for reference..


This is the unbroken version of the documentary
The Dungeons & Dragons experience -2004

The Dungeons & Dragons experience ( complete) - YouTube

Thanks for the link!  I haven't seen this in a long time.  Fun to see people I've met now in person that were in this film.

Just FYI, there seems to be audio problems where it will cut out for a bit at various points.  Is there a version anywhere that doesn't have that problem?

Deadlord wrote in The Dungeons & Dragons experience (documentary):So my question is this: How many of us remember the very first time we ever played?

yeah, I remember too. I was in third grade when my friends and I started playing. One of my friends had played/learned with his older brother and his friends, but we never played with those older kids. We all never had the rules correct (even years later into jr high) but it worked out that it really didn't matter so much. We always had a great time. The PHB and DMG were a challenging books when you start into them in third grade

Deadlord wrote in The Dungeons & Dragons experience (documentary):So my question is this: How many of us remember the very first time we ever played?

I was 7 years old, and my babysitter brought Skarda's Mirror over to our house and played it with my sister and I.  I love questions like these - they really take me back .

Lets see.
Well for me it would be moved to Bay City Mi. Started a new school in 7th grade. Was on the bus. This other kid, Joel Mattson (someday I hope to reunite with him.) Anyhow he was sitting on the bus and someone was being an ass to him. Said something and threatened to take his "stupid books away" I said he could sit with me. He did. I asked what books he had. He told me they were his Dungeons and Dragons books. I asked what that was. He explained it was a game. I asked if I could see one. He was hesitant. After all someone just threatened to destroy them. So he pulled one out and was showing me it in his lap.

Next day he sat with me and handed me the Monster Manual. I thought hmm this is pretty cool.
A week later asked if I wanted to come over. Sure we sat around in the lower level of his house and made up a character. He had a hand made nice detailed map. He and I played together on up through middle school and into high school when he moved away. He was one of the better DMs I ever knew as he was descriptive and kept things mysterious. Never revealing too much.

Only other DM I found close to him was a Marine when I was in the Navy in Pensacola FL. We had a small group of us whom played together then at my wife and my house.

Ah the memories. Sure wish I could find those two guys again though. Anyhow thanks for the memories.

This brings back some memories!  

I was introduced to D&D by a new kid who just transferred to our school in 7th grade.  I was kind of a square peg and didn't get along too well in school.  This new kid sat next to me.  He was kind of an oddball as well.  He introduced me to this "awesome new game" he had just started playing.  I was hooked in seconds.

Later on a third kid in our grade, (also kind of an outsider)  that I hadn't talked to much before then joined up when he overheard us playing.  He knew right away we were playing D&D, why else would we be talking about attacking orcs?     The three of us bonded over the game and became fast friends for the rest of our time in school.  The rest of the kids considered us weirdos but we didn't mind that much.  They didn't like us anyway, so the D&D stigma wasn't much of a deterrent to us.   I think the game helped all three of us get through a tough time in our lives.

We only had the barest inkling of the rules back then, we didn't even have real dice.  We used handfuls of six siders we scavenged from board games.  Only one of us had some real rulebooks, but his parents were strict Baptists and forbade him from playing the game as they thought it was demonic.  Fortunately he cheerfully ignored this ruling, but because of this he could not carry any gaming materials on him, and he had to hide his books in the rafters in his basement.  He'd sneak down there to read a few pages whenever he could.  It was big deal on the rare occasions when he'd risk smuggling them out of his house and we got to hold and read them!  It was like holding the Holy Grail!

We played all through that school year and the summer using only his sketchy memory of the rules, some handfuls of six siders and our imagination.  Those games were some of the best times I've ever had.

It makes me sad looking back now, since I don't see those guys anymore.  I lost my baptist friend in 11th grade to a car accident, and after school I drifted away from the other guy.  Our lives just went in different directions, as so often happens.

Still, those were heady days, and some of my fondest childhood memories are from that time.

To this day when I go by my baptist friend's old house, I wonder if his 1st edition books are still tucked away in his secret hiding spot in the basement, right under the feet of the current owners.