I'm really enjoying watching someone provide meaningful D&D/ RPG content on TH-cam while being adorned in full NFL regalia. LOL ❤ Reading other people's stories has been heart warming, as well.
The first time I played D&D, 1975, and our third-party had a tpk again in the first room of the dungeon. We were wiped out repeatedly by the guards. I have no idea why I thought this was fun but I was hooked.
I remember sitting down in algebra in the mid-90's with my buddy Dan, in the back of the room, and he pulled out these strange magazine looking books with a tarnished bronze motif. He paged through them and set one aside and I couldn't help myself but to ask if I could look at this "Planescape," book. My dad was of the opinion that D&D was satanic, but those books, the stories they hinted at, the strange creatures, the battles between good and evil on an elemental level and the art of DiTerlizzi captured my imagination. Eventually he would let me borrow the books, and sneak them home to read them, draw the artwork inside them, make characters and fall in love with Dungeons and Dragons.
DiTerlizzi's work for D&D is genius. I grew up with the 70's art of creators like DAT and Erol Otis, and I have massive nostalgia for that style, but I wonder if it affected how I come to the game and if some of my positions would be different if I had a different artistic "keystone". Planescape is one of those settings where -- in my youth -- I wasn't taken as much by the story as much as I was by its art. I wouldn't be surprised if DiTerlizzi was considered to be directly responsible for 90%+ of D&D players coming to the game in the 90's.
It was when I ran a 4 person group though B4: The Lost City. We played nearly every day, during the summer and it was a blast. I still play with some of those same people today!
The first game I ever got to actually play was a 5e campaign. I loved building out my character before our first session but I knew I was hooked when in our first session we had to work as a party to escape a city that was under attack by a red dragon and it's minions. We escaped on a ship and fled to an unexplored region. Finding a new and uninhabitable jungle island really tickled my colonialist fantasy.
I remember playing in my brother's 5e group around 2015. The DM was pretty bad and my first thought was "I can do better than this" I put a lot of effort into learning the game and putting a good intro scenario together with the help of Matt Colville. After running that first session I knew I loved the hobby.
1982 I was 10 and my cousin had the original basic set. I wondered at the minis and the tiles it looked amazing. I was already into knights and Robin Hood so He let Mr sit at the table and thats when I was hooked. In 82 My parents bought me the red box and after that my Older brother bought me boxes of grenadier figures. Sometime after that my cousin passed down to me his advanced books and the rest is history. Best times to be a kid.
It started back when I was in Boy Scouts, yes we played D&D on camping trips in The Scouts and it was great! So TTPGs were neve alien to me and I knew I enjoyed playing but, the moment I knew I *loved* TTRPGs in general was when my friends dragged me back into the scene when I was in my mid 20s. We had a consistent party that played L5R for a year. It started off as a fun hangout, but before I knew it I was yearning for Friday nights to play with the group and continue the story. I've yet to find a truly consistent group that really clicked like we did. But man, I still remember those moments like it was yesterday.
I was a kid who somehow ended up in a local hobby store. They were playing a Civil War battle and I learned about move half fire full. I learned moving my commander away from my troops was terrible for morale. I learned about a deck of cards for initiative. I was hooked. came back to play again and again. Very fun.
Got the Holmesian Basic set for Christmas 79. Couldn't fathom a game that wasn't played on a board so I created a huge map of the first level of B1 and used little plastic knights from my Avalon Hill Feudal (yes, I cut the pegs off the bases!). Got some friends to give it a try but no one thought it was anything special. Then one Saturday afternoon, three of us decided to give the game another look. By now I had figured out that this game was played in your head, not on a board, so I volunteered to run the sample dungeon in the back of the rulebook, Zenopus' Basement. No one had any idea what to expect. It was magic. We've been playing ever since.
I was hooked when I first played the starting adventure in the red box over and over, after I got it for my birthday - I knew that this was different to everything else I've ever played and just knew ist was right. Something it clicked into place and about 40 years later this still is true.
Thanks for sharing. I remember getting hooked when I was 12 and my adult friend ran a d&d adventure for me where I played 4 characters at once... There were giant rats, goblins, a necromancer, magic puzzles, a lost dwarf and dark spirits haunting the dungeon. It was about 2 sessions of play. I've been hooked ever since!
My neighbour, who was 2 years older than me (it was in 1979), got a copy of the little black book box set for Traveller and we tried to work out how to play it. We spent a Saturday rolling up a characters and trying to work out the combat system - but how to play the game escaped us. When we went to school on Monday we found some older kids who were just starting The Tomb of Horrors - and they let us play, so we could see how roleplaying games worked. We started writing Traveller scenarios based on Dr Who, Space 1999 and Battlestar Galactica episodes - we also continued to play AD&D with the older kids at school - never stopped after that.
I played Sorcerer Cave at a friend's house, then, months later in High School in 1982, the same friend had three books in his locker...what is that? I said, handing me the player's handbook? I was in awe of the demon idol scene. He explained it was a game and the books were his father's. I managed to convince him if I could read it that night...which led to another friend and I making our own laughable version until I got the Moldvay Box Set...but seeing that cover was what hooked me from then on (as I now look over my shoulder to the poster on my wall of that same cover!)
Definitely my first Dnd game.think it was advanced?and we used the characters that came with the adventure. I picked peralay I think figher/mage/elf .And the dm(patrick) told us that down the deep corridor the slime on the walls glistened from the torchlight and further down the tunnel was a floating skeleton..until it lurched forward and we found ourselves in a gelatinous cube.hooked
For me it was going to my first game convention. I been playing on and off since 81, but it was just a small group from school. They didn't seem interested going beyond DnD. I saw a flyer for a game con at the game store. The con was Omacon, and it was home town omaha. That weekend was the best. For the first time I felt I belonged. There were others just like me. I didn't want to leave that Friday night. I begged to stay with friends at the hotel. My parents were ok with it and had the time of my life. played in an AD&D tournament and won a prize! Not bad for a 12 year old kid. I'll never forget it.
After learning about Call of Cthulhu, I was checking out their source books and when I laid eyes on the cover of Kingsport: City in the Mists, that was when I decided 100% this was the thing I was looking for.
I was hooked before I ever roleplayed as I always wanted to roleplay D&D since a teenager and so when the opportunity arrived when I was working at a hobbyist store I joined a group across from a Freemason's lodge and had lots fun learning and socialising.
For me it was first time I ever played. It was a super stripped down home brew version a friend had made. We just did a simple dungeon crawl and I remember getting beat up hard by a giant bat. Man, I wanted revenge on that bat! Many of my early memories involved me running the old modules - I was the default GM because I happened to have memorized most of the rules, and that was important to 13 year olds. :P During summer camp, we spent the days holed up in a storage room playing such classics as Sinister Secret Of Saltmarsh or Tomb Of Horrors.
I've been playing RPGs for 40 yrs or so. I started out with Basic DnD and have just about played most genres and a slew of games from WEG Star wars, to Call of Cthulhu and I love them all. The one Genre and System that really hooked me was Hero system Champions. I love the SH genre. Maybe it was the group of friends I played with or the GM's plot and storytelling or just the idea of my creation mixing it up against super Bad guys. I'm also happy to say those high school friends are my best buds and we sill play a 2E DnD game every other week.
The D&D Cartoon and Endless Quest books first sparked my interest but getting the Red Box in 1985 at about 13 was the moment I knew I wanted to play. I read the rules did the solo adventure section and grabbed book after book over the next few years devouring the information in each. I knew how to play years before I actually got to sit down with anyone at the table. In the early 90’s I finally got the chance and after many years and a few different gaming groups and different game systems, I can say I have been blessed with enjoying countless hours of the experience only tabletop gaming can deliver. I was fortunate to be in a group for a lot of those years that created a great blend of action and character development and absolutely zero real world politics entering the mix. So many great memories. If I never sit down to play a TTRPG again I can say I was lucky enough to delve into that unique place I had dreamt of when I first cracked open the Red Box so many years ago.
Somewhere around 1988. My brother was 7 years older than me and I didn't really have many opportunities as a 10-year-old to bond with him. He started playing D&D with his friends and needed an extra player and invited me. For me it was a way to get more time with my brother and I was hooked at that point because I realized it was a great way to socialize and be with people.
I won a book token at school so I purchased the Warlock of Firetop Mountain from a book fair. It was then a friend of mine said..."oh, you like that kind of stuff? Come to the school library when school is done for the day". And there, amongst the dusty books, I met a rag-tag bunch of players who would show me Dungeons and Dragons...then Runequest, then Car Wars, then Traveller...40 years later I now play them with my son and his friends. Timeless games, endless stories, brilliant memories.
It was 1978 at a K Bee Toys. Picked up the Blue box D&D. Had no clue what it was? Just was a LotR fan and that the box looked cool. That they had forgot to put the game board in. Once I realized what it was, got 3 other friends together and we started playing. I was 22 years old when I started.
That's a great question. It was probably that first "Basic Set" in its red box and that rudimentary solo adventure where one is given the opportunity to avenge Aleena by slaying that lousy Bargle that did it for me. It's curious -- such a dramatic, tragic, and rather depressing storyline and, yet, it's the one I'm sure hooked so many kids in the 80's. Perhaps the idea that -- by playing -- we could protect an untold number of beautiful priestesses from sharing Aleena's sad fate. I remember, too, a Choose Your Own Adventure book called "The Mountain of Mirrors" that really encouraged my imagination. And, to be perfectly frank, I'd further suggest that old MS-DOS games based on D&D -- indirectly or directly -- like Nethack and Pool of Radiance truly cemented my love for role-playing games.
When I was really young, 6 or so, I watched my mom playing JRPGs. I thought that was amazing. The ability to explore the world of a book, essentially. About 5 years later, someone told me about tabletop RPGs and the idea that I could do the same thing but be as creative as I wanted in solving problems and exploring, well... that blew my mind. That's what hooked me.
There have been several moments over the years but the one that always springs to mind was rolling an E Crit. Iron Crown's MERP when I was trying to shoot an Uruk-Hai at max bow range and Chris the GM describing how the arrow hit in the eye and exited out of the back of his head
Call of Cthulhu was a revelation compared to D&D back in the day. It was the first time I had to stop jumping about shouting, acting out everything and be quiet and think a bit more. I’d like to have a cool unusual answer about when I got hooked but I remember getting Moldvay Basic and just being spellbound by what was inside. That was enough.
I don't think there was any singular moment, but of all the people in my junior high school through college group ('80s into the '90s), I was probably the most enthusiastic. Our gaming schedule was very erratic, which bugged me. While our long-running campaign was going on, I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1E with some friends from work in '88 or '89. We played every week, like clockwork. That sweet-ass 2+ year campaign cemented the idea that I'll always be an RPG player.
I got hooked in 2006 when I stumbled across a D&D 3.0 session underway at the communal hall of our freshman dorms. I'd been exposed to classical wargaming in the 90s as a boy by my father and Warhammer at a LHS across from my mother's offices as a teen by Bishop, the proprietor who looked exactly like the dreadlocked Marvel character. I started realizing that wargames could tell stories and develop characters as well as play out scenarios, an early inspiration being the legendary "Major General Tremorden Rederring's Colonial-era Wargames" page in the early days of the internet. My friends and I started playing the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings game as soon as it launched in the early 2000s, loving the Peter Jackson movies and quickly homebrewing our own rules to play Heroes VS Minions (as well as a Hong Kong Cinema inspired mod of the game for playing martial arts skirmish games). I didn't hear of D&D until college, so that evening stumbling across a bunch of freshmen playing in a senior's ongoing campaign with minis being moved around on a hijacked billiards table intrigued me. I stood there and watched for several minutes trying to wrap my head around the proceedings, at which point one of the player's helpfully handed me the PHB. That was it. The moment I cracked the cover and saw the incredible art and charts and Weapons & Equipment chapter... the rest was history. Within a few months I went on to DM a 5 year, 200+ session campaign that saw the party go from level 1 to 20+. Attended the weddings of two players later on. Now I have a collection of 1,000+ books and digital documents, hundreds of maps, minis and dice for the taking... all from that D&D 3.0 PHB on a pool table. The good old days.
good topic DD. I had older cousins playing, it was the art that really got me into it.. I got the basic concept from watching them play and made my own version called "adventure" with my grade school friends.. it just involved a 6 sider and index cards.. lol.
There was a guy in a trench coat that said "hey kid wanna try some D&D, first time is free" I had seen D&D stuff at the store and thought it looked cool, but it was a friend who brought it to school and he ran the intro adventure. I tried to recreate it with fighting fantasy books till I got that red box set
Christmas 1984. I was in the 4th grade and received the D&D Basic Red Box as my big Christmas present. My friend had the Moldvay Basic book (not the boxed set), and some of the older kids had cobbled together several AD&D books and some dice. I was the only one that read and (somewhat) understood the rules, and I began running adventures. I was actually the youngest (or near youngest) in our group of friends, but I had a facade of authority and knowledge of the game. I learned quickly that appearing confident generally made up for any rules mistake, and improv (even after filling notebooks with adventure notes) and impartiality were the two pillars for my style. I was also the only one that really read much of anything besides comic books (although I also loved comic books). Besides Tolkien, the only fantasy author my parents would allow us to read, I read classics like The Once and Future King, Robin Hood, and anything relating to Greek Mythology that I could get my hands on. At the school library, I was also able to get my hands on choose-your-own-adventure books (went well with the Red Box intro). Even with the excellent choose-your-own-adventure style introduction and the sample dungeon, most of my initial adventures contained elements of Greek myths. I think we were also influenced by the D&D cartoon, but I can't quite remember. I do remember that we all loved the elven cloak (or as I thought of it, Hades cap of invisibility). As juvenile delinquents, we saw great value in being able to disappear. I also remember that the Elmore red dragon cover art was my idea of what D&D was though we were really a long way from that in the Red Box itself. Eventually my friend introduced me to the Dragonlance books, and those books influenced our games for a long time.
I will never forget the old artwork in the Basic/Expert/AD&D books. My brother got the Basic set when he was 10 I think, so I would have been 6 or 7 (depending on if it was a birthday or Christmas present for him). We were fairly new in town, so my brother reached sufficient desperation to sometimes play with his kid brother. I could read since before I started school, but my Kindergarten/First Grade curricula in 1981 had been sadly lacking in fantastic creatures and medieval weaponry, so I always had questions. I haven't really played much as an adult, so I don't know if I can lay any claim to anything now, but those early adventures sparked my imagination, and caused me to read so much fantasy growing up. I couldn't imagine how different life would have been without it.
We had a very rainy summer that kept us from playing football and hockey back in 1981, so my friend Joe asked my brother and Dennis and I if we wanted to play a game called D&D. When I saw the red box basic and the blue box with the Erol Otus covers I was like, "That's going to be a small game board!" Joe told me there was no board then showed me the dice. At first I did not want to play a reading game, but when I saw the dice I wanted to roll them. Joe refused to let me roll the dice unless I made a character. I was pissed when it was just the lousy six siders at first. After purchasing my halfling fighter's gear we were off in a dungeon laying waste to orcs. It was thundering and lighting out and the Lord of the Rings cartoon was on tv and ten hours flew by like nothing. After that day all I could think of was playing D&D, then Gamma World, Aftermath, Traveller, and Star Frontiers, Boothill, and later on Fringeworthy and Stalking The Night Fantastic.
The year was 93/94 7th or 8th grade. A nerd in my class asked if I would like to join in session of Advanced Dungeon and Dragon's. Im like sure played a session till 6am eating Pringles and Drinking Brisk Tea . I was hooked after that because I was like well we can do all the cool stuff we cant do in real life in a fantasy world. After that I started getting into more comic books Magic the Gathering other RPGs another source of nerdom
Many moments I could probably reference, but the very first thing that comes to my mind is thumbing through the original Ravenloft module when it came out. The floorplan! And the second thought that comes to mind is the entire adventure package of The Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth.
Great topic, hoss! Getting the magenta box Basic D&D set was a moment, but not thee moment (especially since I didn't learn how to play until months later). Identifying with a character who survived against all odds and kept becoming more capable and powerful. I can also distinctly recall reading a review of the Call of Cthulhu RPG in Dragon Magazine and thinking, "Oh wow! I would love to do that."
Oh, I remember! For as long as I can remember I was always interested in knights, swords, and medieval-style fantasy stories and such. But my first exposure to D&D I remember clearly: I was probably around 10 years old and it was likely the Christmas Holidays because we had lots of family staying. I crept down into the basement where my brother-in-laws were playing this strange and fascinating game (1e). I was immediately intrigued. My DM brother-in-law was describing to the others about how their party had happened upon a small group of pig-faced orcs sitting around a wooden table in a ruin of some kind, one of the orcs using a dagger to carve into the table to pass the time. Then the question: "What will you do?" I was enthralled but at the same time perplexed - the detail involved and the power of choice afforded to the players was so specific and so wide open, respectively - this was no ordinary game! Confused and noticing the dice, I asked, "Where's the [game] board?" Probably annoyed by their whiney little in-law, everyone at the table completely ignored me and I was left to wonder. So I kept observing. In time I must have discovered the nature of the game, because in my teen years I had invested in Palladium games (partly because that was all that the hobby store in the nearest city had available, and partly because the covers and interior art and array of topics - post-apocalyptic, superheroes, etc. - was intriguing to me at the time.) I was the GM for my two brothers, who to this day said they had fun. Looking back, I was pretty bad at it, but we were kids, so you know. As I got older and was newly married I tried to interest my wife with little success. Over the years my interest in RPGs ebbed and flowed depending on time and stress level. Kids came and I discovered Swords & Wizardry, a retro-clone for OD&D, around 2014. I was taken in by the fact that the PDF was free! I assembled a monster manual on a spreadsheet, which I found myself working on to blow off steam in-between studying for professional exams. I ran a S&W campaign with my kids over the span of several years that ended only in 2022. Around the time that the S&W campaign was wrapping up, I got very interested in B/X and Old School Essentials, and invested in that. Now, although I'm busier than ever due to long work hours, more kids, Church service, and purchasing a house that is a major construction project, I am planning to start another campaign with as many of my kids as want to join.
I was in 3rd grade, and my lunch period was taken up with watching the older kids in the cafeteria play a game with funny dice & graph paper, and stories of delving dungeons & slaying dragons. Eventually the older kids let me be the torchbearer & carry the parties loot. Not exactly noble, but I was hooked at that moment. We moved a year later, and in my new school, I met a guy named Randy. We'd hang out, talk nerd stuff, pretend we were xwings pilots on the swings (I was 10), but Randy also had a Red Box (BECMI), and we'd spend time in the cafeteria using the dungeon key to create our own dungeons and then run each other through our creations. At the end of that year, Randy had to move away, and his mom made his get rid of a lot of stuff, so I bought the box off him. I still have the books from that box, the box long been destroyed. The solo adventure, & Bargle made a huge impression on me. So much so, that my now 19 year old daughter knows the pain of losing Aleena and has plotted her own revenge against Bargle.
In high school, me and another guy used a spare block to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes at a local breakfast place. We saw a guy we knew who was in grade 11 and a dude that had graded the year prior, both sitting at a table. We joined them, and soon we were playing an impromptu game of D&D where we had to kill a party of goblins to retrieve some stolen goods. Began GM soon afterward.
What hooked me was Hero Quest. When we ran out of adventures that were included, we used GURPS to make up new ones and cherry-picked the hell out of it. Then we got our hands on AD&D 2E First Quest and played the hell out of that but what really cemented it was Vampire: The Masquerade and reading Wraith: The Oblivion because now there were other worlds and they really showed me possibilities and I learned more about RPGs, rule sets, etc in general than I ever did from D&D.
I know when I got hooked on RPGs, when a friend handed me the three soft bound books, right after they were released and I sat down and started reading. I can also tell you when I lost my dedication to D&D, when I read Tasha's Guide to Woke Adventuring. Looking at Cities without number now.
I was all in one Summer day in 1981... my old man was stationed in GITMO Bay Cuba and it was hot as Hell that day.... my Buddy down the street asked my little brother and I if we wanted to try a new game he got.... Redbox.... so we spent two hours rolling up characters, him explaining rules here and there... painstakingly buying gear, the whole nine yards... I'm a Elf with Magic Missle and my Longsword and my brother is a Dwarf... finally adventure time! we ventured up a hill and come upon three Orcs... we set about them. Me smashing off my one spell... did some damage... I was closed with another and BAM! dead.... my Brother's Dwarf managed to kill one but when down in a blaze of glory.... 5 mins in.... we looked around the table....silence.... LET"S GO AGAIN!!!! the rest is a blur. Later that Summer we like others took AD&D as the "better grown up version" and before you knew it... my Buddy's SISTER joined us and our DM was my MOM. so don't listen to the Commie Liars that tell you women and girls weren't allowed back then. They are liars.
My first contact with rpgs began as one of my older brother got the second edition core box of the darked eye at chrismas. That must be in the beginning of the 90´s. My brother had put the Heroquest boardgame on his wishlist, but his godfather´s wife judge the game by it´s cover, so she decided the darked eye must be the better game, because of the cover "a dwarf, a human male warrior, a human female warrior and a female elf walked side by side a street in a medival town toward the viewer".
1981 summer camp listening to the high schoolers trying to figure out how to open a door and failing Just the concept of choosing your own options and rolling dice to determine the outcome was very intriguing What was behind that door?
I got into a fight at school in the cafeteria. They logically separated us (both fight participants), making me sit in a benched area (outside the cafeteria) known as the lunch period social spot for the "nerds"/social rejects/"gross" kids. I sat there and started hearing 1 guy run some character ideas past the other guy (DM), for his upcoming "game". Shortly after a small flock of his other players came over and they all started talking about things like wizards, dragons, magic swords, etc. I asked them, what they meant by discussing all of that stuff (wizards, dragons, magic swords, etc), and they started explaining to me what playing D&d (roleplaying) was as they pulled out their books and showed me visuals while they explained : I was pretty enthralled. The next day I went to sit with them all on my own, and we kept talking about D&d. Within a week I was invited to the DMs house on Saturday for his game. Sitting outside with those kids, that were rapidly becoming my new friends became the norm. My other friends (the delinquent scene) made comment to me at various times as all of this was occurring with some variation of : "What are you doing hanging out w/the nerd kids?". I brushed off the inquiries and gradually started retracting from my old social group, as I spent more time hanging out (during & after school) with the "nerd" kids. It'll sound weird to some, but my norm of troublemaking, partying and _____-chasing rapidly became sidelined with all things D&d. It was really funny seeing my new friends completely confused when I would pass up parties and social get togethers where it was a near definite that I'd "get a girl" that night. They didnt get it, because we had always lived in different worlds on that topic. I wasnt pressed about something that was my norm, and I was blessed enough to know that I could "score" a girl just about whenever I wanted. Girls being available had always been part of my world, D&d (and hanging out w/those guys talking about D&d) and all of the stuff about it that I found to be absolutely cool as F, was an entire new world to me. They taught me D&d, and I became the social element within my new friend group that kept other kids in school from just messing with them as a public hierarchy flex.
When I started a few years ago, my first two RPGs were Delta Green, which my friend GMd in person (who is a master at storytelling and improv), and Alpha Centauri supplement for GURPS. I feel like I was spoiled early because after that point, when those two campaigns ended, all everyone wanted to play was DnD 5e, and pretty much only online. I started to dislike the hobby and slowly just stopped playing. Then one day, I bought the Alien RPG rulebook and the Heart of Darkness scenario. I absorbed the rules and the scenario book like a sponge. I had never studied this hard for anything in my life haha! And once I ran the game, everyone had a blast. That's when I knew I loved RPGs even if I was destined to be a forever GM hehe. This hobby is freaking awesome.
For me it was a combination of FASA's Star Trek system (at least I think it was them I was 15 might be misremembering) and Paranoia. Two systems I wish I had copies of. Its funny, I always thought D&D was trash (having only played 2nd) compared to the other systems that were available. Didn't help the guy who owned my LGS HATED Gygax.
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I am really enjoying reading your comments, guys!
I'm really enjoying watching someone provide meaningful D&D/ RPG content on TH-cam while being adorned in full NFL regalia. LOL ❤ Reading other people's stories has been heart warming, as well.
As a Marine in 87’ I was hooked after my first session
The first time I played D&D, 1975, and our third-party had a tpk again in the first room of the dungeon. We were wiped out repeatedly by the guards. I have no idea why I thought this was fun but I was hooked.
😄A glutton for punishment!
1981, 7th grade, as soon as we walked into the Kobold lair in the Caves of Chaos and the dice started rolling!
I remember sitting down in algebra in the mid-90's with my buddy Dan, in the back of the room, and he pulled out these strange magazine looking books with a tarnished bronze motif. He paged through them and set one aside and I couldn't help myself but to ask if I could look at this "Planescape," book. My dad was of the opinion that D&D was satanic, but those books, the stories they hinted at, the strange creatures, the battles between good and evil on an elemental level and the art of DiTerlizzi captured my imagination. Eventually he would let me borrow the books, and sneak them home to read them, draw the artwork inside them, make characters and fall in love with Dungeons and Dragons.
DiTerlizzi's work for D&D is genius. I grew up with the 70's art of creators like DAT and Erol Otis, and I have massive nostalgia for that style, but I wonder if it affected how I come to the game and if some of my positions would be different if I had a different artistic "keystone". Planescape is one of those settings where -- in my youth -- I wasn't taken as much by the story as much as I was by its art. I wouldn't be surprised if DiTerlizzi was considered to be directly responsible for 90%+ of D&D players coming to the game in the 90's.
It was when I ran a 4 person group though B4: The Lost City. We played nearly every day, during the summer and it was a blast. I still play with some of those same people today!
I never played The Lost City and I wish I had!
The first game I ever got to actually play was a 5e campaign. I loved building out my character before our first session but I knew I was hooked when in our first session we had to work as a party to escape a city that was under attack by a red dragon and it's minions. We escaped on a ship and fled to an unexplored region. Finding a new and uninhabitable jungle island really tickled my colonialist fantasy.
Oh yea, I'm a sucker for that jungle stuff too, Panther!
I remember playing in my brother's 5e group around 2015. The DM was pretty bad and my first thought was "I can do better than this"
I put a lot of effort into learning the game and putting a good intro scenario together with the help of Matt Colville. After running that first session I knew I loved the hobby.
1982 I was 10 and my cousin had the original basic set. I wondered at the minis and the tiles it looked amazing. I was already into knights and Robin Hood so He let Mr sit at the table and thats when I was hooked. In 82 My parents bought me the red box and after that my Older brother bought me boxes of grenadier figures. Sometime after that my cousin passed down to me his advanced books and the rest is history. Best times to be a kid.
For sure! Great hearing these stories, it takes me back too!
It started back when I was in Boy Scouts, yes we played D&D on camping trips in The Scouts and it was great! So TTPGs were neve alien to me and I knew I enjoyed playing but, the moment I knew I *loved* TTRPGs in general was when my friends dragged me back into the scene when I was in my mid 20s. We had a consistent party that played L5R for a year. It started off as a fun hangout, but before I knew it I was yearning for Friday nights to play with the group and continue the story. I've yet to find a truly consistent group that really clicked like we did. But man, I still remember those moments like it was yesterday.
Oh that is cool that you played as a kid and were brought back to it later on!
I was a kid who somehow ended up in a local hobby store. They were playing a Civil War battle and I learned about move half fire full. I learned moving my commander away from my troops was terrible for morale. I learned about a deck of cards for initiative. I was hooked. came back to play again and again. Very fun.
Got the Holmesian Basic set for Christmas 79. Couldn't fathom a game that wasn't played on a board so I created a huge map of the first level of B1 and used little plastic knights from my Avalon Hill Feudal (yes, I cut the pegs off the bases!). Got some friends to give it a try but no one thought it was anything special. Then one Saturday afternoon, three of us decided to give the game another look. By now I had figured out that this game was played in your head, not on a board, so I volunteered to run the sample dungeon in the back of the rulebook, Zenopus' Basement. No one had any idea what to expect.
It was magic. We've been playing ever since.
My Mum bought me a copy of 2nd edition players handbook home once. After reading it I was hooked.
I was hooked when I first played the starting adventure in the red box over and over, after I got it for my birthday - I knew that this was different to everything else I've ever played and just knew ist was right. Something it clicked into place and about 40 years later this still is true.
Thanks for sharing. I remember getting hooked when I was 12 and my adult friend ran a d&d adventure for me where I played 4 characters at once... There were giant rats, goblins, a necromancer, magic puzzles, a lost dwarf and dark spirits haunting the dungeon. It was about 2 sessions of play. I've been hooked ever since!
Thank you for watching and sharing your memories!
My neighbour, who was 2 years older than me (it was in 1979), got a copy of the little black book box set for Traveller and we tried to work out how to play it. We spent a Saturday rolling up a characters and trying to work out the combat system - but how to play the game escaped us. When we went to school on Monday we found some older kids who were just starting The Tomb of Horrors - and they let us play, so we could see how roleplaying games worked. We started writing Traveller scenarios based on Dr Who, Space 1999 and Battlestar Galactica episodes - we also continued to play AD&D with the older kids at school - never stopped after that.
My man starting on HardCore Mode.
@@DiscoBarbarianThanks - I remember that my character died in a pit in the Tomb 😅
I played Sorcerer Cave at a friend's house, then, months later in High School in 1982, the same friend had three books in his locker...what is that? I said, handing me the player's handbook? I was in awe of the demon idol scene. He explained it was a game and the books were his father's. I managed to convince him if I could read it that night...which led to another friend and I making our own laughable version until I got the Moldvay Box Set...but seeing that cover was what hooked me from then on (as I now look over my shoulder to the poster on my wall of that same cover!)
The Dungeons and Dragons cartoons made start looking for it...
Definitely my first Dnd game.think it was advanced?and we used the characters that came with the adventure. I picked peralay I think figher/mage/elf .And the dm(patrick) told us that down the deep corridor the slime on the walls glistened from the torchlight and further down the tunnel was a floating skeleton..until it lurched forward and we found ourselves in a gelatinous cube.hooked
For me it was going to my first game convention. I been playing on and off since 81, but it was just a small group from school. They didn't seem interested going beyond DnD. I saw a flyer for a game con at the game store. The con was Omacon, and it was home town omaha. That weekend was the best. For the first time I felt I belonged. There were others just like me. I didn't want to leave that Friday night. I begged to stay with friends at the hotel. My parents were ok with it and had the time of my life. played in an AD&D tournament and won a prize! Not bad for a 12 year old kid. I'll never forget it.
Oh wow! That sounds so freaking cool! I can almost imagine the call to beg to stay overnight lol!
After learning about Call of Cthulhu, I was checking out their source books and when I laid eyes on the cover of Kingsport: City in the Mists, that was when I decided 100% this was the thing I was looking for.
I was hooked before I ever roleplayed as I always wanted to roleplay D&D since a teenager and so when the opportunity arrived when I was working at a hobbyist store I joined a group across from a Freemason's lodge and had lots fun learning and socialising.
Fighting Fantasy books. My first RPG was the Hungarian fantasy game titled M.A.G.U.S.
For me it was first time I ever played. It was a super stripped down home brew version a friend had made. We just did a simple dungeon crawl and I remember getting beat up hard by a giant bat. Man, I wanted revenge on that bat!
Many of my early memories involved me running the old modules - I was the default GM because I happened to have memorized most of the rules, and that was important to 13 year olds. :P During summer camp, we spent the days holed up in a storage room playing such classics as Sinister Secret Of Saltmarsh or Tomb Of Horrors.
What days, my friend! What days we had!
I've been playing RPGs for 40 yrs or so. I started out with Basic DnD and have just about played most genres and a slew of games from WEG Star wars, to Call of Cthulhu and I love them all. The one Genre and System that really hooked me was Hero system Champions. I love the SH genre. Maybe it was the group of friends I played with or the GM's plot and storytelling or just the idea of my creation mixing it up against super Bad guys. I'm also happy to say those high school friends are my best buds and we sill play a 2E DnD game every other week.
I love hearing that you're still gaming with them! The unbreakable bond!
The D&D Cartoon and Endless Quest books first sparked my interest but getting the Red Box in 1985 at about 13 was the moment I knew I wanted to play. I read the rules did the solo adventure section and grabbed book after book over the next few years devouring the information in each. I knew how to play years before I actually got to sit down with anyone at the table.
In the early 90’s I finally got the chance and after many years and a few different gaming groups and different game systems, I can say I have been blessed with enjoying countless hours of the experience only tabletop gaming can deliver. I was fortunate to be in a group for a lot of those years that created a great blend of action and character development and absolutely zero real world politics entering the mix. So many great memories. If I never sit down to play a TTRPG again I can say I was lucky enough to delve into that unique place I had dreamt of when I first cracked open the Red Box so many years ago.
Somewhere around 1988. My brother was 7 years older than me and I didn't really have many opportunities as a 10-year-old to bond with him. He started playing D&D with his friends and needed an extra player and invited me. For me it was a way to get more time with my brother and I was hooked at that point because I realized it was a great way to socialize and be with people.
I won a book token at school so I purchased the Warlock of Firetop Mountain from a book fair. It was then a friend of mine said..."oh, you like that kind of stuff? Come to the school library when school is done for the day". And there, amongst the dusty books, I met a rag-tag bunch of players who would show me Dungeons and Dragons...then Runequest, then Car Wars, then Traveller...40 years later I now play them with my son and his friends. Timeless games, endless stories, brilliant memories.
It was 1978 at a K Bee Toys. Picked up the Blue box D&D. Had no clue what it was? Just was a LotR fan and that the box looked cool. That they had forgot to put the game board in. Once I realized what it was, got 3 other friends together and we started playing. I was 22 years old when I started.
Dude...I have that box set and it's amazing.
That's a great question. It was probably that first "Basic Set" in its red box and that rudimentary solo adventure where one is given the opportunity to avenge Aleena by slaying that lousy Bargle that did it for me. It's curious -- such a dramatic, tragic, and rather depressing storyline and, yet, it's the one I'm sure hooked so many kids in the 80's. Perhaps the idea that -- by playing -- we could protect an untold number of beautiful priestesses from sharing Aleena's sad fate. I remember, too, a Choose Your Own Adventure book called "The Mountain of Mirrors" that really encouraged my imagination. And, to be perfectly frank, I'd further suggest that old MS-DOS games based on D&D -- indirectly or directly -- like Nethack and Pool of Radiance truly cemented my love for role-playing games.
When I was really young, 6 or so, I watched my mom playing JRPGs. I thought that was amazing. The ability to explore the world of a book, essentially. About 5 years later, someone told me about tabletop RPGs and the idea that I could do the same thing but be as creative as I wanted in solving problems and exploring, well... that blew my mind. That's what hooked me.
There have been several moments over the years but the one that always springs to mind was rolling an E Crit. Iron Crown's MERP when I was trying to shoot an Uruk-Hai at max bow range and Chris the GM describing how the arrow hit in the eye and exited out of the back of his head
Call of Cthulhu was a revelation compared to D&D back in the day. It was the first time I had to stop jumping about shouting, acting out everything and be quiet and think a bit more. I’d like to have a cool unusual answer about when I got hooked but I remember getting Moldvay Basic and just being spellbound by what was inside. That was enough.
I don't think there was any singular moment, but of all the people in my junior high school through college group ('80s into the '90s), I was probably the most enthusiastic. Our gaming schedule was very erratic, which bugged me. While our long-running campaign was going on, I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1E with some friends from work in '88 or '89. We played every week, like clockwork. That sweet-ass 2+ year campaign cemented the idea that I'll always be an RPG player.
I got hooked in 2006 when I stumbled across a D&D 3.0 session underway at the communal hall of our freshman dorms.
I'd been exposed to classical wargaming in the 90s as a boy by my father and Warhammer at a LHS across from my mother's offices as a teen by Bishop, the proprietor who looked exactly like the dreadlocked Marvel character. I started realizing that wargames could tell stories and develop characters as well as play out scenarios, an early inspiration being the legendary "Major General Tremorden Rederring's Colonial-era Wargames" page in the early days of the internet.
My friends and I started playing the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings game as soon as it launched in the early 2000s, loving the Peter Jackson movies and quickly homebrewing our own rules to play Heroes VS Minions (as well as a Hong Kong Cinema inspired mod of the game for playing martial arts skirmish games).
I didn't hear of D&D until college, so that evening stumbling across a bunch of freshmen playing in a senior's ongoing campaign with minis being moved around on a hijacked billiards table intrigued me.
I stood there and watched for several minutes trying to wrap my head around the proceedings, at which point one of the player's helpfully handed me the PHB.
That was it. The moment I cracked the cover and saw the incredible art and charts and Weapons & Equipment chapter... the rest was history.
Within a few months I went on to DM a 5 year, 200+ session campaign that saw the party go from level 1 to 20+. Attended the weddings of two players later on.
Now I have a collection of 1,000+ books and digital documents, hundreds of maps, minis and dice for the taking... all from that D&D 3.0 PHB on a pool table.
The good old days.
good topic DD. I had older cousins playing, it was the art that really got me into it.. I got the basic concept from watching them play and made my own version called "adventure" with my grade school friends.. it just involved a 6 sider and index cards.. lol.
nice Hacking the game before actually playing the game.... Skal Grognard.
It happened over time, starting with the D&D choose your own adventure books
There was a guy in a trench coat that said "hey kid wanna try some D&D, first time is free"
I had seen D&D stuff at the store and thought it looked cool, but it was a friend who brought it to school and he ran the intro adventure. I tried to recreate it with fighting fantasy books till I got that red box set
Excellent video, wonderful script!
Christmas 1984. I was in the 4th grade and received the D&D Basic Red Box as my big Christmas present. My friend had the Moldvay Basic book (not the boxed set), and some of the older kids had cobbled together several AD&D books and some dice. I was the only one that read and (somewhat) understood the rules, and I began running adventures. I was actually the youngest (or near youngest) in our group of friends, but I had a facade of authority and knowledge of the game. I learned quickly that appearing confident generally made up for any rules mistake, and improv (even after filling notebooks with adventure notes) and impartiality were the two pillars for my style. I was also the only one that really read much of anything besides comic books (although I also loved comic books). Besides Tolkien, the only fantasy author my parents would allow us to read, I read classics like The Once and Future King, Robin Hood, and anything relating to Greek Mythology that I could get my hands on. At the school library, I was also able to get my hands on choose-your-own-adventure books (went well with the Red Box intro). Even with the excellent choose-your-own-adventure style introduction and the sample dungeon, most of my initial adventures contained elements of Greek myths. I think we were also influenced by the D&D cartoon, but I can't quite remember. I do remember that we all loved the elven cloak (or as I thought of it, Hades cap of invisibility). As juvenile delinquents, we saw great value in being able to disappear. I also remember that the Elmore red dragon cover art was my idea of what D&D was though we were really a long way from that in the Red Box itself. Eventually my friend introduced me to the Dragonlance books, and those books influenced our games for a long time.
Ah, a lovely moment. Something to break up the horror of watching what we love get torn apart. Thankyou for this bud, great video.
My pleasure, thank you for watching!
I will never forget the old artwork in the Basic/Expert/AD&D books. My brother got the Basic set when he was 10 I think, so I would have been 6 or 7 (depending on if it was a birthday or Christmas present for him). We were fairly new in town, so my brother reached sufficient desperation to sometimes play with his kid brother. I could read since before I started school, but my Kindergarten/First Grade curricula in 1981 had been sadly lacking in fantastic creatures and medieval weaponry, so I always had questions.
I haven't really played much as an adult, so I don't know if I can lay any claim to anything now, but those early adventures sparked my imagination, and caused me to read so much fantasy growing up. I couldn't imagine how different life would have been without it.
We had a very rainy summer that kept us from playing football and hockey back in 1981, so my friend Joe asked my brother and Dennis and I if we wanted to play a game called D&D. When I saw the red box basic and the blue box with the Erol Otus covers I was like, "That's going to be a small game board!" Joe told me there was no board then showed me the dice. At first I did not want to play a reading game, but when I saw the dice I wanted to roll them. Joe refused to let me roll the dice unless I made a character. I was pissed when it was just the lousy six siders at first. After purchasing my halfling fighter's gear we were off in a dungeon laying waste to orcs. It was thundering and lighting out and the Lord of the Rings cartoon was on tv and ten hours flew by like nothing. After that day all I could think of was playing D&D, then Gamma World, Aftermath, Traveller, and Star Frontiers, Boothill, and later on Fringeworthy and Stalking The Night Fantastic.
The year was 93/94 7th or 8th grade. A nerd in my class asked if I would like to join in session of Advanced Dungeon and Dragon's. Im like sure played a session till 6am eating Pringles and Drinking Brisk Tea . I was hooked after that because I was like well we can do all the cool stuff we cant do in real life in a fantasy world. After that I started getting into more comic books Magic the Gathering other RPGs another source of nerdom
Many moments I could probably reference, but the very first thing that comes to my mind is thumbing through the original Ravenloft module when it came out. The floorplan! And the second thought that comes to mind is the entire adventure package of The Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth.
The Ravenloft map was iconic!
Great topic, hoss! Getting the magenta box Basic D&D set was a moment, but not thee moment (especially since I didn't learn how to play until months later). Identifying with a character who survived against all odds and kept becoming more capable and powerful. I can also distinctly recall reading a review of the Call of Cthulhu RPG in Dragon Magazine and thinking, "Oh wow! I would love to do that."
Oh, I remember! For as long as I can remember I was always interested in knights, swords, and medieval-style fantasy stories and such. But my first exposure to D&D I remember clearly: I was probably around 10 years old and it was likely the Christmas Holidays because we had lots of family staying. I crept down into the basement where my brother-in-laws were playing this strange and fascinating game (1e). I was immediately intrigued. My DM brother-in-law was describing to the others about how their party had happened upon a small group of pig-faced orcs sitting around a wooden table in a ruin of some kind, one of the orcs using a dagger to carve into the table to pass the time. Then the question: "What will you do?" I was enthralled but at the same time perplexed - the detail involved and the power of choice afforded to the players was so specific and so wide open, respectively - this was no ordinary game! Confused and noticing the dice, I asked, "Where's the [game] board?" Probably annoyed by their whiney little in-law, everyone at the table completely ignored me and I was left to wonder. So I kept observing.
In time I must have discovered the nature of the game, because in my teen years I had invested in Palladium games (partly because that was all that the hobby store in the nearest city had available, and partly because the covers and interior art and array of topics - post-apocalyptic, superheroes, etc. - was intriguing to me at the time.) I was the GM for my two brothers, who to this day said they had fun. Looking back, I was pretty bad at it, but we were kids, so you know.
As I got older and was newly married I tried to interest my wife with little success. Over the years my interest in RPGs ebbed and flowed depending on time and stress level. Kids came and I discovered Swords & Wizardry, a retro-clone for OD&D, around 2014. I was taken in by the fact that the PDF was free! I assembled a monster manual on a spreadsheet, which I found myself working on to blow off steam in-between studying for professional exams. I ran a S&W campaign with my kids over the span of several years that ended only in 2022.
Around the time that the S&W campaign was wrapping up, I got very interested in B/X and Old School Essentials, and invested in that. Now, although I'm busier than ever due to long work hours, more kids, Church service, and purchasing a house that is a major construction project, I am planning to start another campaign with as many of my kids as want to join.
I was in 3rd grade, and my lunch period was taken up with watching the older kids in the cafeteria play a game with funny dice & graph paper, and stories of delving dungeons & slaying dragons. Eventually the older kids let me be the torchbearer & carry the parties loot. Not exactly noble, but I was hooked at that moment. We moved a year later, and in my new school, I met a guy named Randy. We'd hang out, talk nerd stuff, pretend we were xwings pilots on the swings (I was 10), but Randy also had a Red Box (BECMI), and we'd spend time in the cafeteria using the dungeon key to create our own dungeons and then run each other through our creations. At the end of that year, Randy had to move away, and his mom made his get rid of a lot of stuff, so I bought the box off him. I still have the books from that box, the box long been destroyed. The solo adventure, & Bargle made a huge impression on me. So much so, that my now 19 year old daughter knows the pain of losing Aleena and has plotted her own revenge against Bargle.
😄 The Bargle grudge is passed down through generations!
In high school, me and another guy used a spare block to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes at a local breakfast place. We saw a guy we knew who was in grade 11 and a dude that had graded the year prior, both sitting at a table. We joined them, and soon we were playing an impromptu game of D&D where we had to kill a party of goblins to retrieve some stolen goods. Began GM soon afterward.
Love it!
What hooked me was Hero Quest. When we ran out of adventures that were included, we used GURPS to make up new ones and cherry-picked the hell out of it. Then we got our hands on AD&D 2E First Quest and played the hell out of that but what really cemented it was Vampire: The Masquerade and reading Wraith: The Oblivion because now there were other worlds and they really showed me possibilities and I learned more about RPGs, rule sets, etc in general than I ever did from D&D.
I know when I got hooked on RPGs, when a friend handed me the three soft bound books, right after they were released and I sat down and started reading. I can also tell you when I lost my dedication to D&D, when I read Tasha's Guide to Woke Adventuring. Looking at Cities without number now.
I was all in one Summer day in 1981... my old man was stationed in GITMO Bay Cuba and it was hot as Hell that day.... my Buddy down the street asked my little brother and I if we wanted to try a new game he got.... Redbox.... so we spent two hours rolling up characters, him explaining rules here and there... painstakingly buying gear, the whole nine yards... I'm a Elf with Magic Missle and my Longsword and my brother is a Dwarf...
finally adventure time! we ventured up a hill and come upon three Orcs... we set about them. Me smashing off my one spell... did some damage... I was closed with another and BAM! dead.... my Brother's Dwarf managed to kill one but when down in a blaze of glory.... 5 mins in....
we looked around the table....silence.... LET"S GO AGAIN!!!!
the rest is a blur. Later that Summer we like others took AD&D as the "better grown up version" and before you knew it... my Buddy's SISTER joined us and our DM was my MOM.
so don't listen to the Commie Liars that tell you women and girls weren't allowed back then. They are liars.
My first contact with rpgs began as one of my older brother got the second edition core box of the darked eye at chrismas. That must be in the beginning of the 90´s. My brother had put the Heroquest boardgame on his wishlist, but his godfather´s wife judge the game by it´s cover, so she decided the darked eye must be the better game, because of the cover "a dwarf, a human male warrior, a human female warrior and a female elf walked side by side a street in a medival town toward the viewer".
1981 summer camp listening to the high schoolers trying to figure out how to open a door and failing
Just the concept of choosing your own options and rolling dice to determine the outcome was very intriguing
What was behind that door?
I got into a fight at school in the cafeteria. They logically separated us (both fight participants), making me sit in a benched area (outside the cafeteria) known as the lunch period social spot for the "nerds"/social rejects/"gross" kids. I sat there and started hearing 1 guy run some character ideas past the other guy (DM), for his upcoming "game". Shortly after a small flock of his other players came over and they all started talking about things like wizards, dragons, magic swords, etc.
I asked them, what they meant by discussing all of that stuff (wizards, dragons, magic swords, etc), and they started explaining to me what playing D&d (roleplaying) was as they pulled out their books and showed me visuals while they explained : I was pretty enthralled.
The next day I went to sit with them all on my own, and we kept talking about D&d.
Within a week I was invited to the DMs house on Saturday for his game.
Sitting outside with those kids, that were rapidly becoming my new friends became the norm. My other friends (the delinquent scene) made comment to me at various times as all of this was occurring with some variation of : "What are you doing hanging out w/the nerd kids?". I brushed off the inquiries and gradually started retracting from my old social group, as I spent more time hanging out (during & after school) with the "nerd" kids.
It'll sound weird to some, but my norm of troublemaking, partying and _____-chasing rapidly became sidelined with all things D&d. It was really funny seeing my new friends completely confused when I would pass up parties and social get togethers where it was a near definite that I'd "get a girl" that night. They didnt get it, because we had always lived in different worlds on that topic. I wasnt pressed about something that was my norm, and I was blessed enough to know that I could "score" a girl just about whenever I wanted. Girls being available had always been part of my world, D&d (and hanging out w/those guys talking about D&d) and all of the stuff about it that I found to be absolutely cool as F, was an entire new world to me.
They taught me D&d, and I became the social element within my new friend group that kept other kids in school from just messing with them as a public hierarchy flex.
That is really cool! The cosmic game of pool had you at the exact right table at the exact right time! I am really liking these background stories!
Hooked at first session basic D&D, but knew I was in for the long haul when I played S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
Great adventure!
When I started a few years ago, my first two RPGs were Delta Green, which my friend GMd in person (who is a master at storytelling and improv), and Alpha Centauri supplement for GURPS. I feel like I was spoiled early because after that point, when those two campaigns ended, all everyone wanted to play was DnD 5e, and pretty much only online. I started to dislike the hobby and slowly just stopped playing. Then one day, I bought the Alien RPG rulebook and the Heart of Darkness scenario. I absorbed the rules and the scenario book like a sponge. I had never studied this hard for anything in my life haha! And once I ran the game, everyone had a blast. That's when I knew I loved RPGs even if I was destined to be a forever GM hehe. This hobby is freaking awesome.
For me it was a combination of FASA's Star Trek system (at least I think it was them I was 15 might be misremembering) and Paranoia. Two systems I wish I had copies of.
Its funny, I always thought D&D was trash (having only played 2nd) compared to the other systems that were available. Didn't help the guy who owned my LGS HATED Gygax.
I loved FASA Star Trek! That ship combat system was great!
3:59 - I'm just glad it wasn't only me who let some of those early books and RPG stuff get away.