Thinking back, what was it like the first time you opened up an RPG book?

Wayback in the early to mid 80s (perhaps 1983), I bought the Player's handbook for ADnD. I guess I was about 16.



Earlier than that, I had been playing with the "choose your own adventure books, Sorcery books, Wizard of Firetop mountain" etc...



But I'm referring to a real RPG rules set, playing with other people.



So anyway, a new RPG shop opened in my area and they were doing introductory ADnD adventures to actually show people how to play RPGs.

I didn't have the rules at the time and only vaguely understood what RPGs were.



I had read many fantasy books before then, such as LOTR, The Hobbit and all sorts of other Author's books, but apart from the solo Game books, that's all I had to go on, RPG wise.



The guy who was running these sessions had the PHB, DMG and MM on the table, but all we got to see was the PHB from a distance and we generated characters, which was fun in itself.



I ended up generating a Human Mage, so I had a Sleep spell and that was about it.

The other players generated various other class/Race combinations.

I remember being pretty excited, as it all felt very arcane and secretive, especially as I'd not even had a look in the PHB really. The DM was just reading out to us what to do.



Then the gaming session itself started and it was awesome and exciting. You could throw a spell and roll dice and all those dice and and character sheets looked so cool.

He also used 25mm figures, which was even more awesome as it really helped visualise what was going on.

That and he drew out a map of where we were when fighting Goblins and a forest encampment etc.



Anyway, after that quite long session, I guess which ran for about 5 hours, it was the evening and the RPG shop where the sessions took place stayed open for us to buy the books.

Very kind of them indeed! ;) .



I ended up buying the PHB, MM and DMG there and then, along with a set of dice.

so did pretty much everyone else in that gaming session.



The other people and I ended up forming an RPG club and we even hired a community hall to play RPGs for a while.

The club lasted for some months and I played ADnD for that duration. So those months were a lot about playing the game and getting the rules terribly wrong probably, but it was awesome fun and I was truly obsessed with RPGs from then on.



Later I bought the 1st Edition Stormbringer Boxed set and that was the first RPG I ever actually ran.

Shortly after that I started running ADnD as well though.



To me the first time I opened up that PHB and started reading the rules and generating characters, it seemed very mysterious, secretive and special, like I had some secret knowledge the general populace didn't have.

It really gripped my imagination and attention as a major part of my life for years.



So, what was it like for you?

What RPG was it?

What were the circumstances of your first real RPG experience?

Thinking back, what was it like the first time you opened up an RPG book?