D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge, Day 1

Let's see if I can keep this up the entire month... I'm guessing by my past history that no, likely not. Worth a shot though.

First person who introduced you to D&D? Which edition? Your first character?

Introduced in this case is different from who had "told" me about Dungeons and Dragons. Briefly speaking, the person who "told" me about Dungeons and Dragons had also introduced me to playing miniatures wargaming when I was in grade school. He knew I loved Lord of the Rings, so thought that I might like a game that he and his more serious game compadres were looking into called "Chainmail". He gave me a small box of lizard men to paint and I was immediately taken with the odd creatures.

But I never played the game. And it wasn't until about a year later, 7th grade to be precise, that I met my future best friend. We were sitting in the gymnasium at lunch and he asked me if I'd like to try a game called Dungeons and Dragons. It sounded cool, so I said sure, why not.

The next day he brought me the AD&D Players Handbook. (I think this was about 1977, if I'm remembering correctly.) I was taken aback. I had played plenty of Avalon Hill bookshelf games and thought that THOSE rules were intricate and long. Boy, was I wrong.

Nonetheless, I took them home and did my best at trying to figure things out over the next few days in preparation to playing. Needless to say, I got the basic concept of class, race and things like that. I couldn't make heads nor tails of nearly anything else though. I was absolutely confused regarding this "level" concept. Spells? Ha! I had no idea, but man were they COOL! I loved paging through them and reading the descriptions. Trampier's art seemed to spark fires in my imagination. The whole thing was confusing, but I didn't care one whit. It was love at first sight.

It was the ranger though that really caught my attention. Here was Aragorn! 

That was my first character. A ranger. I don't remember his name right off hand. I don't even remember if I rolled him up fairly. I kind of doubt it, but nevertheless, my buddy let me keep him. 

He lasted all of one session. But that's a story for another post.

Here is the list of the next 27 posts... I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It's been a long while since I've written. I'm WAY out of practice. But this sounds like a lot of fun.

We out.