I was thinking a bit on this since unearthing the time-capsule of early games from the shed and my thoughts were that:
a) my route in looked a lot more like the original D&D'ers of yore - boardgames and wargames led sideways into D&D through a box set - D&D as 'super-heroquest'
b) that treading along that path was a bit mushy and its hard to say where on that continuum I had my first true TTRPG game
c) I was a sucker for 'advanced' games as a kid and they got me good
Starting with the first of these points - I came in sideways from boardgames and from my point of view, D&D piggy-backed on all of Games Workshops stuff.
I came in from Heroquest from MB Games back in the day. Heroquest and Space Crusade led to White Dwarf, led to an awareness of all the other stuff out there, thence to the D&D Black Box in early 93, then Dragon Magazine (April 93) and on into AD&D 2e from there.
There was no Games Workshop, where I grew up, far too small and far out. There were not even that many places in the country carrying TTRPG books - maybe a trio in Dublin - the old Virgin Megastore, Marks Models and perhaps one of the comic stores? What there was available to hand was Heroquest, Space Crusade and such like in the local toy stores. Things that looked like boardgames made it as far out as we were, not TTRPG books or blisters of minis. Magic: The Gathering and the internet were yet to come at that stage.
This meant that magazines (White Dwarf, Dragon) spotted when people were in Dublin or over the border in the North were the only information channels to what was available out there. Even once we figured out that there were things to be had, everything had to be mail ordered and in old punts which got a pretty poor exchange rate to sterling, so everything was expensive. Getting things ordered direct from America was not even considered. The brochures, catalogues and adverts got pored over, trying to figure out what were these things that were hinted at and what did you want to spend your very scarce opportunities on getting.
All this meant that what we did not have, did not get played, it was a lot easier to play the Heroquest in hand. Even when we got some bits and pieces there was a lot of building out from the basic books. Looking at Questing Beasts 'folk/official' breakdown, we were official where we could be but folk practitioners where we had to be.
On the second point, it was a messy continuum where it is hard to say where the first 'official' TTRPG experience was.
Was it the running about free form imagineering of primary school? No - that had no rules or dice, only restrained by the mutually assured destruction of we all played on each others continents. so while it was play and story-telling it was not a TTRPG; it often lacked even a table.
Was it when my pal got their hands on Advanced Fighting Fantasy and tried to run a session for me which I did not get at the time? Maybe, but I did not understand what I ought to have been doing, did not understand the switch from the 'choose between paths' of the Choose Your Own Adventure Fighting Fantasy books to this new experience.
Was it when I got my Black Box and ran something with the same pal? Probably that was the 'official' start but it was a spotty single test that did not go anywhere much.
Definitely by end of '94 I know I had sat at a Gamma World table, I had played in a LARP at Gaelcon, definitely it had happened by then - but those were all the guttering sparks beforehand.
It was sometime in there, after I had gotten my hands on the AD&D 2e PHB, DMG and Monster Manual that I ran my first *true* game, where three intrepid adventurers set out to an auction at an old wizards tower to see what they could find. One of those characters was still in play years later, in a campaign that is insisted to be just on (a 20 year) hiatus.
By 96 things were roaring along, I was in a WoD campaign, in a WHFRP campaign, had played Conspiracy X, had played Dragonlance and was running AD&D. The bright shine of those games and that era of great gaming makes it hard to pick out which of the sparks from before I would call as the one where it all decisively caught? It certainly wasn't the 'I had a pal that knew what this was' introduction that I know others had, it was semi-spontaneously generated with very little in the way of guidance and no play tradition to draw on at the start. Even when I found other folk, we were all winging it at the same time.
On the third and last point, I realise now I fell hook, line and sinker for the lure of 'advanced'.
Despite the fact that I got the D&D Black Box and in theory should have gotten the Rules Cyclopedia to continue with D&D, I headed off for AD&D as my first step. At the time I was a low/mid-teen and from the stats that was similar to most of the new joiners at the time. All the influences wereointing to 'grow up, move up' - exams, legal age of drinking, adulthood etc. Looking at what was available at the time - on the shelves in the toy store, beside kiddie games were Heroquest, Space Crusade, Black Box D&D - but available through catalogues or rarely on bookshelves were Advanced Space Crusade, Advanced Heroquest, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; must be better right? Put away your childish things and move up, right?
Reading up on the die hard BX/BECMI folk I think those who did not move on from D&D to AD&D were already pretty advanced - you had to know a lot to know that not moving "up" was an option. Interestingly, there was no mention of the Rules Cyclopedia in the 1992 catalogue that came in my Black Box despite it having been released only the year before. What we did not know about, we could never know to want.
As a counter - throughout that catalog, my only window into what was out there at the time, all the cool stuff had AD&D 2e splashed across them - Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Greyhawk - all these were for AD&D and for D&D there was only Dragons Den, Goblins Lair, Assault on Ravens Ruin and Thunder Rift. Interesting, maybe a counter to Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk but there was nothing to balance Dark Sun, Al-Qadim and Spelljammer - so off to AD&D I went. If they were trying to sell me that Advanced was the place to be, I certainly bought it.
So all told, myself and my original gang of players boot-strapped ourselves up to TTRPGs off boardgames, wargames and books not via joining an existing TTRPG table - a game at a con was probably the most contact with an existing TTRPG tradition but I struggle to recall any con games of those early years. I think we had at least a couple of years of doing it our own way before attending university got most of us into contact with a broader gaming tradition.
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