Tell us about your First Table top Roleplaying charcter

[aeroth001]

Please keep these going. They are fun to read..

They sure are. I am checking this topic a few times a day allready ))

[leonardvi]

My first character was a dwarf warrior I made when I was like 10. I was playing with family, so it was a pretty secure and tolerant environment. My aunt, the DM, basically gave me a list of good dwarven names so rather than just pick one I kept the list and just gave a new name every time I was asked. He was notoriously unlucky despite being a fairly competent fighter and had the smarts to be able to stand back and point out little things wrong with what the party was doing though nobody ever seemed to listen until it was too late. Of course, he'd wade in anyway to rescue the cleric that saved him from a bunch of angry bitey horses when he first joined the party.

Ah, memories.

[jadescimitar]

Started playing back in 1983 with a male elven wizard named Torm. Played him for a few years and he spectacularly met his end casting a fireball in a cave fighting drow in the Underdark, the fireball pretty much filled the cave and incinerated everything inside!

[lissaanne]

My first pnp character was a female elven ranger, I had no idea what I was doing so the DM, a childhood friend, rolled all her stats for me. She ended up with the lowest charisma anyone in the party had ever seen and just after our first dungeon raid she tripped head first into a sentient bush which then wrapped around her and refused to let go while doing constant low level damage. The DM made me roll to see if removing said bush from her person would be successful, unfortunately for the poor girl I had terrible luck rolling dice for the entire campaign. The rest of our group lost interest in the game before she managed to extract herself or plan b was to make the bush a companion, 'twould have been an epic companion.

[chili1179]

My first was a fighter named Graegos (no last name)

He was adopted as a baby by a member of the military and raised to also be a member. After 5 years of service he joined an adventuring party to explore the wild lands to sew his wild oats so to say.

I played him for about a year as my main PC while I was not a DM and occasionally as a DM character on adventures with his friends when he had free time.

When I became a regular/full time DM I had him rejoining the military and fighting in an ongoing war, thus taking him out of rotation with the group. In this war he became a great leader while his friends (my player's group) still explored the lands for adventure, occasionally crossing paths with the character but never adventuring with him (he would give them side missions as he fought the war directly with the military)

This character eventually fell in battle and was raised by a lich to fight for the very enemy he was fighting to stop and thus becoming the main antagonist in my sessions against his former friends as they were destined to destroy the evil that plagued the campaign world.

Although the players did eventually help to drive back and defeat the group of Wizards heading up the war, they never defeated the lich nor put their friend to rest and his (and the lich's) whereabouts became unknown and never returned during our gaming sessions. It was planned but all good things come to an end, including my almost 5 year steady D&D group.

[fullmetalpope]

I started playing in 4th grade (1983) with three other friends and we played the same campaign until we graduated highschool. In highschool we expanded to six players. We rotated between D&D and AD&D 1st edition. I played the same Cleric the entire time and we made it to the mid level thirty range. Yes our DM was stingy on the exp although I do appreciate that now. We never knew our current HP because he took care of that. We used miniatures, supplements from dungeon and dragon magazines and the good ole fashioned pewter miniatures.

God I miss those days! I just spent the past hours looking through my five banana boxes of books and miniatures. It brings back alot of old memories!

[hamete]

I don't remember my first exactly. Back in high school we made an awful attempt at a tabletop game.. during lunch.. with no table.. or character sheets really. But I do remember my first constructed and seriously thought out character. It was a couple of years ago when I made him for 4th edition.

Xordan- the razorclaw monk. As a foundling, Xordan had an innate curiosity in his own past and would imagine himself to be the child of a great tribal warrior who was exiled due to the jealous chief. Unable to support his child, Xordan assumed his father gave him to the monastery in order to grow strong. Excelling in the martial arts, Xordan spent his extra time reading old history books, delighting the tales of past adventurers. He longed to discover lost ruins and delver into their secrets. In time he left into the world where he joined up with an Adventuring Company known as Lost Words.

The company would search for artifacts on commission and recover priceless trinkets for safe keeping. He partnered up with a Longtooth shifter named Dawn, who despite being mildly unstable in the mind, was a good friend. Finding himself, the voice of reason within the party, he eventually was promoted to a liaison in the underdark city of Seven Pillar Hall. (this is where his story as a player character ends.)

In a later adventure, I introduced another monk Sparrow. Sparrow was Xordan's Daughter. Born of Xordan and a human Sorceress specializing in Water and Wind, Sparrow followed her father's footsteps. She searched ancient ruins and battled monsters in order to recover and preserve hidden artifacts (magical or not). Part of a secret society of Treasure hunters, various monstaries supported by her father would have hidden vaults to protect the artifacts and hide them away from dangerous individuals.

I won't bore you anymore with her story but I can explain more about if if you guys would like.

[hamete]

I wanna bump this mostly cause I don't want to be the last one to say something on here! Makes me feel like I killed the readers

[ryger5]

I've already talked about my first character, but to keep the thread going I feel this story is in the same spirit.

So here goes a small tale about the very first time I bought the D&D basic box (the blue one with the red dragon hoarding his treasure):

It was spring of 1980. I was 13.

It was a difficult time. My father had been promoted within the ranks of CBC but had to move to Toronto to receive the promotion. We were stuck in Calgary, having a hard time selling the house and also finishing up school for the year before we transferred. I had not seen my father since Christmas when we visited him in Toronto. He was living in a small apartment at Church & Wellesely.

My Dad gave us a little pocket money and I used some of it to buy the box set. I had wanted to buy it in Calgary earlier, but had visited several hobby stores and could not find it.

But I stumbled into a game/hobby store called Gameway's Ark.

If you know Toronto and you are a gamer of a certain age, you know what Gameway's Ark is and what an incredible bastion it was for all things deliciously nerdy and cool.

The store had four floors. The first floor was in the basement, it was toy models, balsa planes, those cool Tamiya models we all built as kids and of course radio control models and toys. The second floor was basic games, toys and puzzles. It was the "mainstream" floor, where you could find Ker-Plunk, Sorry, Connect 4, Monopoly etc. etc.

The third floor was dedicated to the growing field of RPGs and war gaming.

It was a paradise of amazing games.

It was also the favorite floor of the staff, who seemed to be always shopping, browsing their own inventory, and eagerly discussing new games. The late 70's and early 80's were really the renaissance of RPGs, (peaking probably around 1983 or so). I was 13, my eyes were wide, I felt I had entered into something that would pre-occupy me as a hobby for the rest of my days.

Now, 33 years later, I was clearly right.

But it was the fourth floor that is the capper.

The fourth floor was a large empty warehouse. But they carpeted it and painted the walls black. They began to build (and completed) a full-size replica of the Star Trek bridge at the back of the room. I was told, they combined Star Fleet Battles with LARP on the set. I was told it was "18 and over" to join the club that did this. So I never actually got to see it live, but the set was amazing, and every detail was lovingly recreated.

In another section of this warehouse, was a MASSIVE map of Europe, with some kind of Napoleonic campaign going on. There were weather charts, turn phase charts and it looked to me like there was Russia, Prussia, France, Spain and England included as players. France was winning, I could tell that and there was just a MASSIVE amount of pieces deep into Russia, but it also looked like Russia was rallying and English forces were coalescing with Prussian forces to launch a counter strike.

This table, was bigger than most ping-pong tables. They needed little sticks to actually move the pieces at the center of the board.

Finally, the centerpiece of the room were gaming tables. These tables had embedded in them, fully laminated hexagon patterns, providing a fast, clean surface to play any miniature game you wanted. Here were several huddled groups of people, each playing their own iteration of D&D.

It was just an amazing sight and of course, I was sold on D&D as a result. Which means I was already into the game, before I even opened the starter box I had just bought.

One more anecdote for the finale. I opened my box and received the "B1 - In Search of the Unknown" module and the rule book and some fairly crappy, soft plastic dice (if you remember old dice that came in the starter, you know what I am talking about). The rule book was amazing and I devoured it instantly. The module however was junk. It had, a urine-yellow cover and some very banal flavor text on the back. It was also really just a very boring map and a list of encounters, that you could easily have derived from the starter book.

It wasn't even keyed, you had to key the whole thing yourself.



I did what it asked and began to key the thing and then coerced my brother to play. He chose "Pendor" a Halfing in the book that came with pre-rolled stats, he knocked off a few Orcs, we made him second level, but we both agreed, it was time to start designing our own adventures!

Fast forward a year later. I am now living in Toronto.

The same Gameway's Ark was having a competition. It was a fairly unique one. Most D&D competitions gave each DM the same exact adventure, and players were judged by specific accomplishments in the adventure and GMs were judged by player feedback. This one was different. This one GMs were instructed to come up with their own short adventure that could be played in 4 to 5 hours. GMs would be judged by their players and players would be judged by their GMs and a special player at each table, that was both a player and a judge. This player/judge would also help judge the quality of the GMs adventure.

I wanted into that competition as a GM!

The problem was two-fold, they had a "18 or over" policy and they had 6 party slots and all 6 were taken up. I was upset. I had prepared for this competition! I was ready!

Luckily one of the employees not only knew me, he had hung out on a session I had GM'd on a casual night at Gameway's Ark. He saw I was mature, he saw I was a fair GM and he advocated for me. They agreed to cobble together a 7th party and had just enough "waiting list" players to do it.

I came in second that day as a GM!

Now, cynics would tell you I was given second because I was just 14 and they felt sorry for me. I am sure part of that is true. But I will also tell you, we were laughing and having a ball at our table. I can also tell you some of the players last night asked me to continue the campaign. So I must have done something right. It's one of my proudest moments with D&D.

By the way, I won a ten dollar store credit and a little lapel pin badge.

But that's not the real story with the competition. The real "prize" for the night was I was heading back home to middle-class Port Credit on the GO Train after I won second place. I was carrying all my books and D&D gear in a big, ugly plastic briefcase. Now I was at a new high school, after having moved to Toronto. I was having a hard time making friends.

I was also accelerated one grade in a few subjects, particularly English, Math and Music. So all the kids in those classes were a year older than me. If anyone remembers high school, that one year often made a huge difference, in terms of size, maturity and social grace. So I was, quite frankly, intimidated.

A few of my classmates in music happened to be at the GO Station that night. They saw me, I was the younger, nerdy Oboe player who got accelerated one year. Some dork from Calgary that nobody knew or really cared to know. I was also holding this massive, plastic briefcase.

They could not resist making fun of me. So they teased me, mocked me a little. Nothing outlandishly mean, just basic hazing you get at age 14.

Then they asked what was in my briefcase.

I was nervous. I felt for sure if I showed them, I would just get teased more. So I was hesitant to show them at first. Which of course, only made them want to see what was inside more.

So they grabbed the case and opened it for themselves. They saw my Monster Manual, DMs guide, DMs screen, my big Crown Royal bag of dice and my carefully foamed cardboard boxes of Ral Partha miniatures.

"You play D&D?", they asked.

"Yes well I DM mostly, I mostly DM," I said. "A Dungeon Master they call it, it's when..."

"Oh we know what a DM is," someone replied enthusiastically.

We spent the entire train ride together, talking about D&D. It turns out they all played. They not only all played, but their favorite DM had just moved away to California. They were stuck without a DM and were looking for a campaign to play in. Not only that, one of the guys had this cool room above the garage called the "loft" that had this perfect isolated gaming table, as well as a stereo and a space heater in which to play.

That forged a friendship instantly.

I not only became great friends with those guys throughout high school, I remain good friends with almost all of them to this day.

D&D touches our lives.

It's a hobby that is easily mocked (and often for good reason). It's a hobby that is sometimes even demonized.

To me, it's one of the most creative hobbies you can ever indulge in. It also touches our lives. It builds friendships, it expands our imaginations and because it relies centrally on team work and collaboration, sets up social and even business skills that are invaluable.

I wrote this huge piece of babble for a few reasons:

1. To show how D&D touches us all.
2. To recant a tale about our first D&D experiences (the theme of the thread)
3. To also highlight the great, amazing store that was Gameway's Ark. If you lived in Toronto in the early 80's you know the store. You know how magical it was. It touched so many lives. Sadly, that building now is a Wendy's and the fourth floor, (with the Star Trek set and the gaming tables) is now a tacky fitness gym.

God bless Gameway's Ark.

God bless your local gaming store. If you are lucky to have one, do your best to support them, they are a dying, but invaluable treasure. They touched my life in ways I am still grateful for.

[saberhagen1]

At least I don't feel so old anymore.

My first character was Justacar (Yes I didn't even realize it when I wrote it down). He was a Cavalier looking to make a name for himself by doing adventures in the neighboring villages. This was back in 1986. We had a group of 6 people that we played with back them. The guys always mocked my name for the longest time. I played with a major of the group till out DM went to U of M. After that I took over being the GM and make Justacar run into a pack of undead and needless to say did not live to tell the table. Those where some of my best memory as a kid and even to this day me and one of our orginal members still get together at least once of month but we have evolved the game to space but still use swords and other "medival type" equipment but with some added fun. My friend does that DMing now and I have enjoyed our version of the old D & D. I know of lot of this is off topic but when I was reading though the thread it brought back alot of old memories. You see we didn't buy the adventure packs, we made our own. We even devoloped a system that determined where you hit someone when you fight. Fun times.