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I was glancing at the favorite character thread and misread it as first character. I decided to start a thread relating to my misreading.
My first character was a human thief for the Red Box basic D&D set. It was the first time any of us had played so it took us an hour to put them together.
Once finished my thief, and my brothers' cleric and fighter walked up to the dungeon.
I fell in a pit trap and died at the entrance.
I started play 3.0 D&D, my first character was a Half elf Desert themed Druid. She was helping the party cross the desert as a guide.
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Great thread!
My first character was from 1980; he was the bastard son of a bastard son, and even though there were no Half Elves in the Red Box of which rule set he belonged to he was a Half Elf.
He was no Elrond though, far more Eric but with no angst, with a dash of Modred. He actually started at 2nd level because when I had made his character's background he had killed his father to take his title, lands and privileges (which I think is pretty dark to come out of 9 year olds imagination! And my 11 year old DM cleared it - so hey, it was game legal!
For his chracters name I chose to reuse the name I gave to my Star Wars recurring villain, which in turn I had created for my little acton figures games (this was pre TESB movie mind you) who was like the "Dark CFO/Treasurer of The Galactic Empire" (he was the guy who built super weapons for The Empire, not a brilliant engineer mind you, he was the money guy, proving that money is the root of all evil planet destroying battle stations ... boy I was a wierd kid).
His name of course, The Baron Arem Heshvaun.
First character was for Traveler itty bitty box set. Solomon Colt. Fifty something veteran Scout. I was an Andre Norton fan at the time and created lots of imaginary backstory for him. Curiously, I never played him. My step father bought Traveler. Read it with one of his friends, they decided they did not like the game. ( They did lots of Alpha/Omega space minatures ) He gave it to me and I read it. But the idea of "RPG's" never clicked. Nor had I ever seen one played. Character creation ... down pat. What to do with it once made...no clue.
Years later in middle school, I am riding my bike home with two new friends. They are arguing about which character is more powerful, Andy's Cleric... or John's Ranger. I enquired as to WTF they were speaking about. I was invited to the Ball State Student Center's Gaming club. Just watching ten minutes of first game BAM it all became clear.
AD&D became first game played, first character was Bosk, a dwarven fighter that upheld the tenants of good...by bashing bad. Died on a dock outside of a volcanic island fighting slavers.
Greg
Edit: My first game played was in the fall of 1981.
Auris Vector, human monk of Illmater. Wielded a spiked chain that he carried wrapped around his arms, which left him covered in scars from the constant cuts.
That campaign went nowhere, and he's been rewritten as a street urchin that joined the circus as an acrobat, developing a fighting style of his own out of his performance routine.
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While the first RPG product in my hands was the Red Box (Elmore cover) in 1992, my first character was in a Polish RPG game "Krzysztaly Czasu" (have fun spelling that out, germanic language speakers :P), who was a half-orc Guardsman. The game was a horrible gestalt of D&D, GURPS and Palladium mechanics. Suffice to say, my weapon did 150-200 slashing damage, 200-230 piercing damage against randomly determined hardness of target armor. How did we manage to play that without Excel is beyond me.
AD&D 2nd edition. I was 12.
First character was an elf wizard, either LE or NE, who started with a hippogriff mount and the Staff of the Magi and everything else my greedy little Monty Haul heart desired. (I was also, of course, the GM. I am pretty sure that I bought the original Tome of Magic solely so that I could go through it and assign all the cool stuff to my own PC.) I did not understand the rules at all. Thought that being a Level 3 caster meant that you got Level 3 spells, etc.
It's vaguely embarrassing to think back on that, but at least I was still a better GM than my brother, who had a swarm of giant bears materialize out of nowhere and eat the entire party after he got annoyed that they were too cheap to rent rooms at the local inn and camped in the street instead. So they got eaten by bears. All of them. Overnight.
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My introduction to the world of gaming happened when I was 11 back in the 80's at school on recess and a group of guys were talking about strange creatures, giants and dragons. I asked what they were talking about and soon enough I found my self invited to my first ADD game(1st ed).
I remember the funky dice , in the dim light of a basement they looked like strange shaped gems. Character creation was a blur, I wanted to play a ninja(go figure lol) not a class at the time. I ended up with a neutral evil human assassin. We had a very strange party of evil , two assassins and two cavaliers :)
Needless to say the game was a fun romp of slaying monsters (first one I encountered was a Rakasta(catman) and taking loot from the critters. It was monty haul, way way to much treasure etc but damn it was fun.
Soon after I purchased the books, Dice etc and well the rest is history!!
16 years ago...
System: DSA, The Black Eye or Realms of Arcania v2.0
Sarados el Tamelein
Human War Mage from the academy of Beilunk
Son of Nahema el Tamelein, one of the greatest sorceress of the world.
Later he became head of the grey mages (there are three generall "orders" in DSA black, grey and white).
Hmm...my first character, eh? Talk about a bloody mess...but I loved her nonetheless.
My first character was in 3.0, the summer before 3.5 came out. She was a half-elf fighter named Aurora, and was aiming to use two longswords when she hit about 4th level. Then she was going to splash some Wizard levels to fit the character I'd written up a few months prior, even though even I knew that it was a bad idea. She ended up dieing when the GM ran us into a trio of wild boars and an ogre when half of the party hadn't made it to the session. They ogre tried to keep us alive, but I died outright. Of course, we quickly found out that the GM was a jerk...I wasn't there for the final session, but I heard about it. The 2nd-4th level party ran into a succubus and her minions who slaughtered them. The GM packed up and left the room, and then never showed up the next week. I like to think that I learned what not to do from him.
I don't remember how long ago, but it was a standard sword and board human fighter in D&D 1st edition.
We had borrowed the 1st ed. book to check if we liked pen and paper rpg's. We did, so we soon bought our own 2nd edition AD&D books.
Been playing ever since :-)
It was some kind of homebrew built on 3.something and I was a pirate named William Nightingale. Some amalgamation of rogue/bard/fighter. No spells, but I had two single shot pistols and a cutlass. My partner was Darth Sidious. I'm not joking, that's exactly what he wanted and the GM let him have it.
In three game sessions, we killed the crews of two boats. But, I suspect because the GM didn't know how to work boats in, I wasn't allowed to sail or keep either of them (even to sell off).
Even so, I hope there is a Shackles AP at some point...
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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1980, my friend Chris High's very whimsical campaign. He insisted that in the Kingdom of Alfred, half the mem were named Alfred. Since none of the other PCs were, I decided I should be the token Alfred.
Alfred, the were-chicken thief. From a not-entirely-honorable lineage of were-chickens.
Chris decided that trained animals (three commands) would cost twice the base price. That made sense for dogs and horses, but did you know that in AD&D 1t Edition, chickens cost 3 copper a piece?
So for 30 gp, I could get 500 trained attack chickens. The clutch made Move Silently difficult, to be sure, but it was awfully effective at cleaning out rooms with monsters the rest of the party was afraid to fight. Displacer beasts are nasty when you're 3rd Level, wbut when the rooom is filled with chickens, their displacement doesn't do much good, and nothing can beat the action economy of 500 claw-claw-peck routines.
Led by a half-chicken / half-human monster who could only be struck with magic and silver.
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Five years ago, when I was 13, I started playing with D&D 3.5...I remember that I was playing a human paladin whick was quick to anger. In my first encounter, y party was going against gruop of Drows, and, thanks to two natural 20's, smite evil and my cleave feat, the first time I roled the dice for a battle I killed two drows at one. It was truly awesome.
Too bad the Paladin died three sessions from there!
I've told this story often, so I'll try to squoze it down to a smaller version:
In September 1985, I was back at college for what would become another year of wasted student loan money and academic endeavor. I lived off campus, but my best friend lived in the dorms. I was hanging out with him when a couple guys came in and asked to finish a game they'd started the night before. I started to leave, and they told me to hang out and play a character belonging to someone who couldn't make it that night. It was AD&D (they just called it D&D), and while I'd heard of the game and even knew a little about it, I'd never played.
So they handed me a character sheet with the name "Crusher" written on it. Crusher was a 4th level fighter. I stared at the numbers and terms, but they said, "Just do what we tell you, and you'll catch on." I did ask a lot of questions at first, but actually ended up being the party leader in that session; the other two guys just...anyway.
I survived the game and when Crusher's player announced he was dropping out of college, my friend (the DM) gave me his character sheet. I changed his name to Logan, changed his class to the NPC Bounty Hunter from Dragon Magazine, and played him for years.
The first character I actually created from scratch was an Anti-Paladin. But that is a tale for another time.
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Ah memories... My first character a charismatic rogue who took barbarian as his second level so he could rage when anyone hit him in the face, or touched his hair. The game was Eberron, and petered out after a few sessions, but I was hooked, lol. I wish I could recall his name... In 3.5 as I'm a relatively recent RPG convert.
My first DM was a kid vivisting a friend of mine for the summer. He had played, but didn't have all the rules straight for the first D&D hardbacks.
I built a hobbit wizard with a dog sized psuedo-dragon familiar he rode. I don'r remember his name, but he was probably a member of the Proudfoot family.
I remember fighting Umber Hulks and a strange rule that said the killing blow earned you all the experience from the monster.
By the end of the summer, we had retired our characters after becoming the only handful of survivors of a war on a neighboring continent.
I was glancing at the favorite character thread and misread it as first character. I decided to start a thread relating to my misreading.
My first character was a human thief for the Red Box basic D&D set. It was the first time any of us had played so it took us an hour to put them together.
Once finished my thief, and my brothers' cleric and fighter walked up to the dungeon.
I fell in a pit trap and died at the entrance.
I was 7-years-old and my dad had my brother and I role up a pair of Fighters in AD&D. My character died from arrow wounds as he charged into a Kobold den and became a pin cushion.
I've always been much more cautious since then.
Back in '80 or '81 in grade school I played Ansor the halfling, using the red box rules I picked up at Toys-R-Us at the mall for either my birthday or Christmas. (Hey, it was a long time ago.) I loved that character, we played almost every day at school and he made it all the way to 36th level, as we got later box sets then books as they came out. None of us knew what the heck we were doing, what a cleric was, or what "dexterity" meant. But we had fun.
I even survived adventuring with the dread Torture Paladins (DM didn't enforce those pesky moral restrictions on the class, and the players had surprisingly grim imaginations for 4th graders.) What they did to that poor hermit in Keep on the Borderlands was just *wrong*.
I'm with the group that can't remember. I know it was the red box and I think I was a fighter.
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Lief Stern the pregen fighter from Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh. I was recruited by my brother to play and they gave me a pregen fighter cause the two guys that played fighters in the group both didn't show.
My first created PC was a elven fight/magic user. I honestly can no longer remember her name Tazilinn or something like that.
I started playing right around 10 years ago, just after starting High School. Some new people I met at lunch one day (now my best and closest friends) were talking about playing, and invited me to join them.
The DMs (there were two) were big Drow fans, and so we ran a Drow campaign. We were all supposed to be from one noble house (Daernak, and 10 years later I still don't know if that's canon or they made it up).
My character was a Wizard named Shadar Daernak. I had a whole pile of random spells (we were level 12 and the GMs ruled I could have every spell in the game in my spellbook (it was just easier that way I guess)) and some really silly gear. I carried a quarterstaff with both ends enchanted (with shocking and frost, I think). I carried an iron cauldron and a block of cheese (I've always been one to go through the mundane items list thoroughly) in case I needed to fabricate a wall of iron reinforced cheese (yes, I know it doesn't work that way, now).
After one session, I was completely hooked. I grabbed one friend the next day, we both made level 1 characters (I made an Elven Wizard that later became an Arcane Archer), and I started DMing. I learned the rules as I went, and by the time that campaign ended we were level 12 and I had probably 12 players. Since then I've been the default GM for my group, whether I know the rules of the game or not (I GMed a Shadowrun campaign before I ever learned the rules, using one of the players to arbitrate).
My first character I simply can't recall anymore. But, as my memory serves at the time that I began playing D&D again after a long hiatus...
Khann Vilar - Minotaur, Fighter in 2nd edition. I had a lot of fun but stopped playing shortly after. A few years later I returned to the gaming table in 3.0...
Anktor - Dwarf, Fighter/ Barbarian/ Battlerager
Anktor was a ferocious, death dealing ball of complete reckless abandon. I loved it and I really got into playing that character. Since then I have played for the last 5 years and I've run a plethora of different races and classes.
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Grimaldus the Wizard in Heroquest!
At least that was the first player character I ever got so emotionally attached to I started coming up with stories for him.
Captain Blackthorn of the Empire from the Empire/Pirates Legos! Gosh, what was I then, 14, 15? My younger brother got to play the Pirates. I don't remember which one was the main one. I remember that so vividly because the combat system worked like a dream... Dice were used for hand to hand combat, but the rifles and cannons were a blast! Put a pencil point at the end of the gun, close your eyes, and draw an invisible line to whatever you're aiming at. About 60% of the time, the shot went wide... but hey, firearms in the 18th century weren't that great you know.
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Bungo Harfoot (yes, I was in middle school and laughed about his name).
Halfling Fighter in 2nd edition.
We played a bunch of short games. I survived our groups final group kill off because I was slower than everyone else. He was not a glamorous character. It was nice when I finally got to play 3.0, as my gaming experiences prior were short or limited to computer games.
As with most German players who started to play rpgs in the middle of the 80s, my first game was "The Dark Eye" (in German: Das Schwarze Auge), my character a strong, good looking "Streuner" (sth. like a mixture of rogue/fighter) named Sohoe Ripper from the legendary city of Al'Anfa. I think I was 13 years old.
In the city I lived back then, DSA was the only game available at the time. After playing for around two years we started to become unsatisfied with the system and the game world and began creating our own stuff and exploring american and english systems (Runequest, AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer, MERP...)
First character I ever played was an REF Military Specialist in Robotech. I don't remember what his name was, but his call sign was "Ponderosa", and his mecha of choice was a restored VHT. He made it to 7th level before the game ended.
My best friend I've known since 3rd grade had talked me into that game, as he'd been playing DnD, but I would not join him becasue I erroneously believed it was "evil" at the time. I was 19 before I gave RPG's a shot, and 21 before I tried DnD.
I owe him a great debt, as this is my first, best love as far as hobbies go. Well, that and Legos :)
I was glancing at the favorite character thread and misread it as first character. I decided to start a thread relating to my misreading.
Cool.
This is a story that never gets old:
My first character was a first level human fighter (two-handed sword) under 2nd edition. In our first adventure, we went into a haunted castle, where I found a magic sword. In the next encounter, we discovered, rather quickly, that it was a two-handed sword of berserking. I killed the enemies. I killed the reinforcements. I killed the evil undead baron. Here's where it got bad.
I killed the party. All of them. They were kind of disappointed in that.
By that point, messengers from the castle had run down to the village a mile down the road and reinforcements for the evil baron began slowly filing up the road. I killed them, too. By this point, the DM looked like he was about to explode. I had absolutely trainwrecked his poor campaign ideas, all because of a cursed sword he planted.
I finally died about a hundred yards outside of town due to arrow fire, shot down right after killing yet another squad of soldiers.
My first Character, as a player, was Thomas Glint. A LE Rogue/Assassin with a hatred of Wizards, not all arcane casters, just Wizards. His back story was that early in his career he attempted to rob a Wizard. During the subsequent battle, Thomas dodged an Acid Arrow, but unfortunately it passed close to the right side of his face and burned it badly. Consequently, he now wears a golden (phantom of the opera syle) mask that lets him use Disguise Self 1/Day at Min CL.
Other quirks of his personal code:
Doesn't kill unarmed opponents
Will kill for a womans honor, except if they're Wizards.
My first character was a 3.0 rogue, Llwaran Kirunin. Our game went from level 1-20, a truly epic campaign. We still have many of the PCs from that game make guest appearances in our group.
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My first character was Garrett Duskdragon, a human ranger that I rolled up for 1st edition AD&D. I had played previously but had always used pregen characters so I never really counted them as being mine. Garrett was raised in a small forest village and after a remarkable adventuring career (a five year campaign that is the longest I have ever played in) he and his one true love (the party's NPC elven cavalier) returned to the village where he became the lord and mayor. Later I began playing in a campaign that lasted about three years and in that campaign I played Siloquai Duskdragon, who is Garrett's half-elven daughter.
My first character was an elven ranger called Elaine of Browind. Every bow he had he broke at least once, he fell off everything and never saw or heard a thing in his entire carear.
Ah, yes! Excellent postings. A year after the Centennial I found myself cuddling a box set called; Blackmoor. I assembled nearby friends to join me in character creation. The dice tell the story and I rolled up a human fighter with zero personality.
He died a pathetic death in some unknown region of Blackmoor.
Cherrio!
I started as a DM with the D&D box set (Holmes edition) and didn't get to play a character until '86 (that's what? Seven years?) with 1e. Dwarf fighter/thief. Solo adventure, third level below ground, forgot just one time to check for traps. Great moments in bad timing. Dumped into a pit and left to starve.
Didn't play a character again until 2010.
I'd just started high-school in 1981 (30 years ago, sheesh!) and a kid from America whose dad worked at one of the local American Air Force bases was in my class. He introduced me and my mates to a quick game of Traveller (never really got into it) and then started up a AD&D campaign. This was 1st edition, those books seem so thin these days. My character was Malico, a Magic-User who made it up to 13th level after playing constantly (every lunch break, weekend sleep-overs, school holidays) before being blasted by a Red Dragon. This was not the end of him however as I just decided he'd been thrown into another dimension when his Staff of the Magi blew up and is now a NPC in my own campagn world.
Just about to start a group of novice players off on the great journey this Friday and I just hope that if they have a fraction of the enjoyment that I have had with this hobby then we'll have a great time.
Thanks Tom Kozemplik (DM Extraordinaire), wherever you are.
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My first character was on the Freeform RPG boards on an old internet game called "Ambar: War of the Elements". His name was Darkwind, a Slythe Rogue, with a pair of grappling hookshots mounted on each arm and a penchant for shadow magic.
My first table top character (that I remember) was in 3.0. A gestalt human fighter/rogue named Cap'n Jim Kidd. A pirate who lost his boat to a huge multi-tentacled sea monster and was captured by a group of religious fascist LG types. Unfortunately that campaign ended because the GM had the attention span of a small dog. I'm sad that I never got to finish his story...
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Back in...1979 or 80? I was 10 or 11. I can't remember the actually first character, since there were some no-name guys (They tended to die, the DM,Mark, liked to pull badass monsters...) before we got an actual campaign sort of thing semi-down. Elf (In basic it was just...Elf , an auto F/M-U.
Legolas... Mark would DM and play Gimli, a Dwarf (Again Race as Class).
We incorporated Hawk the Slayer,Sword & the Sorcerer, and especially Flash Gordon...we had Hawkmen, used bizarre made-up rules for mass combat, and we would use Playboy Centerfold pics for the NPC girls (Hehe) 'The Nymph looks like THIS (Pulls out July 81 or whatever...). That was a magic all it's own for a 12 year old.
First real character, once we got the game down, was Talon, Human Ranger in AD&D. I had a +1 Broadsword (Remember how Broadswords just sucked...compared to Longswords?) up until Lvl 13, when I stopped playing him...Because my older brother was a great artist, and he would draw out all of these weapons,and let you RP out the weapon shop encounter. Some weapons were magic, some Quality non magic pluses (Master Worked), some would be a neg to hit, but do better damage, crude, but with jagged blades etc...All pretty cool for 1981...
After that, I was usually the DM, but I had a second fave old guy,Human Fighter (Norse, followed Heimdall) named Acroyear. Yes, like the Micronaut. the Knight of the Azure Rose, a Cavalier, from when they came out in Dragon.
My Brother rolled a human fighter, named him 'Ugg'. He rolled in order, 18...00%, Legit. And a 3 Charisma. He picked an Orc miniature for him, since he was SO Ugly (Thus the name as well...supposedly the first thing his father said, upon spotting the wee little ugly thing)That was a funny character to DM. He'd frequently 'help' people, butting in, breaking things. My little sister had Kiri, an Elf (F/M-U), named after Olivia Newton John's character in Xanadu (Kira,a little different spelling). Rode a unicorn (She was 8), we made sure that she never got killed, and my little sister just played along, drew pictures of her elf (With huge goofy ears)rode her Unicorn and said smartass things to Aggro Dragons etc...that would them attack the rest of us.
My Mom: 'Ronny, make sure Krista's character doesn't get eaten by a Dragon or anything... Oh, and I stopped by McDonald's for you guys, have a fun game' She was the best (RIP Mom).
It was really fun playing as siblings, my cousin would play as well.
My first character of the new era of D&D in 3.0 was Finnegan Mac Morn, Human Fighter (Was going to be a F/Rogue sort)...i played him exactly once, then became the DM.
:D
-Uriel
I'm with the group that can't remember. I know it was the red box and I think I was a fighter.
I think I made a fighter with a sword and a shield using the Basic Set around 83 or 84. I can't remember his name. He died during recess when we played on the blacktop next to the school.
My first character that I can remember was from my first AD&D game not to much longer after that at the YMCA D&D Club. His name was Zarth Wolfen and he was a paladin in Plate Mail and had a Bastard Sword. I barely understood what a paladin was. I think we explored the "Temple of Ra" Judges Guild module. Good times.
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Wow, my first character was back in the 80's DnD (1st Ed). High Elf CG Fighter named Sem Quest. I only got him up to lvl 5, then became a little bit disinterested in the game, was young and more into outside activities.
I later came back to the same game 2 yrs later and continued with the Fighter path with a Human CG Fighter with the name Nanoc. Yep I was into Conan movies big time!
Those were some fun games. :D
Back in about 1986 a friend and I finally could track down a fantasy store here in Germany (Mannheim area).
We bought the brand new german versions of the AD&D handbooks (the ones with the orange backs).
My friend wanted to DM so I rolled up a Dwarven Fighter. My first roll was for Str and we rolled 3d6 - 6,6,6 - I was delighted to say the least. Then I was informed that I could roll percentile for extra Str and I rolled a "0" for the first and a "0" for the second digit - a 18-00 Strength - awesome!
Alas the dwarf perished not long afterwards in securing the withdrawal of the other PCs in the Adventure "Under Ilefarn".
I got into tabletop gaming fairly recently, actually, so my first character isn't even a year old! The secretary of my school's gaming club was planning on running the 3.5 Red Hand of Doom module using the Pathfinder system and was looking for people to fill out the party and since I've wanted to learn tabletop for years I asked if I could join. So he helped me roll up a dwarf fighter (who I named Sigurd) to be the party Tank and was very patient with my confused flailing and I ended up loving Pathfinder muchly. We're still playing the RHoD campaign, actually, since he only runs it when school is in session.
Sigurd--or Siggi as I've been calling her--ended up taking on a life of her own starting from the second session. I had some rather strict notions of what Lawful Good meant when starting out, so when the Chaotic Neutral sorcerer of the party ended up killing our captives I got all Paladin-ish on him and and he wanted to know why, if my character had been supposedly been fighting so long as to have reached fifth level, I was so innocent of "real" combat. So I ended up coming up with this whole backstory about how the Dwarven city she came from had been at peace for generations, so instead of training soldier and warriors it instead had a lot of tournament fighting and that Siggi had been the local champion until last year and that this was actually her first real adventure.
And after that she just kind of evolved into this really girly, genki character who might be wearing leather and chainmail and carrying a big, sharp axe, but by gum it was all color-coordinated! She still writes her parents almost every other night and sends part of her loot home and her best friends in the party are the elf and the half-orc.
lol; not sure I remember his name; was a dwarf; blue box edition of D&D; rolled with chits in a dixie cup over our head as we had no polyhedral dice and didnt know where to get any; this is back about 1980. I was the strongest in the party with a 14 strength hehe. Whew; I cant come up with the name; but was Christmas afternoon; my fried Tim had just gotten the box set as a Xmas present; so we all made up characters and played; was my first gaming experience so many many years ago.