The spines of a dozen or so RPG books.

#RPGaDay2019 – First

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The opening topic for #RPGaDay2019 is all about firsts. Rather than focus on a particular first, I decided to brainstorm a big list of them.

  • First RPG: Dungeons & Dragons (Basic Set, circa 1981). My mom bought it for me and my world was never the same.
  • First RPG Module: Keep on the Borderlands. I had no idea how to run it; I didn’t understand the map, and thought the encounters needed to be run in ascending order.
  • First Dice: The dice that came with the original basic set (which included a wax crayon to color in the numbers)
  • First Campaign Setting: The Known World. Aka Mystara before it was Mystara.  Different pieces of the map showed up in the Expert and Companion boxed sets devoid of almost any context.
  • First Campaign Love: The World of Greyhawk. When I got serious about running a campaign, I moved from Mystara to Greyhawk. 
  • First Character: Samuel “Battle Axe” Longriver. His original name was simply “Battle Axe”; he got a first and surname when I started my college campaign and introduced a few of my old characters as NPCs.
  • First non-D&D RPG: Star Frontiers. I loved this game and had both the original and Alpha Dawn boxed sets, but sadly never got to play it.
  • First non-D&D RPG I Actually Got to Play: Twilight 2000. This may also qualify as the first true campaign I played in. Inspired by Red Dawn, my middle school friends and I played Twilight 2000 for most of 7th grade.
  • First Horror RPG: Call of Cthulhu. I was introduced to the game by a college friend who remains the single best CoC game master I’ve ever had.
  • First Superhero RPG: DC Heroes. The same friend who introduced me to Call of Cthulhu ran my first supers campaign.
  • First RPG Club: The Role-Playing Underground at Lock Haven University.
  • First Artifact of my own design: Time’s Splinter. A magical artifact capable of warping space and time (which my players weren’t super thrilled about).
  • First Freelance RPG publication appearance: Knights of the Dinner Table. 
  • First Convention: RUCON at Lock Haven University (actually, it was likely another regional con in central Pennsylvania, but I don’t remember which one it was). RUCON was the Underground’s biannual convention.
  • First National Convention: GenCon 1999

This post is part of RPG a Day 2019, an online celebration of all things role-playing games.

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