Day 1: First person who introduced you to D&D. Which edition? First character?
Ok. Let's start thing off complicated! No one person introduced me. In fact it seemed to be a conspiracy to get me to play. I remember borrowing Asa Herald's AD&D Monster Manual to read during silent reading in grade school. I remember Darin Buhlig and I trying to figure out Holmes basic on a field trip bus ride to St. Louis. But I have to give credit to Jon Cook for being my first DM. We played the hell out of some D&D then. He had the AD&D books and I had the Basic/Expert books. We ran with it.
My first character was Johan Werper, human lawful cleric. He worshiped an unnamed sun god. At this point in my life I had become fairly committed to my own atheism but I still found religion interesting. I guess to be a religious human was as alien to me as an elf or dwarf. But I also thought the turning undead thing was really cool. I was very, very much into vampires and horror and I *got* that the Cleric was supposed to be Van Helsing, so that is how I played him.
Johan became something of my "ego" character. With my assassin Nigel as my "id" and my grizzled old wizard Phygora as my "superego" they made up the trinity of characters I played most often in Jr. High and High School. Larina my witch was an "anima" character. Cause eventually all psychologists leave Freud in favor of Jung.
He also became one of my first "generational" characters. Anytime a new version of D&D came out I would make a new Johan who is the son of the previous one. Johan I was a cleric under Basic, Johan II was a Lawful Good Paladin for AD&D, Johan III was a Cavalier for Unearthed Arcana. Celene was Johan II's daughter and she was a Healer in 2nd ed. I kept this up even until recently with Johan V for D&D 4. I fully expect that Johan VI will be for Next. All Lawful good clerics or paladins, or something similar.
I still have all the sheets.
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You're so organised!
ReplyDeleteI'm in! Sounds like fun.
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