Friday, June 11, 2010

Open Friday: First Character

Do you remember your first character and the game system for which he was created? Mine was, as I mentioned before, Sir James, a fighter originally created under the Holmes Basic rules and later converted to a paladin under AD&D.

Who was yours?

74 comments:

  1. I think my 1st character was a Dwarf in Holmes D&D named something unimaginative like Balin or Thorin.

    My 1st real, as an actually played with full understanding of the rules, character was Adam Warhawk,a Fighter in AD&D1e

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  2. I don't remember my first few characters, Holmes creations my brother and I did while I was in high school. The first character I remember was under 1st ed AD&D, from my freshman year of college. He was a dwarf fighter, and I believe his name was Doli. Followed by a succession of dwarf fighters, a cleric named George Ringo (carried off by gnolls because of his punny name), and a 1/2 orc fighter named Grishnak. And finally, a monk named Taran. And thus ended my freshman year of college.

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  3. Rome the warrior, who I imagined as lone wolf, but in a red-plumed helmet. Got eaten by a giant spider in about five minutes, and was replaced by Grimslade the halberd- wielding paladin, who was turned into a fighter after leaving his two hirelings to a giant spider, but regained them after pointing out that 1; they were thieves, and 2; they were neutral, not good.
    We didn't really get it.

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  4. I don't remember the first few characters I made, which were all for AD&D. The first one I remember playing was a 1st-level magic user who died trying to unstick the lid of a pit trap...by jumping up and down on it.

    Hey, I was 12.

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  5. My fist RPG ever was Chill, but I used a pre-generated character. My first character I created was for Pendragon named Bradwen, later Sir Bradwen.

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  6. My first character was a cleric for what I think was Holmes D&D. (I was pretty young at the time and don't remember the rule book used). I happened to roll an 18 Wisdom and my older brother elected that I be a cleric. I don't even think my character had a name - though I remember our party trying to hide from troglodytes (and I reached 2nd level!).

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  7. It was winter of 1982 and I was in Year 5 at a Catholic school in a holiday town on Australia's east coast. My friend's much older brother had let a group of us borrow his copy of one of the early "D&D" manuals and we used to sit on the cement in a vacant cricket net and play. Because I adored "The Hobbit" (and still do), I chose to play a dwarf and pretty much stuck with that race/class for the next few years. That first character's name was Araboss. When he died, his suspiciously similar brother Aramoss appeared on the scene, and so it went until someone proved to me that humans could grow much more powerful than demihumans :-)

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  8. My first character was a fighter for Holmes D&D, for decent into the unknown. We were like 10th grade, and it was just a one off, we were just sort of learning, testing it out. My first character for a campaign was a human fighter named Thiles Targon. Campaign petered out after maybe ½ dozen sessions, so he's still alive somewhere.

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  9. Don't remember my first character. I do remember that most of them died before I ever grew too attached to them. My first rpg was Basic Dungeons & Dragons back in '81.

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  10. He was a 1st level magic user for AD&D. He was also the only one of the party to survive Tomb of Horrors, because (not knowing what people thought you were supposed to do) he had spent all his money on mercenary fighters who took the brunt of the dangers. Of course, part of that was due to the DM's inexperience with handling friendly NPCs, so he let me give them orders which they followed without question.

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  11. Ugo Hornskin, a first-level dwarf fighter for AD&D. An utterly derivative blend of Terry Brooks's Hendel (from Sword of Shannara) and the Bros. Hildebrandt's Hugh Oxhine (from Urshurak).

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  12. A red box elf--Silverblade? Silversomething.

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  13. Halfling Thief for AD&D. Wonder what my inspiration could have possibly been.

    Have since come to loath halflings. Since the LOTR movies. Not sure why. I don't think it was the "subtext" of Frodo and Sam's relationship.

    Word Verification "scour"ing of the Shire? Weird.

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  14. My first was an elf named Sword Master. The system was Moldvay Basic.

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  15. I don't recall the very first character I created; that was probably under OD&D rules circa 1975. The first character I ever *played* was created under a mix of Holmes Basic and AD&D 1E rules - Margon the Mediocre, an Elf thief whose highest stat was a 14 Dex, and that only because of the Elf bonus.

    Long before BA Felton had Tar Markvar, there was Margon.

    (Named for my Astronomy 3 TA at UCLA.)

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  16. an "adventurer" for "the dark eye" ("das schwarze auge" in english, google said so), for the basic version of the first edition. adventurer was the class you got when all your stats were mediocre. :/

    that was in 1986, when i was 12 years old. :O

    if i remember correctly he fell off a tower...

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  17. The very first ones I can't really remember, other that they were human and dwarf warriors, using AD&D...the first "proper" one was a paladin with the uninspired name of Sir John, using AD&D 2n Edition.

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  18. My first character was an NPC Bard converted to a PC so I could finally hand over the DM reigns to someone else after four years of refereeing. I would continue to use the character exclusively through successive campaigns for the next four years (until I stopped playing AD&D).

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  19. A cleric named King Atlas (after an action figure). I was 8 ;P

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  20. Am I the only one who cut his first character's teeth on something that wasn't fantasy? Say it isn't so!

    LBB Traveller. An ex-naval officer by the name of Joseph Aramis. Of course, it being LBBT and us having no idea of what the Imperium was like, we based our adventures on the Family D'Alembert books.

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  21. Treson, Chaotic Fighter for Mentzer Red Box. The first in a long line of characters with the same name and I have no idea where the word Treson came from. Intended to a be a copy of a Citadel Miniatures Chaos Warrior that an older kid at school sold me.

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  22. I started playing as DM, but I recall the first characters my players created back then, with Mentzer's D&D:
    - Zoltar Aragon (cleric);
    - Weston (the) Weak (thief), later called Weston l'Altissimo [in English:(the) Tallest];
    - Alexander Korrigan (fighter) and - Stellara (elf).

    The cleric bite the dust two times, replaced by Zoltar II and Zoltar III.
    The others survived more or less unscathed and went to about 18th level (rank E for the Elf).

    I still keep those character sheets...The year we started played D&D; it must have been one of the best years of my life.

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  23. Pete the fighter, Holmes basic set. I died in after my fellow sixth grader, Jason, cast a web spell to trap a doppleganger (which killed me). Never really trusted him after that. No idea who followed Pete. Maybe Peter II?

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  24. A Traveller Merchant named Beywolf Schaffer. He's the first one I remember rolling up, my previous D&D experiences had been with pregenerated characters.

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  25. Oh yes, I do remember my first character very well...

    The game was D&D (Moldvay's Basic Set) and the name was Forban, a thief (the class I disliked the most, but I REALLY rolled a 18 for dexterity with my three six sided dice, so I thought I HAD to be a thief)...

    He was strangled to death by a doppleganger during his sleep, shortly after he reached lvl 4.

    Never played a thief after that disaster...

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  26. A human thief for B/X D&D, he attempted a dungeon solo, and died in the second room thanks to a trap he never spotted. I remember being more amused than annoyed. He never lived long enough to earn a name.

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  27. Johan Werper, a Lawful Cleric from Holmes Basic.

    I picked him because turning undead was cool.

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  28. Azak, a halfling archer (from Dragon issue 45) for an AD&D game.

    I think he was neutral... but it was 30 years ago, so my memory is fuzzy.

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  29. I know it was a fighter in Basic D&D, but that's about it. My second character ever was a superhero who got run through the X-Men module.

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  30. Mine was Jupider, a fighter under Moldvay Basic.

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  31. 1987. It was a red box. I was 11 years old and fascinated by this game the older kids were playing. One of them spent some time with me and let me roll up a character.

    "I want to be an elf prince!" I exclaimed.

    My only fantasy exposure at that time had been "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", and "The Hobbit".

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  32. Deogolf the fighter for AD&D (1979?). He made it to 9th or 10th level before retiring.

    I still have his sheet somewhere, so "unretiring" is always a possibility! ;o)

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  33. I think the first RPG I played was Top Secret, but I don't remember anything now about it. My first D&D character I mentioned before. It was a fighter with a high strength and charisma for 1e AD&D.

    The first character I made when I started to RPG more regularly was a BECMI elf named Elfer, the second character was a fighter named Nighthawk, and third I think was an orc (using dwarf XP) named Og.

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  34. 1E AD&D. I was a monk. I remember running from a giant centipede.

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  35. Freki The Slow for AD&D, a fighter. We rolled randomly for weight on a homemade chart by my down the street neighbor. My character was a 'chubby'. So I was docked on my movement. Later on "The Slow" was added not just for speed but for Freki's low Intelligence and Wisdom score as well.

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  36. My first character...
    Orig System: Holmes Basic D&D (1978)
    Last System: 1E AD&D (1985)
    Name: Djehuti-Yama
    Class: Fighter/Magic-User
    Max Levels: 12/14
    Status: Retired

    Ciao!
    GW

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  37. My first character was a mutant weasel in the Palladium 'TMNT & other Strangeness' game. I played on the bus to a summer enrichment day-camp back in 88 or 89, I don't remember. But that launched me into gaming. Since then I've played everything from Palladium, AD&D, 2nd Ed, Werewolf, Vampire (non-sparkly) & Wraith from the old World of Darkness, Star Wars, Gurps, ... My groups didn't really care what system, we just loved to play. That and we'd houserule the hell out of anything that didn't work.

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  38. Galbereth Blackboots, dwarven veteran for Mentzer Basic. He got paralyzed by a carrion crawler in his first encounter...auspicious start (for him and me).

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  39. A red box cleric named Dirk the Daring.

    I was really, really, really in love with the video game "Dragon's Lair".

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  40. Mine was for Marvel Superheroes, he was an unnamed hero that had two randomly rolled/non-related powers. He was an energy body (made of energy) but he couldn't project/shoot it. He could also change color--of which I got to pick ONE other color. My friend's older brother was the GM and he wasn't really giving us any leeway on the rolls.

    My hero was created using the Ultimate Powers book for the advanced rules. I don't recall him dying because he really couldn't do much in combat.

    Eventually my buddy's bro went on to greater RPGs like Dragonlance(!) and gave me his Marvel books, which I used to create about 50 new heroes.

    I feel like it worked out pretty good for me in the end.

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  41. My first character was a fighter named Toren for Mentzer Basic D&D. He was very short lived, but I can't remember his replacement.

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  42. My first character was a wizard named X the Unknown; he was created for Wizard (i.e. TFT) when I was 10.

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  43. Redic - Human Fighter/MU dual class.
    Str. 18 50
    Int. 18
    Dex. 18
    Wis. 15
    Con. 18
    Chr. 16

    I rolled these using 3D6 and did so even twice...to the amazement of the DM.

    All I remember there was a Maze with Orcs w/laser crossbows.

    Later, I rolled up Hondor 1st level MU who I managed to climb up to lv 25.

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  44. Hmm... First character I ever made for a game system...

    Probably a Gamma World guy or a Top Secret character, as my best friend at the time had those games and kind of introduced me to RPG's.

    If I strain my memory I think the GW critter was some kind of werewolfy thing, but it was waay back when I was somewhere between 4th. - 6th. grade. and we never really played GW so much as read thru the rulebooks a lot.

    Pushing aside the haze, my Top Secret guy was an executive branch agent codenamed Luger, who used, get this, a Luger. Played a couple sessions of that, but I think TS' rules were a little crunchy for kids our age...

    Never really started playing an actual, solid, continuing game 'til first year in art school. (Where my first character was a dwarf assassin named Angus Kettleblack, who I remember packed a crossbow and wasn't terribly effective but looked all dark and broody with a black goatee and a field cap...)

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  45. My first character would have been for Fighting Fantasy, and is lost to the mists of memory. My "formal" induction into roleplaying as a hobby was with Shadowrun, and I played a motorbike-riding ork street samurai called Mr Majika, who was incapacitated in the first session and replaced with a Wolverine knock-off called Garfield. I was fifteen, and knew no better.

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  46. I was eight years old, playing swedish rpg "Drakar & Demoner" (a port of BRP)My character was a rather bland rogue named Roy, who got swiftly killed in a pit full of skeletons. Pretty much every other character i made was a rouge after that.

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  47. It was in 1976. Someone had just brought this curious new wargame, vcalled Dungeons & Dragons back from a vacation in the United States. It sounded like fun, and a change from the normal run of SPI boardgames we tended to play at the time, so we all created characters.

    Mine was a fighting-man with 15 Strength named Malthias the Bold. I think he survived for about 7 minutes in that first dungeon, before meeting a grisly end in a pit of green slime.

    Despite the extreme deadliness of that first dungeon (we later insisted on getting 1xp for every foot we penetrated one of his dungeons), most of us stopped off at the local game shop and ordered more copies of this game and had started designing our own dungeons before they actually arrived.

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  48. I was about twelve, and had taken "Striker!!!" as my tag whenever I got to enter my high-score name in at the arcade. So when I rolled up my first fighter in Mentzer D&D, I called him "Sword Striker." I'd played Gauntlet, Rogue and other fantasy video games long before I got my hands an paper& pencil D&D after all; I saw D&D as just a different version of that.

    Later I gave him a bit of a background: he was the son of brussel sprout farmers, who were killed by a crash of their brussel sprout cart. He therefore hated brussel sprouts. At the time, that struck me as very clever.

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  49. We had a 1x/week afternoon-long class in grade school to play D&D. It was AD&D 1e. I rolled randomly and got stats for a paladin, so that's what I played. We went through B2. I was killed in a rear guard action in the first session.

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  50. Tharadyne, a Troll Swordmaster for FASA's Earthdawn.

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  51. Arcturus Grimm, a ranger who, despite being rolled on 3d6 in order in front of 2 other people, ended up with an 18 strenght, two 17's, and the rest no less than 14. My first rolls of all time were the best. A year or so later I would have him as my first NPC in my new gameworld. Arcturus still pops up from time to time (and ex-king of rangers), and even has his hands in the current campaign a bit (an important NPC is his youngest daughter).

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  52. Marvel SH, aged 5. I don't recall much other than I wanted my character to have a flamethrower (being the most dangerous thing I could think of at that time), but he ended up with no means to control the fire. My much older cousins brought the game down when they spent a summer with us. I think we played once or twice before they got frustrated with a little kid running around screaming, but it led me down this darkest of paths. They ended up introducing me to HPL/CoC, and D&D that summer as well...

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  53. My first character was rolled up for AD&D, although it was really a mash up of AD&D, house rules and whatever version of "Basic" D&D was current at the time.

    But I was a character, I didn't need to know the rules, the DM did that stuff!

    He was named Casca Rufio Longinus, who, despite the name, was not a fighter but a thief. Rolling 3d6 in order gave him 15 dex and nothing else higher than 10. He retired at 8th level.

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  54. Mine was a grey elf fighter-magic user named Amen. Captured by orcs and died of amnesia (I couldn't remember where I left my character sheet)

    Here it is now! http://frothyfriar.blogspot.com/2010/05/100th-post.html

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  55. My first ever RPG character was a fighter named "Lancer" in a game of Dragonraid, GM'd by my older brother. He had never played an RPG before, and he hardly ever played after, but my younger brother and I who played in that Dragonraid game are still significantly into gaming in all of its forms (sans gambling).

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  56. My first character was a fighter named "Dar" (And this was before I saw Beastmaster!). We were playing red box basic D&D. Dar wouldn't wear armor and would only use a shield as I thought it didn't fit in with the barbaric image I had of him. Needless to say he got hit a lot. I think he might have been loosely based on Thundarr the Barbarian. He never did get a sun sword and I don't remember what happened to him.

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  57. My first character was actually two characters: a fighter named The Earl of McGee (named after our high school's football coach at the time) and a Magic-User named Crazy Eddy, rolled up for whitebox D&D in 1975 for my friend Aaron's dungeon. (We didn't do "campaigns" then... it was just "the dungeon.")

    As I recall, McGee and Eddy did a lot of running away from things. I don't think either one got past 1st level.

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  58. My first character was an elf named Pimur, made for the Cook/Moldvay iteration of D&D.

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  59. Either a Black Numenorean Ranger in MERP or a Human Merc in D6 Star Wars. I know those were my first two characters, I just can't remember which came first. I do know both existed for a while, we played at Boy Scout meetings and campouts.

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  60. Noven the wanderer. Made for OD&D back longer then I can remember. Then after being introduced to AD&D, It was Ugly John the half orc fighter and his thieving dwarf companion Phill Grumplestone,

    As I recall, Ugly John was killed by some octopus creature found in the Fiend Folio. The dwarf received a "hot shot" from a trapped treasure chest via a poisoned needle and his con dropped to a single digit and retired him. Noven I think I only played three or four times before his character sheets " wandered" out of my possession from a cross country trip with my parents.

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  61. Racoop the Red
    (obnoxious DM: "Racoop the Purple")
    Based not directly not Gandalf but on my LARP alter ego-- the "daggers only" rule really cramped his style and so instead of spells, he had weapons that he controlled with his magic.
    Even after we started following the rules, he was more like a fighter in robes (red robes, yeah?) with a thing for increasingly-powerful magic daggers (thanks to later DM whose obnoxiousness ran in my favor.)

    Racoop built a tower and had a lot of apprentices, including one special, female apprentice.

    And that's enough embarassment for one day.

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  62. "Berserker" a fighter in Moldvay Basic. I was inspired by Dunstan the Berserker from Brian Daley's Coramonde novels. Didn't have stats at all, just HP, AC and weapons. Got straight into the dungeon.

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  63. Holmes edition Elf F-MU-T named Elector. One of two PCs from original group to survive until retired. He became a patron (and sometimes a protector) for later characters in the gaming group.

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  64. Richard M. Nixon, a thief in OD&D in the summer of 1976. He didn't get as much as he thought he deserved, so he stole a magic gem from the party's fighter. Turns out the gem would cause the user to grow giant porcupine quills, so a subsequent character was planned called Spiny Norman.

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  65. It would have been the Moldvay edition of D&D, but no, I don't remember!

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  66. Werr the Arcane, elf F/MU from Holmes D&D who was later reworked for AD&D. Name stolen from a Martian story by Ray Bradbury. Still have a doodle of him I did in math class. Had a pseudodragon familiar, and way too many magic items. I remember him fondly.

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  67. Gobbo Pepperthorn, Basic D&D Halfling, August 25th, 1977.

    http://barkingalien.blogspot.com/2010/05/secret-origins-part-ii.html

    Ah, the memories...

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  68. I can't remember the inspiration, but it was a red-haired female cleric named Genevieve, and she was pretty good at both combat and magic casting.

    This was D&D 3.5. I am not nearly as old-school as most here.

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  69. The first character I made was for BECMI redbox: a thief. I can't remember his name.

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  70. My first game was AD&D 1st ED in the adventure from the back of the rulebook mixed up with bits from In Search of the Unknown. I played a human fighter named Brannaur. He got reduced to 1 hp, changed into a female by a magic statue, then made permanently drunk before a wish turned him back to normal.

    The game was with a bunch of fellow High school students and the only volunteer for gaming location was the student who lived on the wrong side of town. Quite an adventure getting home that night as well.

    tegeus

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  71. My first character was an elf made for the Holmes basic set. I no longer remember his name, but I do remember being terribly excited that I had rolled a 13 for one of his abilities. The rest ranged from 6 to 11 or thereabouts.
    My second character was a dwarf named Re Oxeneecle (don't ask), whose claim to fame was that not once in his entire career did he fail his roll to open doors. We imagined this as him wearing a horned helmet and the rest of the party using him as a battering ram.

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  72. My first character was a 2nd edition AD&D 1st-level human wizard nicknamed Dangerous (whose real name was unknown). I created Dangerous back in 1996, and I still have his character sheet. I have really fond memories of those times, and I still play with people from that group.

    Dangerous and his comrades tried to save the world from Goram, god of fire & death. To accomplish that, they traveled back through time to stop Goram's cultists from releasing him from his prison, but they also helped the good people of Selidor to rebel against their tyrants. After all his contemporary friends died, Dangerous was the sole survivor of his time, stuck in the past.

    Sadly, we never completed the adventure, something we always regret.

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  73. Sadly, my first experience was D&D 3.5 in 2006 with a co-worker and friend from high-school. My character was a 1st level Druid name Dalamon WolfMage (named after a character in one of my books I tried writing during high school). He couldn't use a wolf yet so he had a badger I believe. The co-worker was DMing and ran the module, The Burning Plague. My friend ran a 1st level sorceror. That was all our party consisted of, so the first trap in the dungeon killed both of us. That spiked trap was deadly!

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  74. I was 17 (back in 1980) when I first played AD&D (1st Ed). We played the module A1 "Scourge of the Slave Lords", and I played the 1/2ling Thief named 'Blodgett'. I did however end up taking control of the NPC 'Ogre' a Human Fighter for our DM. My characters were the only survivors of the series of the 3 different games it took us to play the module, and actually my 1/2ling became a MONK of all things. My deity had answered my prayers and I had to serve for 2 years (1 year of game time) in a monastery.
    What I consider 'my first' character was "Alexius Marcellus" a Human Fighter of greek-like origins who was of minor nobility. He soon enrolled in a gladiator arena then became a slave for a short time. After two games of fighting as a slave and my 'friends' making quite a bit off of my victories, the party tried to buy my freedom. The pit boss decided not to sell me and with my fellow adventurers help I escaped. Alexius made it to 19th level and with 'guidance' from my DM he became the Emperor of the Alecian Empire. This was to be my own campaign world to develop. One of Alexius' high points was defeating the Demon Prince, Demogorgon.
    Uh ahhh, those were the days.

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