What Was Your Gateway to Adventure

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This was an old TSR Hobbies catalog. I can’t recall whether this came packaged in my Holmes Basic set or in the later Moldvay set.

1977 had been a big year already, with the release of Star Wars during the past spring. The summer had been spent running around the neighborhood, shooting imaginary Storm Troopers, and debating the fate of Darth Vader.

It was around Thanksgiving when I became aware of a new animated TV Special. The Hobbit was coming to television. Now, for those of you much younger than I, you must understand that the late 70s were a much different time. We had cartoons every Saturday morning, without fail. However, aside from the annual Charlie Brown specials and perhaps Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, animated specials were almost unheard of. If you are too young to have lived through this, it’s hard to describe just how odd this was to see on network tv.

Rumors had spread through my school like wildfire. The Hobbit was something totally different. Not only was this a new animated special, but it was a story of wizards, dwarves, elves, and even a dragon! Truly, this was something not to be missed.

I don’t recall what I did wrong. Perhaps I had knocked the gravy over and into my Aunt’s lap during Thanksgiving dinner. At any rate, as luck would have it, I found myself quite grounded for the world television premier of The Hobbit.  It was devastating. I was certain that quite possibly; nothing good could come of my life from that day forward. You see, in 1977, there was no streaming, no DVRs (or VCRs for that matter). As a matter of fact, there was a great likelihood that if you missed a show on TV or even a movie in the theater, that you may never have an opportunity to see it again.

During the following week, I was forced to listen to my young friends tells stories about The Hobbit.  They would go on and on about the goblins, the spiders, and even some strange thing that they referred to as “Gollum”.  I was devastated. Within the span of one year, I had been told that I was too young to have a poster of Farrah Fawcett and now I had missed The Hobbit.

This was the cover to my first version of The Hobbit in the late 1970s.

During the fall of 1978. I came home from school one day to find a paperback book lying on my bed. It was The Hobbit; my parents had purchased me a copy of the novel. While it was certainly quite a bit larger than any book I had read thus far, I was intrigued by the maps and “strange writing” which I found just inside the front cover. I set about reading it right away.

I was hooked immediately. Shortly after finishing The Hobbit, I moved on to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. By the time that these were all finished I was a fantasy junkie, devouring any new novels that I could land my hands on. As I recall, the next up were the Lancer/Ace Conan series with the striking Frank Frazetta covers.

It was some time after that when I heard a couple of my friends talking about some new game. They had been playing this game, with the older kids who lived on the next road over. The details were sketchy but apparently there were hobbits and goblins in it and it was different from any of type of game.

The Holmes Basic D&D boxed set.

The whole thing was terribly confusing and made no sense to me at all. When I asked them about the board, they said there was no board. When I asked if there were cards, they said there were no cards. I was a skeptic, to say the least. Certainly, if a game like this existed, it would have to be listed within the pages of the J.C. Penney Christmas catalog (everything worth having as a child was.) It was not.

Then, one day, my friend and I happened to accompany my mother on a trip to Scrantom’s (a local card & stationary store in Rochester, NY). As we were checking out, I saw a curious looking box, sitting behind the counter. The box was adorned with a picture of a large dragon, sitting on a huge pile of treasure. The words “Dungeons & Dragons” were printed across the top of the box. A look to my buddy confirmed that this was the game he’d been trying to tell me about.

I received that very box for my birthday (this was the Holmes edition Dungeons & Dragons Basic set.) Like a blind man who has never seen, I immediately understood about games without boards. Suddenly, I had the ability to do more than just read fantasy stories; I could create them and watch them unfold before my eyes. The years to follow were filled with all kinds of great gaming memories.

Conclusion

That was how I was introduced to the hobby. However, sticking true to the title of this post, I’m curious about you. What was your gateway to adventure? When were you first exposed to the hobby and what was your first game? I’ve always loved hearing these type of origin stories and I find it fascinating to read about. Drop a comment below and let me know.

That’s all for now. Have a great week and thank you for stopping by. Good gaming!

For maps & plot hooks, go here.

For my Idea Chest posts, go here.

For some random tables, go here.

Want to help me to compile a list of TTRPG conventions? Click here.

Finally, for a bit about me and some general stuff, this is the spot.

24 thoughts on “What Was Your Gateway to Adventure”

  1. Good question, it’s been long enough ago that I can’t remember which came first – reading the Belgariad or picking up the Red Box for D&D. Surely one prompted the other. I wonder sometimes what my life would be like now if my friends weren’t willing to try playing D&D. If they weren’t into it I doubt I would have been interested enough to look around for other people that were.

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    • Yeah. I’d be interested to see how things would have turned out for me if I’d never been introduced to the hobby. It certainly had a big impact on me socially on into my early 20s. I generally think a lot of good comes from it.

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  2. D&D was really a mind twister. I should maybe do a blog post, but I recall how I eavesdropped on some kids in the library playing it. I sort of understood it and sort of didn’t. I ran home that day and tried to create my own game based off of what I had heard. Wish I still had that, because I bet it would be laughable how off the mark I was! I read the Hobbit a few years before D&D, but was mostly interested in reading comics. My first D&D copy was the Moldvay Basic box. Quickly followed by the AD&D1e books as they came out.

    That is also so devastating that you missed The Hobbit special! I’m not sure if I even knew it was out, but I remember wanting to watch the KISS special and my parents wouldn’t let me. I think the first time I saw the Hobbit special was on vhs.

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    • This is great. You should definitely write a blog post about it. I recently found some of my old notes and maps. They are pretty amusing to look back on now.

      It’s funny that you mention your parents not letting you watch a KISS special. I recall being very interested in KISS back in the late 1970s. I recall talking my parents into buying me KISS Alive! for Christmas one year. However, I could tell that they weren’t thrilled with it, once I put it on the stereo. I’m wondering if the special that your parents wouldn’t let you watch might have been Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, because I just stumbled onto that again recently and it was pretty entertaining.

      Thanks for taking the time to share your story!

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      • Yes, it was KISS meets the Phantom in the Park! I didn’t even really know who KISS was at the time, I was just intrigued by their costumes and makeup. I caught part of it on TV years later, and it seemed pretty bad, so maybe it was a good thing that they didn’t let me watch it! 😉

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  3. I discovered D&D at a friend’s house, because his brother was a decade older and made efforts to introduce us to things he thought were cool when he was back during summer break from college. (When he wasn’t gently terrorizing us during sleepovers. I distinctly remember him appearing outside the second-story window as a screaming Mothman one night in second or third grade.) He left his rulebooks and modules around, and his miniatures were as amazing as any art major’s should be. He knew I loved the Chronicles of Prydain, and introduced Tolkien and Monty Python and Camper Van Beethoven, as I recall.

    This was the time when AD&D 2e was coming out, so that’s where we picked up. The books were expensive when my only income was allowance, but I still have them on the shelf near my desk for when I need new ideas.

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    • My apologies. Work has been a bear lately and it has taken me longer than normal to be able to respond.

      I can absolutely relate to being terrorized by older kids, right around the same time as being introduced to ttrpgs. For me it was older neighbor kids. I recall being chased down the street by a headless “horseman” (albeit on a 10-speed). On another occasion, a young friend and I were temporarily locked into a closet and told that when it open we would have been transported to the Planet of the Apes.

      I also recall how tight funds were back then for acquiring new games and accessories. Have a great week!

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  4. My very first encounter was seeing some older boys playing DnD in the Scout troop my dad was Scoutmaster. I sat and watched them play, offering my very naive advice. They said i was too young to play, butet me watch. I was probably 9 or 10, so this was 1983 or 84. I found the Red Box at a garage sale a couple summers later,and I’ve been hooked ever since.

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    • Thank you for sharing. You bring up a good point. I was in the grocery store the other day and I saw a young fellow in a Cub Scout uniform. I remember thinking to myself that it’s been ages since I’ve seen any type of scout out in public.

      I was not a scout myself but I’d wager that a lot of people got their start back in the day due to an affiliation with the Scouts.

      It was really a magical time, wasn’t it? Flipping through the pages, deciphering rules, and taking in the art was good stuff. Thank you for taking the time to write. I really enjoy hearing how people got their start.

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  5. Looking back, it’s funny how close I was to the hobby and how long it took me to get into it.

    In high school in the early 2000’s I had a boyfriend who would spend time “building dungeons”, but it seemed like a nerdy boy thing and I wasn’t interested. One time he caught me reading a Dragonlance book and trying to look up the word “lich” in a dictionary. In university I had a grad student friend whose husband had a bookshelf of binders that contained “campaigns”, and similarly I was vaguely aware of what that meant but did not think it pertained to me.

    And then I went home for the summer and a friend invited a group of us over for a game of something called GURPS. It was very nearly fun. I think we all liked the concept of role-playing but thought there must be a better way to do it.

    The Adventure Zone podcast finally got me to D&D in 2015. And now much of the content I had been reading for years finally makes sense.

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    • Most of my most recent group seems to share a similar backstory. My gf and her friends all had brushes with the hobby through the 90s and early 2000s. They all read fantasy novels and some had even been curious about RPGs. However, none had actually played until I finally managed to drag them in.

      I’ll not to check out The Adventure Zone. I’ve heard of it but haven’t had a chance to explore it. It was stumbling onto Critical Hit (not Critical Role) that brought me back into the hobby after a number of years away. Thanks for taking the time to write.

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  6. My case is… A bit odd.

    I’ve looked reading and playing video games ever since I had any contact with the missus in question. I became a reading addict by the age of 7, when I finally was allowed to borrow books from my primary school’s library.

    I had a budding interest in making games for a while, so when during high school, a classmate asked me if I wanted to join them in making a game I jumped at the occasion.

    It wasn’t a video game. That of course didn’t discourage me. We’ve been tinkering at it for a year or so, when we kinda started playtesting.

    It was a system better suited to computer games (values reaching thousands, pseudo-real-time counted in milliseconds, resource regeneration per second, ability to cancel additions and abilities like “your attacks take 0.5% less time”).

    The playtests kinda turned into a campaign when we burned a forest fire (by summoning a demon… You’d think we were all drunk or high then…).

    When we could no longer tolerate the combined clunkiness of the software the GM wrote for keeping the turn order and the system in general… The decision was made to switch over to d&d5e, since it released fairly recently…

    And after that I had a bigger break, until a person on my year in uni asked me if I’d like to play in his 3.5 game…

    And that was it, really. 3.5 was the thing. The sheer amount of chargen options drew me in deep.
    And here I am now.

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  7. I was just thinking back on this exact question other day and then I find this article. Funny how that works.

    In the early 80’s, an older kid down the street had tried to run an RPG with me in a modern spy genre. I was too young to grasp all his rules and didn’t realize we were playing an RPG at the time, I just liked hanging out with him.

    I was not a reader as a kid but I loved fantasy and sci-fi movies and television. It was not until middle school and I had a steady stream of income from shoveling, mowing lawns, and delivering papers, that I discovered several things almost at once. I started reading comic books, since I could afford them, and I was given the Dragonlance book series for Christmas. Like you, I was enthralled by the map inside the cover. I discovered that I did enjoy reading. At an uncle’s suggestion I picked up a book about a dark elf. I think Legacy was the first one I read in that series before going back and starting from the beginning after that.

    About this time a pack of friends of mine were playing campaigns of both D&D and another game TMNT and Other Strangeness. I started investing in both games, often riding my bike 4 miles to a local hobby store that was attached to a green house to get the latest released books, minis, and Dragon/Dungeon magazines.

    My high school game group from the mid 90’s stayed playing in one way or another for many years afterward until the mid 2010’s, when our lives all kind of got in the way. Now I play in a library club game every two weeks and I have introduced my kids to the hobby, which I have enough of them to have a full table.

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    • Great story! This is exactly the type of thing I enjoy reading. I reckon a lot of us were ultimately pulled into the hobby through some of the older kids in the neighborhood. I wonder how much of that actually happens these days. I don’t have kids myself but I suspect there is less neighborhood interacting like that.

      The original Dragonlance books really came out at a perfect time. Things were really starting to take off and that first book was likely a gateway for a lot of people. I just read the first three books again last year.

      You’re the second person who has mentioned the TMNT game since I posted this. I didn’t realize it at the time but it seems like it influenced a number of young gamers back then. Seems like I saw recently that they had kickstarted a reprint of it.

      I can totally relate to riding my bike miles to a gaming store. The fact that you wrote “attached to a green house” had me rolling and laughing. That kind of thing was so typical back then. I wonder whatever became of those old-times who ran those early gaming stores.

      It’s awesome that you’ve got your kids into the hobby. I’ve run into a number of folks like that and it must feel great. Hopefully once we’re all old and retired there will be gaming groups in the retirement homes!

      Thanks for taking the time to write. When I started this endeavor it was to interact with other gamers. I was honestly having a lousy day at work today and when I read your comment it totally got me through the rest of the day. Cheers!

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      • We are propping each-other up I think. I was having a pretty lousy week with work, and finding your article and thinking back got me into a better place mentally. That my comment was able to brighten your day has actually brightened mine.

        I love that, even though we could be having one of the worst weeks, having that game session to look forward to, or even just some time spent reminiscing with someone about the hobby can have such a stabilizing affect.

        Gaming has been one of the few avenues that I have been able to bond with my oldest daughter, who is a teenager. You are right they don’t have as much neighborhood interaction but they do manage to still find these groups of friends at school and D&D and RPG clubs are more prevalent and accepted than were back in our days.

        TMNT was fun. Those books still have a place on my shelf. Most of its ruleset was kind of wonky, but the mutation character creation rules were fairly novel and I loved just creating characters using it. Palladium Books character background tables were also great to use. I will definitely have a look for the crowdfunding campaign, I was not aware of it.

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      • Haha. That’s great. The hobby certainly has been very important in my life. I stepped away from it for quite a spell from my late 20s until about the time that I turned 40 and I view that as a big mistake.

        That’s fantastic about your daughter. I can imagine that will lead to great memories for both of you. Have a great weekend!

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  8. Thank you for liking my post 🙂

    I love your story: the part about D&D, of course, but, most especially, the way that you first mourned, and then were introduced to, The Hobbit! That sounds very special.

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      • My husband. He, like you, became enchanted by the game as a boy. I will have to show him your blog: he will really enjoy all of your posts!

        I am a life-long fantasy and sci-fi fan (my sister basically raised me on Terry Pratchett). But it was always books and films for me. Not so much games. I did try an RPG with my then boyfriend, now husband, in college. But I was too young, dumb, and self-conscious to be able to sit across a table and pretend to be someone else in front of the person that I was dating :). So we took a decades-long hiatus from that. Then, in the fall of 2021, he suggested that we play a one-off Alien horror game with some friends for Halloween.

        Older, wiser, less up-tight me had such a great time! All of us did. We were completely hooked. And then my husband, with devious hopefulness, suggested that we all meet again for a longer-running home game.

        So I am now playing in my first real campaign (D&D5E, set on the Sword Coast). And my blog is intended as a big thank you-I’m sorry it took this long-I love you to my husband and friends!

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