D&D for me.

[Xavier Storm]

Dungeons & Dragons 'began' for me on Jan. 11th 1978 as a birthday present -(interestingly enough I was turning 11 on my b-day of 1/11 that year)- I remember vividly; admiring the cover art of the Red-Dragon & the adventurous interlopers to his lair, opening the brightly colored box & marvelling at the shiny new booklets & the then needle pointed plastic dice-set that slid out of the box almost luxuriously.
Ahhh, the "Blue-Book", & of course the lime green module: B-1 ("In search of the unknown"). Both still glossy & almost warm from the printers. My father was amazed & commented at; "...how little game you got for a whopping $10.00".
I recall not acknowledging the human commoner's babblings, as I was already involved, pouring over the strange sets of arcane numbers & mysterious, unfathomable tables & charts that dotted the NPC chapter towards the end of B-1
I spent the next several nights perusing the rules & making characters, I made about 4 initially & settled on a thief, then stealing a name from the list (again) in the back of B-1, I equipped, illustrated & devised a persona
After about a week my older cousin came to stay with us. The very cousin who had pointed me towards Tolkien & Moorcock & made me a fan (& had regaled me with tales of this 'boardless' game). It was he who had suggested it (the game) to my parents as a B-day present. Needless to say I spent the next three days Playing D&D, well 2 actually the 3rd was spent learning to DM with my cousin as teacher & as victim. These were my very 1st "all-nighters". By the time my cousin left, My thief was 3rd level & I was a fan, I began to take an interest in Dungeonmastering & using B-1 as a model began a "super" dungeon (I didn't even know how to DM yet, but I knew drawing maps & filling the results with handpicked monsters was fun) I played sporadically with my cousin (now usually with me as DM) but not often enough for me to not lose a little interest & kind of shelve the game through the summer. Then came 6th grade
....continued below

[clangador]

Interesting. You introduced me to D&D in '79 I believe. Ken was the first person who DMed me.

[Xavier Storm]

Exactly, 6th grade near the end of the year, you had Mrs.D (my homeroom teacher) for art. I shall continue:
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{continued from above}
.......Then came 6th grade. My teacher Mrs.D caught me with my 'Blue-Book' & confiscated it, relegating it to the backroom for the duration of the day. 'The backroom', where lurked Tim B., a strange highschooler who worked as a teachers assistant in part of an extra-credit H.S. program. He was the caretaker of all things confiscated as well. At days end Tim B's final responsibility was to return said items to thier owners , when it came my turn in the line he took me aside saying: "I saw your basic-book & the notes in it (creep), have you seen one of these?" & looking around firtively as if he were about to show me a kilo of heroin; He slid a large hardbound tome from his tattered book-bag, a Dungeons Masters Guide. I was speechless, I had never heard of such a thing, we talked there & later at the bus pick-up, exchanged phone #'s & he loaned me the DM's guide & a 2-sided photocopy (a rare & wonderous thing back in those days) of a TSR, AD&D 'Player Character Sheet'.
I couldn't get home fast enough.
Though I was fascinated & couldn't get enough of it, the DM's guide was useless to me (It was all he had on him at the time) so over the phone he coached me through the basic to advanced conversion for my thief, gave me an overview of the World of Greyhawk & D&D in general (which I had assumed was a new thing at the time- it was not, it had been around for years.) The next several days were spent under his tutelage, all freetime was spent absorbing ALL things TSR (& later Judges guild, GDW, Flying Buffalo, S.Jackson, etc.) We played some solo stuff, but soon. I was introduced to his 'group' of four & learned much. Enough I thought, to try this DM thing myself, at least with the 'Blue-Book'.
Enter: Ken, a 'sorta-friend' (oh how things change) who I could play D&D with "on the down-low" (these were the days when it wasn't 'coo'l to....ok it still isn't, n/m) I began DM'ng & that's what we did I DM'd Basic with Ken & my cousin (occasionally) & played AD&D with the "Big" kids like 2 times a month, then I started introducing it to others Chris & Mike E., Ray C & his brother Mike & several more, soon they each introduced a friend or 3, & all of a sudden we had games going on all the time at various places, for a solid 4 consecutive years Dugeons & Dragons was (or was close to being) central to my life & foremost in my thoughts most if not all days of any given week.
And over those years my simple "2nd story-man", the thief with the stolen name, rose & fell from glory & fame more than once, there were others (characters) of course, but none topped the longeveity, or the almost comical extremes of disasters & successes that hi-lited the exploits of that very first pre-teen adventurer that couldn't even afford lock-picks.
Though it's influence has waxed & waned over the following decades; Dungeons & Dragons & the cultural phenomena it spawned & legitimized, the social, personal & artistic bonds it created for me & many around me, will always be counted as a blessing.
Good Hunting
- R.M.F.

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