Monday, March 17, 2025
Was Your First Tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons?
We've got a very simple poll this week: was your first tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons? I suspect that the vast majority of people who read this blog entered the hobby through D&D, but I'm nevertheless curious about the number who didn't. If you answered "no," please use the comments to indicate the tabletop RPG that was your first instead and, if you can recall, the year when you first played it. I'm very curious about the other games that might have served as gateways to roleplaying and when they did so.
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Yup. It was the only one out.
ReplyDeleteI think I had three or four choices, not counting any overseas stuff that I'd never heard of and had no way to buy if I had.
DeleteQuest, in 2021.
ReplyDeleteFirst RPG was RuneQuest, November 1978.
ReplyDeleteJohn E. Boyle
I never played Dungeons and dragons. My tabletop games were wargaming ones, mainly with traditional toy soldiers but also Warhammer. Role Playing became an element of my wargaming, inspired by Frank Perry.
ReplyDeleteI voted "no," but it's a little more complex than that. The first character I ever created was for AD&D at my junior high school's D&D club, but that club was soon closed down before we ever got a chance to play. Thank you, Satanic scare.
ReplyDeleteThe first ttrpg I actually ever played was Star Frontiers in 1982, unless one counts Car Wars in 1981, though I felt that original Car Wars was more a combat simulation game than an rpg.
I was about 12 at the time, depending on time of year, having been born in mid-'69.
My first RPG was the French SF RPG Messagers Galactiques (1984) which was published as a magazine. You played agents of the Galactic Federation who were sent to alternate worlds. All the PCs had a power called "Transfer": they could send their mind into a NPC and occupy their body, if they were able to defeat them psychically. It was very useful for investigations...
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. Sounds like it might have taken some inspiration from Piers Anthony's early scifi, back his stuff was all about mental projection and kirlian aura strengths and whatnot.
DeleteIt pretty well has to be inspired by Anthony's Cluster novels; they even use the term "transfer" for the process of possession.
DeleteMy first tabletop RPG was MERP
ReplyDeleteI kinda adore that when I cast the 60th vote in the poll the non D&D starters were exactly 1 in 6.
ReplyDeleteMy first ttrpg was Rolemaster. I was a player, so I never came to know how much of it the GM used and how much he made up himself. I do remember tables were used, and that my dwarf fighter, having been badly hurt by an attack, managed to bite the opponent's foot. The GM ruled that the damage to be rolled was that of a "small animal" ("pienen eläimen vahinko") if I recall correctly. Rolemaster was one of those systems that was translated into Finnish in the early 1990s.
ReplyDeleteI was a big fan of the Fighting Fantasy adventure game books and they had an RPG system based on those rules called Advanced Fighting Fantasy, which was my gateway.
ReplyDelete1988 was the year and the game was MechWarrior, followed shortly by Shadowrun when it came out
ReplyDeleteFirst RPG was the good old MERP, in 1989. The translated spanish version. Next one was RuneQuest. D&D came years later (AD&D second edition, the one by Zeb Cook), and I used it to play Dark Sun and Birthright.
ReplyDeleteIn Spain the first translated RPG was D&D, but only a couple of adventures were published. The main translated RPGs were MERP, Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, WEG Star Wars and, later, AD&D and Vampire. D&D, Vampire and Call of Cthulhu are still the most popular RPGs in Spain.
The Dark Eye, ~2013
ReplyDeleteNo. My first was either Fighting Fantasy or Shadowrun, depending on how you count it.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the UK. I've long had a feeling that other rpgs (Call fo Cthulhu and RuneQuest in particular) were more dominant than D&D here in the 80s, but I don't know how accurate that feeling is, and how much of it is influenced by White Dwarf's coverage, which of curse was going to focus more on the games it was (re)publishing.
Oh, and as for years, FF would have been 1987-1989ish, Shadowrun later in 1994-1995.
Delete"No" for me, because of RuneQuest. Followed in (I think) less than a week by Traveller. Year: 1980.
ReplyDeleteD&D had to wait nearly forty years.
1984, I played star frontiers. We were in 4th grade and didn't really know how to play but it was fun. I started dnd in maybe 1987.
ReplyDeleteDragon Warriors, 1985. It looked like a fighting fantasy game book in the book catalogue at school. I believe quite a few British gamers came into the hobby this way.
ReplyDeleteTraveller for me. Fantasy (and therefore D&D) never appealed to me as much as science fiction. I've still not played much D&D, even now, 44 years later.
ReplyDeleteTraveller for me, in 1981. I've always preferred SF over fantasy, and have never played much D&D.
ReplyDeleteJim Hodges---
ReplyDeleteYes, D&D was my first and also the only tabletop role-playing game I knew of for probably the first year I played it, until a TSR catalog made me aware of other TSR RPGs, and then gradually other company's games entered my consciousnesses through being in the hobby and knowing other players. D&D was 99-percent of what I ever played during the heyday of my gaming.
HeroQuest house-ruled out the wazoo c. 1992. Picked up the republished B/X eventually and folded that in.
ReplyDeleteChampions (pre-4e) in 1994
ReplyDeleteBasic D&D - the Games Workshop single book reprint. I got lured into Arduin Grimoire almost immediately and then the university club's mish-mash of C&S, D&D and Home-Grown.
ReplyDeleteT&T for me, specifically the UK fifth edition in 1979 or thereabouts
ReplyDeleteT&T for me, specifically the uk printing of the fifth edition
ReplyDeleteYep, the "B" in BECMI was my first. I then went on with the E, C, and M before transitioning to AD&D 2nd ed. But I had already branched out to other games by then, too. Mostly GDW stuff like T2K and MegaTraveller.
ReplyDeleteB/X rules and AD&D 1st ed in 1981.
ReplyDeleteHolmes Basic as a player quickly followed by AD&D as a DM and a year or so later on to RuneQuest 2.
ReplyDeleteMoldvay's Basic Edition. Still the best.
ReplyDeleteOkay. I chose no. As previously mentioned, I count The Fantasy Trip as my first meaningful RPG experience, April 1, 1981. But I bought the AD&D books in summer 1980. Tried to run a module (T1) for a friend and got nowhere and didn't understand anything. I've played AD&D a few times since (few = countable on one hand) ... there's no real way to credit D&D for anything I've done, except pioneering the hobby of course.
ReplyDeleteOut of curiosity, did you come into TFT through the microgames (Melee and Wizard, and the solo adventures) or was it TFT from word one? I've often wondered how much those micros built a player base before the RPG proper existed - especially in light of the way Howard was obviously try to do something similar with Starkeader: Assault late in Metagaming's lifespan.
DeleteParanoia, 2008
ReplyDeleteMoldvay Basic in '83.
ReplyDeleteYes for me. It was Holmes' Blue Book, in the summer of 1980.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe Fantasy Trip, 1979
Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition, my dad's copy, with Buffalo Castle and the Deathtrap Equalizer solitaires, in the same stack as Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, with the Jade Jaguar; I'd've been 9 or 10, so early 1990s. First for my very own was the gift of Car Wars Deluxe, the old box set with the Deluxe rulebook instead of a Compendium.
ReplyDeleteThe first games I bought was SPI's Universe and Dragonquest. The first I played was Runequest, though B/X D&D followed close on its heels.
ReplyDeleteCAIRN
ReplyDeleteTechnically Cogent (a one-shot several years ago), followed by a rough attempt at GMing Fate Accelerated, but my first honest-to-goodness game has been OSE.
ReplyDelete(The first *content* I consumed was the Titansgrave series with Hank Green, followed by a bunch of TTRPG podcasts, variously using 5e, OSE, Fate Accelerated, Avatar Legends, Blades in the Dark, Pathfinder 2e, and Monster of the Week.)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness.
ReplyDeleteI loved the show as a kid and my older neighbor introduced me to role playing through that game.
I also started with the Palladium TMNT in 1988 or so. It was a few years before I moved on to AD&D 2nd Edition.
DeleteOog Des Meesters, a Dutch translation of Das Schwarze Aug
ReplyDelete1992 probably
ReplyDeleteTunnels &Trolls about 1982
ReplyDeleteMy buddy and I pored over my dad’s copy of MERP, around 2009. Only attempted play one time. This was followed by actually running the D&D 5e starter set around 2014.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually surprised that the "nos" on _this_ survey are as many as they are. At the same time I think the proportion of "nos" would be even larger in a survey of TTRPGers as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI think the hobby is heavily siloed, and this blog is strongly a "D&D blog" -- gamers without a background in D&D are just not as likely be visiting and catching the survey when it was up.
Empire of the Petal Throne in 1978.
ReplyDeleteHolmes Basic in 1980. After asking for, and receiving it, as a birthday present from my parents.
ReplyDeleteI voted yes, but it's more of an "I think so?" About 1980, and my first RPG might have been Top Secret?
ReplyDeleteMy first RPG system was 1st edition of Warhammer Fantasy (WFRP).
ReplyDeleteThen I also played Deadlands (2e), Crystallicum (fairly obscure system, I dunno if known at all outside of Poland), Fading Suns (well, I've read it and made a character, never actually played), WFRP 2e, and then D&D 3e (though in general I knew of AD&D via Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 way earlier).
Crystallicum has come up lately in discussions on several of the sites I frequent. Admittedly, most of that's been in "obscure/forgotten games" threads, but at least it's well-known enough to get mentioned. :)
DeleteThe first RPG that I bought, and played, was Empire of the Petal Throne in the summer of 1976. I had known about D&D, a friend down the street showed me his copy while we were playing some Avalon Hill games. I went to the hobby shop to buy a copy for myself and I saw EPT. The box cover convinced me to buy that instead of the much less expensive white box D&D. I did eventually get a copy of D&D, and played much more of it over the years. I think the setting of EPT was much more advanced than my 14 year old brain was ready for. I only played it with one other friend, but we played it off an on for a few years.
ReplyDeleteMy first as a player was a post-apocalyptic homebrew designed by a friend. This was in 1990. My first as a GM was MERP in 1991. Our group only played a single session of D&D, just to try it, and then got right back to MERP and RuneQuest.
ReplyDeleteSpring/Summer 1984: We ran a couple of very simple games using an adapted version of the rules in the Fighting Fantasy books by Ian Livingstone, until three of us requrested DMG / PH / MM as our Christmas presents.
ReplyDeleteI started playing in, I believe, 1989. The first RPG I played was "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness" followed by the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced set. The 3rd RPG I played was AD&D 1e. As far as purchases, my first bought RPG was the Marvel Super Heroes Basic set followed by... MegaTraveller (a game I never played, but loved to read! I have played other versions of Traveller since, however.)
ReplyDeleteTechnically D&D redbox was my first rpg experience when my best friend ran Keep on the Borderline for me and another friend, Summer of 83 I believe. I was immediately hooked, but my bestie loved Westerns, so we spent the next year or so playing Boot Hill before transitioning back to fantasy with AD&D.
ReplyDeleteWhat's fascinating is how the comments are completely out of line with the poll of 533 votes and counting. I'll have to keep that in mind when I read comments here from now on! :)
ReplyDeleteOP: D&D of course. Holmes Basic for a few months, a gift from my parents, and then I leapt into AD&D 1e. If my parents knew what they were doing, I wonder if they would have started me down this 45 year road.
Mine was probably Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or possibly MERP.
ReplyDeleteI did have a couple of BECMI books, but I don't remember actually playing them, except for the introductory solo adventure.
In 5th grade, I think ‘86, my friend would bring his older brother’s copy of DC Heroes to school every day. During lunch, and then continuing out to recess, me and a small group of classmates would play members of the Teen Titans while he ran the game. We had no idea what we were doing, but he ran that game with such confidence, we didn’t need to. I’ve been hooked ever since. I played star frontiers, Palladium’s Recon and TMNt through the end of elementary and then middle school. I didn’t play D&D until a few years later, in high-school. JUST before 2nd edition came out. The first book I bought for myself was the (1st edition) AD&D players handbook.
ReplyDeleteMy first RPG was the original 3-volume D&D in '76 when I was 14. There was a big wargaming club at school and soon there were plenty of wargamers like me who were also RPG players. When I talk about games shops in those days, thhat's where we bought wargames. My first RPG store was in '79 when I went away to university. That led to another gaming group, all playing AD&D but not so many wargamers.
ReplyDeleteStarted with the Fighting Fantasy RPG in 1986. Played the Riddling Reaver campaign a bit before we detoured hard into the D&D red box that year, and onward into AD&D before the year was out.
ReplyDelete