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Here we go:
REVERB GAMERS 2012, #1: What was your first roleplaying experience? Who introduced you to it? How did that introduction shape the gamer you’ve become? (Courtesy of Atlas Games. Visit their web site at www.atlas-games.com)
I was first introduced to gaming by Troy Haney, the only other kid other than my brother in my childhood neighborhood* when I was in, I think, 4th grade (so around 1982 or 83). Troy had only played D&D once and didn’t have any of the books, so the first few games weren’t exactly “by the book.” He remembered something like 4 out of the 6 stats, and we each chose a Class and Alignment, but things like Hit Points and Armor Class didn’t come up. Except for one trap, the game was mostly combat, which was resolved by rolling a 6-sided die (we didn’t have any of the weird polyhedrals yet). If I remember correctly, a 1-3 missed, a 4 or 5 wounded the opponent (two wounds got you a kill), and a 6 was a kill.
Eventually we got Troy’s GM, Chris Wood, who actually owned a module or two (though I don’t think he had any of the core rulebooks yet at this point), to run a game for us (Descent into the Depths of the Earth), which was probably my first game that more-or-less used the actual rules of the game. It was from Chris that I found out that the local Boy Scout troop played D&D on camping trips, which was the initial reason I got involved in scouting.** I also saved up my allowance for a few months (I think I got $1 or $2 a week) to buy the $12 D&D Basic Set (the old red box with the Erol Otis cover and holes punched along one side so you could put it in a 3-ring binder) and have been gaming ever since.
I suspect that those early games where we didn’t really know the rules and didn’t really care led me to eventually come to prefer rules-light games.
*I lived in the boonies, so by “neighborhood,” I mean “three houses that were within a mile of one another.”
**I eventually became an Eagle scout, insuring that for the rest of my life people will overestimate my ability to tie knots. I also learned the hard way that even the 3 core rulebooks from D&D get really damned heavy when carried in a backpack for 10 miles.
