showing the Capt how an encounter went and had a couple of mini's on the table. They were rolling weird looking dice and talking about thinking about what to do to survive the encounter. When I got back to my Dad's house at the end of summer I was telling my friends about it and one of them said, "Yea, I know someone who plays that game!" We found a copy of the Red Box Basic rules, devoured them in a day and made up characters for this guy's next game. My first character was a Cleric, because that's what the group needed but after that I played nothing but Halflings, and Halfling Thieves when we switched to AD&D...

My Friends... We all already played war games. Got invited to go play Be a Guinea Pig / Test Subject for the College guys  a new type of game called Dungeons and Dragons.

p.s. Why isn't the vbulletin strikethrough code working?