Goodman Games

I started playing in middle school around 1978. I got a copy of Holmes Basic (with chits) in 1979, and have been playing and DMing every since.

Holmes blue box set was my introduction to D&D. And I was able to get the AD&D books as they came out.

I started in 1981, age 16, with the Moldvay Basic and Expert sets. I have been addicted to RPGs ever since.

A friend of a friend brought his 3.0 or 3.5 core books to school when I was 13 or 14, and I happened to flip the MM randomly open to the gelatinous cube... Rest is history haha.

Mentzer Red box...1984, followed by many years of 1st and 2nd edition AD&D. Gave it up when I went to college in 1992. Picked it back up about 6-7 years ago after listening to the first few episodes of the Roll for Initiative podcast. Haven't looked back!

I still remember Matthew telling a tale of dwarves, elves , magic and dragons at a party. We stood in the kitchen and the more he talked the more the sound of everything else receded as tho we were being removed from the vaccuum of reality. I can not stretch far enough to remember if he mentioned any specific adventuring other than the prospect of what could be done. This was the spring of 81 and he offered to take me on an adventure. But I was moving off to nowhere Maine.

His story was so compelling that months later, when I finally found a decent book shop, I dropped my limited funds to buy the DMG. And this was before ever seeing anything let alone playing. I did pick up a red box with B1 in search of the unknown, which did not help that much in my understanding of things. Matt was big on taking modules as a starting point for making an adventure. I still remember parts of the first night we played, which included getting the crap beaten from me by giant ants, and, the next adventure having to climb a giant mushroom to get to a big trading city.

I think it was very early in my adventuring with him that he mentioned something about his other campaigners getting caught by bad guys and ending up with nothing in the bottom of a volcano that was clearly in the early stages of erupting (A4). Since then, 98% of my time has been as DM, watching as the game continued to change - which I think is fantastic. Most of the new rules have no place in my world, but does frequently provide food for thought. And, I thoroughly respect the need for a game like this to constantly reinvent itself, lest it whither and die.

LG

1984. I was 6 years old. I played an elf in a game a local kid was running from the Mentzer Basic D&D Red Box. I was killed by a giant spider. I didn't play again until I was 10, this time as the DM, also from the Red Box edition. I went to my first con when I was 12 and was exposed to Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, and Warhammer tabletop. My dad drove me like and hour and a half to get there and he had no interest in any of this stuff. Looking back I realize how supportive he was being of my hobby. At 14 I discovered Vampire the Masquerade and that kind of took over all gaming activities for me from then on.

I started in middle school in 2001 playing my step dads old AD&D modules modified for use with 3.0. I begged him to let me play because i was really into The Chronicles of Narnia books at the time (Not exactly Appendix N but close enough). I really enjoyed the fantasy world of it and the Lord of the Rings movies coming out a few years later just added to my love of the genre. And so i've been playing and branching out ever since. So i guess that puts me in the youth dungeon divers club.