Dear community,

I found out mainly from Stranger Things, but Big Bang Theory was also a big influence (although that was after). Where did you find out about DND?

Yours sincerely,

X.R. Balzan.

Greetings Ninxon,

Growing up in the Twin Cities in the late 70s where D&D was partially developed, so my family new of it from people just talking about it, then in the 80s came the D&D Cartoon and everything changed from there and every kid I knew was talking about it.

I'm very glad that people are still learning of the game and giving it a try and like that it is referenced in Movies and Shows.
I do think more people should give it a try :)

Cheers!

   I first played D&D at College in Tallahassee, Florida. 1979 I played D&D in the FSU Wargamers club and i was elected President! It was about 20 guys who played D&D and Traveller in dorms and in the Student Union. As President I had to hold rooms for us authorized by the student government and we ran wargames there every weekend.
   There was every kind of war game. You name it. We kept a library of popular games and we checked them out and played them. Diplomacy. Kingmaker, Cosmic Encounters, illuminati card game, Wooden Ships and Iron Men. Squad Leader, etc etc etc
   I ran a D&D campaign for all comers every Saturday at the Student union. On campus, Teachers and Moms found out and they would dump their kids a dozen or so on me. the Munchkins we called them. And we played with them. I raised that generation of kids on D&D in 1979. I laugh now. But I was the guy who played D&D with your parents.

From my dad and his friends. I remember watching them play a long time before I actually got to really join in, you know, other than rolling some dice for them from time to time. I got to play for real when I was 12 and have been playing ever since. My mom also plays, but she prefers VtM or Traveller to D&D, so while I have learned some stuff from her, it was primarily my dad when it came to D&D.

I watched and loved the cartoon as a kid in the 80s but growing up in a sheltered English village had no idea it connected to anything else. When I was older and moved to a city some friends of friends owned a FLGS which is when I learnt there was more to it but they were incredibly gatekeeper-y and unwelcoming to new players (the shop lasted 6 months before going bust) so I never got a chance to play until over twenty years later when the pandemic kicked off and my friends and I needed an excuse to meet up online during lockdown

I got the basic set as a present from an aunt circa 1981 and quickly moved to AD&D which I played in our basement, primarily with my brothers and occasionally with another friend. Many a Saturday morning, we'd get dropped off at the LGS for a couple of hours and I would wander around looking at other games (Hello Boot Hill and Car Wars!) and at various modules and minis (I remember there was a Grenadier gold box of dwarves I wanted so badly, but could never afford). Then sometime in high school I fell out of it. Started again about 5 years ago at an LGS (RIP Gaming on Grand) trying to get my son into it. He played for a while, but lost interest, while I was back into it full tilt.

I couldn't say where I found out about D&D. It was kind of always in my periphery because I grew up in the 'nerd culture'. But what got me to play for the first time was Critical Role.

My dad had heard about it somewhere, and bought the Moldvay Basic D&D boxed set to play with my older brother and me. However, we couldn't figure it out so it sat on a shelf for a year or so. Then, in 1983, a babysitter saw it and said, "Woah, you guys have D&D? Want to learn to play?"

I rolled up a fighter and my brother rolled up a cleric. We got into a fight with some kobolds and my brother's cleric got killed. He got upset and refused to play again; I was hooked for life.

My first exposure was Baldurs Gate 1; I was (and still am) very much a CRPG gamer and didn't know anything about this tabletop stuff at the time. My first meatspace game was 3e, then I went back and tried 2e, and then stuck with 3e into Pathfinder, largely skipping 4e before pivoting to 5e.

Growing up I was extremely sports oriented, always outside doing something unless the weather was really dire. I came down with some illness that lasted for more than a week (I forget what it was now) and was depressed not being able to leave my room. My parents knew I always enjoyed fantasy stories and stopped by the game store in our tiny little town (no idea how long it lasted, it can't  have been long) to see if their friend who ran the shop had any suggestions for a sick 12 year old. They picked up the Player's Handbook for me. Within a few weeks I had friends coming over every week to play.

Knew about it from general pop culture. And my father played AD&D back in his day.

First played D&D when someone I knew invited me to a table. I took over a lv2 rogue in Lost Mine of Phandelver.

First session was the entry to the Redbrand Hideout. We encountered the Nothic and it was pretty nice. (Having no context for how powerful a creature was made it delightfully tense.)

Missed the next one. Next session I did we were in the graveyard / ruins place after meeting the banshee and an owlbear came out at night. Again, another delightful encounter. I also got to play a bit of bard that time. Using dancing lights to look like a person so the owlbear would chase it, helping us RUN AWAY!

Then that group fell apart but years later a friend asked me if I'd be interested in a D&D group he was getting together. First session we all came thinking someone else was DMing, but despite the chaos and some long hiatuses we've been doing alright with keeping the group together more or less.

There must be some people out there who first heard about it from seeing E.T.

in 1979, a friend of mine invited me over to play a game that was a lot like lord of the rings.

I started DMing in 1980 and ran an open game regularly attended by 15 to 23 people every Saturday and Sunday, 10 hours each day, at a public venue.

Still play with some of the same people I played with then. But not the guy who killed my first character. ;)

Growing up in the late 90s always knew about it, but in high school between years 2001-2005 a friend if mine brought the books to school tried getting campaign started but nothing came of it it.

We went to see ET to see if they got it right…

Honestly? Probably people making fun of D&D.  While D&D might be fairly mainstream now thanks to celebrity players, Stranger Things, Critical Role, etc., for most of its history, it has been a fringe hobby.  Jokes at the expensive of the “anti-social basement dwelling nerd” were fairly common. I distinctly recall thinking the game itself sounds fun - even if the people I knew who played are the same decidedly miserable folks who grew up to yell angry racist things on D&D Beyond.

Seeing as I had no interest in playing with the creepy folks well on their way to becoming grognards, more cool groups mostly were in the closet and not looking to recruit, and most of my actual friends were too uncomfortable to get over the stigma and start playing, it would take a number of years before I managed to get together a group and start actually tossing some dice.

Me and my siblings were visiting our cousins for a week. One day, the elder cousin brought out a red box. "We just picked up this game. Wanna try it out?"

After we rolled up some PCs, it took about twenty minutes of play before my first character, a cleric, died in a trap. That was in 1976.

Quote from jl8e >>

There must be some people out there who first heard about it from seeing E.T.

That was probably my first exposure, yeah

Captainspcter, somehow I missed all that. Started in 1979 in Tallahassee as well but as a grad student so I didn’t have much contact  with the general culture at FSU. A friend was an Anthro grad and fencing instructor for the SCA. He invited me to a game and I was hooked. Started DMing about 3 months later when he got tired of me “rules lawyering”  and had me take over occasionally. Moved around a ton and taught new groups the game from Jamaica to Malaysia working on oil rigs played with a number of different groups in and around NYC when I left the oil patch and started teaching.

It was 1983, and I walked into a local bookstore and saw the Mentzer BASIC RULES, and having already grown fond of fantasy and sword & sorcery books and movies, I walked out of that bookstore with that red box.

This was before the internet, before I had ever laid eyes on a copy of Dragon magazine, before the game really began to make appearances in broader popular culture—with the exception of E.T.—at least where I grew up.