First character you ever played?

Hey all...I know you're probably sick of me starting threads, but Harkins is trying to build some kind of critical mass here. My personal contribution is creating threads that are conducive to having comments posted on them. I suggest you all start doing the same so NearbyGamers grows even faster.

So, what was the first character you ever played?

The first character I ever played was a hired thug in the D6 Star Wars roleplaying game. It was the first roleplaying game I'd ever seen, and I had to bother my brother constantly to get to look at it for the duration of an entire vacation.

When he finally let me play, I built a hired gun named Jago, and spent the length of my solo adventuring career either looking for work or evading arrest.

In retrospect, I would describe the campaign as a space western probably better suited to the Serenity game world, but it was about a decade before Serenity was even on the map...maybe more. The first part of Star Wars Episode IV was mostly space western anyway.

Numerous prison breaks, black market deals, arms runs to revolutionaries/ criminals, and close calls later, the game ended when I was brutally gunned down in a cantina by two questionably legal assassin droids (oh, I can hear the argument over it now) the day after coming out of hiding. Happily, I took both of them with me.

Jago, we hardly knew ye.

The first RPG I ever played in was Ian Grojnowski's AD&D game which he ran in the library at school. I was fifteen, Ian must have been fourteen I suppose. Neither of us, nor any of the other players (Bill Plant, Michael Barr-David, Paul Tritter IIRC), had much of a grasp of the finer points. Ian provided that every character had to have 18s in all six D&D attributes. Also, that every character had to be chaotic evil 'because it gave them more freedom'. But they started at first level, and rolled for hit points. Michael's character had been through a couple of adventures before the rest of us joined and was fifth level with a flying carpet and a golf bag full of magic swords.

I don't remember my character's name. But I do remember that he was a half-ettin magic-user with two heads, with all psionic attack modes in one head and all psionic defence modes in the other. We couldn't work out what his 'level of mastery' was, though. (This turned out to be an undefined synonym for 'character level').

Things did not go terribly well. I consider it a bit of a marvel that I stayed with the hobby

My first character was a basic D&D (red boxed set) M-U, somewhat mediocre, who got killed in the first room with the goblins in B2 'Caves of Chaos' (which came in the box).

Christmas eve, 1982. Halcyon days.

Perhaps unusual here, in that the first roleplaying character I ever played was online, in something like 1994 or 95. TrekMOO II: Final Frontiers was the place, and the character was 'Chiropteran' a Cardassian who was eventually recruited into the Klingon Empire. OK, so it was a little sloppy on the roleplay side, but it was fun. In any event, Chiropteran became flagship CO for the Klingons almost immediately because I was good with the simulated space part of the game, and we didn't have too many players. Shortly ascended to flag rank, and became one of a functional triumvirate running the Klingon Empire on that game. (Chiropteran's pet, a coding project of a Cardassian salamander, gave me the name 'Redag' which is my most common online moniker to this day.)

A year or so beyond that I was invited into my first D&D campaign. My character there was "Chirop Teran" an older dwarven fighter, eventually reincarnated as a minotaur (Krynn flavor) to much twinky murderousness.

Later online characters would include:

Redag -- StarMOO, AOFS officer and later famed rebel. Emerson D. Corman -- HoloTrek Starfleet character: inept descendant of Roger Corman. Failed as a film student? Join Starfleet.

Chirop Teran was far and away my most memorable pen and paper character though. No other campaign has had nearly that longevity.

Man, if we're expanding this to the first GOOD character, I didn't have one for years. I ran a lot of good NPCs, but I never had many chances to field a player (you GMs all know how it is).

The first good character I got to play was late in my roleplaying career. It was in 2001, right after September 11. I'd just cut off all my hair and gotten involved with a commissioning program. I was in a class at Notre Dame with a very intelligent and refreshingly conservative Trotskyite, and we somehow found out we were both avid roleplayers. He offered to run a campaign for myself, a friend of his, and the girl I ended up marrying four years later.

We met in my now-father-in-law's basement and he ran a campaign where he started us all off as NPC-class or apprentice-level characters. I thought it was absolutely brilliant, so I hit the books hard to find a good character concept.

In the end, I played a shepherd named Csaba Siksallandir. And rather than building him for combat, like I tended to do with previous characters, I built him for herding sheep. What a revelation. A whole world of roleplaying opened up. I sat around and watched sheep, levelled into ranger and got a dog (with better stats than me), took perform (flute), handle animal, animal empathy, wilderness survival, etc.

When wolves started harassing the sheep, it was like ultra-high adventure all of a sudden. I basically took my father's composite longbow (I think it was named Lada) and went after a pack of wolves for weeks.

It ended when I tracked them to their den and killed most of the pack by shooting and moving from one concealed perch to another (I took a hitpoint of damage from pulling a bow with such high poundage without enough practice). In the end, I was caught in a perch aiming on the alpha when the wind shifted (random roll for the wind...got unlucky).

I got yanked from some low branches by one of the remaining wolves, and mauled pretty badly (there were more than a few rolls to determine what kind of permanent scars I got). I killed one of them with a knife, made some kind of called shot on another to do bleeding damage on every subsequent turn, and managed to get free. I lost my bow and knife in the process though.

In the end, I was about halfway up a very tall pine with two very angry wolves pacing below me. It was a long wait. Fortunately, one of them bled to death. Unfortunately, I was bleeding to death, too. Then I remembered my sling. What I didn't have was sling bullets. What I DID have was a few copper coins and a whetstone.

Based on the DM's description of the coins' mass and dimensions, I sharpened the edges of one of them and used it as a sling bullet. I figured I was going down fighting, but I critted and confirmed on the first one. The wolf died, I managed the heal roll to stabilize myself, and I slowly crawled back to town.

And that was just my prologue. I got recruited into the actual adventuring party shortly after.

Hmm... other than Allaryin (mentioned in thread 25), I have a hard time remembering that far back.

I did a lot of (most of) Steve Jackson/Ian Livingstone's (Games Workshop, not Steve Jackson Games) Fighting Fantasy single-player book driven adventures. I did several similar Middle Earth themed books (with a system that I later recognized as a d6 adaptation of ICE's MERP/Rolemaster system).

I rolled up a bunch of characters with my uncle's books... but never played any of them. He did, however, give me my first set of dice. I still have some of them.

I think the first character I actually played in a situation with another person in the room would have been a low level chaotic neutral AD&D 2nd edition rogue back in elementary school. I doubt he died, we probably just lost his character sheet or moved on to more interesting things.

Some of my more memorable characters from later on in my gaming career would have been: - a Dark Sun mule gladiator who found himself without a job when the city was leveled when the neighboring city-state got a bit over zealous in their conquest - a wookiee artillery specialist type whose sole claim to fame was finding himself without a big gun and thus going into melee with an AT-ST - a female werewolf (WoD) who acted as the group's alpha and generally kept the males cowed into a state of slightly less irresponsible behavior - a lizardman druid/samurai (yeah, i know, i know - but he was the only non-standard race in the group, no half-celestial/half-robot template junk) who pretended to be a pack animal while in town to avoid attention - Clerics. Lots and lots of clerics.

Whee! And now I complain to Harkins (who's suspiciously not at his computer - stupid good weather) about how the forum's failure to recognize and correctly render my poor attempt at a wiki style list :P

If we're counting VERY first role-playing character then I have have to go back a bit. Not counting the obvious "role-playing" children do around the ages of 7-10, my first character would've had to have been when I was around 12 on a Pokemon freeform Chat/Message Board RPG. Mostly, people role-played fights.Ocassionally there were joke posts about things happening outside these boundaries. My character was Pikablu, who later became PikabluGG, and then just Gadgetguy. Despite how embarassing it might be to admit, he had a wonderfully complex backstory for a 12 year old playing. It mostly involved being born not human, being turned human, cliche villains and rivals, a few near misses with death. It was campish, mostly self-insertive, and rather ridiculous, but like I said, it was quite deep for a 12 year old's first character in a non-structured system. Sound nerdy as hell? It was. Still, it laid some of the basis for many Forum role-playing systems to come. Essentially this group evolved over time, split up, and rejoin in some weird systems.

Over time, I played a LOT of characters and modded a few times. Before I even laid my hands on a d20, I had probably played about 20 different personas in freeform. They may be rather ludicrous beginnings, but I believe those years allowed me to hone the edge for improvisation that I eventually needed when I would become GM. It also laid the foundations to a lifelong addiction to writing and helped me overcome the "characters are a direct entension of the author" phase a lot of people had trouble with.

Now, if we want first character that can be tied to a REAL system, that would be Audrick the D&D Cleric. Essentially, a friend wanted to GM some D&D. Always wanting to try, a few friends and I obliged. Half the group had played before, the other half was clueless. As such, I was logically pidgeoned-holed into the job of being cleric because it's clearly such an easy class to start out as. I managed fine all things considered. However, before our first session, I needed a personality to go with my character. This was a problem because clerics are a bit hard to put a strong personality onto sometimes. I essentially had a choice between a pious man, the fatherly type, or the crusader. I decided to go with an overzealous idiot savant with good intentions. I was lucky because the party Rogue immediately latched onto this and we had our own little Abbot and Costello routine going.

As the adventures went on, Audrick had some rather wonderful moments. Here I was, playing a 12 int character like he had a 6 int, but he always did well on knowledge checks he cared about. So, it was a big running gag that when no one could figure anything out, Audrick would probably roll a nat 20. Audrick also had a propensity for screaming Pelor, refusing to drink, a comic mishap involving a half-elf chick and not understanding the word celibacy, gaining prophetic dreams that made him sound insane, and smashing the heads in of anyone that messed with him. All in all, a very fun character to play that had some moments I still rank in my favorites to this day.

First character. Can't remember anything about him. I'd finished playing cards at the Rec Center in Ft. Meade MD when another table grabbed my interest. The guy at the head of the table had a brief case open and on its side to his left and a yellow board (DM screen) in front of him. I went to look and he shooed me away. The others (there were four or five) were on the other side of the screen and looking at a big yellow map. There were building outlines and there were periods in various places (in front of the shop doors I believe). They saw me watching and "made" me sit down and start playing. There were a bunch of different dice (the white and pink d20's) and we had a pretty good time.

That was D&D (original) back in 1976 I guess and we were playing City State of the Invincible Overlord.

I came back a few times to play and bought the blue boxed basic set (blue book, dungeon geomorphs and random treasures). I went to Germany and that's where my RPGing got going for real. When I returned, I was stationed at Ft. Belvoir VA where I was president of the gaming club for a few years even hosting a couple of local conventions.

Carl

All through High school I wanted into the AD&D group there, but alas they were sexist jerks who did not like my attempts to join the school approved group. So I was a late bloomer in gaming and did not have my first game until college. My first character was a insanely annoying feline pooka in a sorta freeform table top Changeling game. Cat was her preffered name. She could not tell the truth to save her life, but honestly believed anyone who talked to her. Despite Tristan's (storyteller) many attempts to stop Cat from jumping into Lake Greymere, Cat hit the water and was frozen for pretty much the rest of the campaign. I end up playing a NPC squirrel pooka. Later Cat came back from reincarnating her bones under an oak tree. In the game my character was constantly antagonizing another player's sidhe. We became very close friends after that. Our characters are almost always opposites of each other, we love to in game bicker. Ahh, good times, good times.

Hmm my first character.... Well that would have to be NeBree although most people just called him Ne. He was a Dark Elf Assassin in the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game. I got started with him while I was stationed in S. Korea. He was a lil kick ass mo fo, a tad bit sadistic at times but it worked for him. Had a lot of fun with his Shadow Meld and his Mask of Guise.

Wow! That was a long time ago. One of my gamer friends who is a grey beard like me likes to joke that he has characters older than most players - heh-heh.

I was 13, it was 1981 and the characters name was Stag. Elven fighter/Magic-User created using the D&D Expert rules set. Sure wish I still had that box set. I don't think Expert rules was ever a big seller for TSR. Stag later morphed into a Ranger when AD&D came out -- or at least I became aware of AD&D -- I played him on and off for several years in my teens mostly in high level campaigns.

So, I get a little grin any time I talk about my first character. He's been reprised many times since that first campaign, but he always makes me giggle.

He was a halfling paladin, of the minimum height, who carried around his longsword (which was like a broadsword on a human) and had his trusty mount, Tooth the panther. He would love to scream "In the name of Yandala" as his battle cry, and it was the most amusing thing to picture me (6'4") playing a character that was, literally, half my height. But little Garret had a heart of gold, and the most noble of intentions. There was many a time when the raid would walk into a room and see the big bad meanie on his throne, and would try and talk their way out of whatever situation... then from the rear, they would hear Garret's battle cry, and he would fling one of those infamous Halfling stones, plinking it off the meanie's forehead.

See, now I want to go resurrect him and get in on a D&D game... oh well, were I have to have time for all my hobbies....

The first character I ever played I made using second edition D&D. It was a really cheesy game, but I was too new to know that at the time. I don't remember the name of the character or anything. I just remember that I came into the middle of a campaign, in a really tight knit party, and I remember that the only way they would accept my character was to screw with me. I think the worst thing they ever did to the character was tell her she was playing cards and handed her the "Deck of Totems". She drew the card and *poof*, was a man (this wasn't as bad as being stuck in the gelatinous cube of death just funnier). I was stuck with doing the guttural voice for weeks because our GM at the time docked us for not role-playing. Then I had to strike a deal with a witch where I killed another member of the party in their sleep and gave her the body. Not really a great character but it was a memorable one.

I had one botched attempt to play D&D when I was about 12 (1983ish), over at a friend's house. My character was an elven wizard, that through miraculous luck rolled a pseudo-dragon as a familiar. The game lasted about three hours though. I think (and here I hang my head in utter shame) the character's name was Zaphod Beeblebrox. I have since instated a rule in my games where players must give their characters original names, not ones ripped off from someone else.

The first RPG I had any real exposure to was Star Frontiers. Sitting around bored one evening with two friends, one mentions that he bought this game 'Star Frontiers'. So, he brought it over, and I told them to leave me alone until the next day. From then on, we started playing after school every night. I jumped from that to Marvel Super Heros, then to AD&D 1st ed. which I ran all through high school.

I have mostly been GM, and only had a few memorable PCs, mostly in several long-running Champions games.

My first was an unnamed dwarven fighter back in my first year of college in 1980 (that would be the quarter that I got a 1.8 GPA!!). I just remember that he lasted two nights before he had his throat ripped out by something called a "Dire Wolf". I was hooked immediately.

Two weeks later, I was a newly minted DM - doing some of the most horrible Monty Haul DMing ever seen. After five years or so, I got better... but it was a looooooonnnnnnng five years!

Though I've DM'ed almost exclusively since then, except for the first six months, ALL of my characters have been memorable.

The time was the 1980 and my brother and I were freshman in college when we came across a guy we knew in an unused classroom with a couple other guys and they were playing this strange game. My brother was immediately hooked.

It took me a while to get interested (I was trying to get a date with my soon-to-be girlfriend at the time and was distracted -- I needed to get my priorities straight, I guess)

Anyway, after one session I was hooked. My first character was a Chaotic Neutral Thief named Random. Of the 6 players starting that day, he was the only one to survive the whole campaign. I played him like a coward most of the time, only shooting arrows from behind obstacles and rarely ever tackling anything head on.

Oh those were heady days, indeed.

First character was a 5th level Cleric of Thor in AD&D circa 1982. My girlfriend's older brother, David, was running the game and I was hooked on RPGs when I got my first critical hit with my warhammer...

My first character was a Mokole by the name of Jason (never was too good at names, so half of my characters are some form of Jason, and the other half have the moniker of Static, need to get a name book I suppose ;). Sadly the game died after only about 3 sessions, but I got one good story out of it.

For lack of any better plan for the night, the GM had us "train" against one another. Well I went up against a Vampire character that had been being played for close to a year of weekly games. The vampire jumped one of my characters heads (he had two) and used some sort of mastery of blood to force the blood from my head. I rolled to see if my character could figure out which head the vamp had landed on, and failed. So I narated that after giving one another a good look to figure out which one of them the vamp was on, one of the heads decided that it "knew" that the vamp was on the other head. And bit it (did I mention that the character had poisonous fangs?). I was planing to have the character play through learning about it's race (it had grown up without knowing there were any of it's kind around, because there were none in it's town). Shame that we most likely will never start that one up again (most of those involved in that game have since left the group).

The first character i've ever played. Hmm, that's a surprisingly hard question, as it is a while since i have played.. I remember that the game was Rolemaster though, we used to play it in a friend's house with books we had borrowed from library, good times. I remember we chose rolemaster 'cause the books were available in finnish, the rules were pretty straightforward (At least we thought so, later on thinking checking a huge table each time you rolled something was kind of.. Slow, The system is propably made for more social RPGs).

I recall my first character being alchemist, that's something like a wizard, except it had different spell list, you know, in rolemaster every spellcaster has three different spell lists they can advance upon. It was pretty fun character to play, but it died to a goblin critting it's head off.. Gotta hate rolemaster critical hits table, i mean, those crits are half about "You died"..

Needless to say, our first campaigns / games were pretty much "Go there and kill that" or "Go there and get me that item", basically something that needed no innovation. Quess lots of people start that way, anyways - At least we learned the basics. To our defence we can also say that we were about 10 years when we started. Then, after some time we got to more complicated quests and so on.

Now i mainly play D&D as a Pen and paper RPG, and mainly WoW as online counterpart (Though i must add that WoW has nothing that ever touched roleplaying in it, it's just "KILL" in huge, capitalized letters.)

Hmm, you're asking me to reach WAAAAAAYYYYY back intot the mists of time here.

This would have been sometime between Thanksgiving 1979 and Halloween 1980 and I would have been 10 or 11.

I played an Elf named Legolas (real creative I know) , He was only an Elf because it was Basic D&D, not even advanced so there were no classes but honestly I don't remember much else about him or playing back then.

Well, if we're talking about my very first character, I don't really remember. I believe I was ten (back in 1981), and my British-American friend Kyle Blake had this new game called Dungeons & Dragons (Basic). I believe I made a fighter character, who ran around in Kyle's homemade dungeon, fighting monsters, solving riddles and having conversations with intelligent magic pools. All in all, it was very fun time and I was hooked.

As for my first good, memorable character, I had to wait until high school to really learn what role-playing was. I think my first good one would have been my cowboy character in a homebrew Boot Hill game (Badges & Bad Men) that my friend's dad ran for us in his garage. Samuel "Lefty" Reiter was an honest man turned outlaw, riding with bad company (not the band! :-P) and drawn ever deeper into a life of violence. His increasing greed and disdain for law and order led him from fighting banditos and Indians, to robbing banks (or trying to anyhow), to being pummeled by midgets, to running from Tyrannosaurus Tex (yes, a real dinosaur - it was a bit of a pulp weird west game). Looking back, those were some of the best times I've had in a campaign, even after another twenty years of gaming.

Wow, major D&D freaks. Awesome. But I must admit, my first character, and therein my first RPG experience was not in the world of dice. Its called free form rpg. Typing like you would in here, but completly in character. Interacting with people from everywhere, in a world all our own. Her name was Vaycha (surprise right?) and she was a silver dragon wyrmling. I know she was nothing special, no stats, no feats, nothing from the rules or a d20 system. But she was my first and from then on, I have been Vaycha. It is, in a way, my alter ego, my persona of the free form world. I take her everywhere I go, and she is in every game I play.

History? A lost dragon, half silver, half black, and wholly lost in the word of the draconic. Raised by a human woman then exiled by enraged villagers, she has only herself to rely on.

Maybe you guys don't care. You are d20 gamers, after all, and perhaps the free form RPG is a lost art. I hope this is not so. Let me know!

Fighter. Can't remember the name. In my first DnD game (and this was original 3 booklet DnD, you young whippersnappers!). On New Years Day 1976. Dave Langford was the GM and responsible for all the many hours and days and weeks I have spent at this silly hobby when I could have been.... Well, doing something useful.

Red box D&D Keep on the border lands and it was an elf. That was about 27 years ago or so

An AD&D Cleric dude, so young I couldn't read the books and counting the dots on the dice was the easy math, the bonus algebra and ... negative number armor class numbers!

Oh we did the "D" series Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, and Vault of the Drow. Almost everyone had to train their smack after leveling and was upset, but I seemed to bloom new spells and all was good. I remember some argument people about the technical aspects of crossbows.

Berek Larethian an AD&D fighter ex ranger(level8) . He's wearing a set of platemail and wielding a spetum. He's a disarming sort. All his stuff is really good quality but not magical since the Fiend Folio came out. Remember disenchanters? I do! It was 1978 when I started and 1980 when he retired. He lost a duel. Oh did I mention he was a woman? Remember girdles of masculinity/femininity? ;)

I think it was 1989 in high school. A wizard that managed to live up to 3rd level when the DM decided it was a good idea to drop a Cleric with a Staff of Fireballs against the group ... that 5D6 blast killed my character and two other characters just with the damage incurred, despite my rolling a natural 20 on the save for half damage.

First character was an Elf in a modded DND campaign an old girlfreind got me into back in 89, with a SUPER good DM. The Elf (Name long since forgotten) used 2 swords (long before a certain Drow), and was eventually forcibly retired due to his participation in TPKs.

The big event that stands out is when the Elf opened a door the rest of the party had decided to avoid and inadvertantly let out a shitstorm of bonegolems on the group. Seeing the approaching doom, he cast Speed (or some spell like that - I haven't played an ages and never was good at memorising spell names & info) and beats it to an empty room down the hall, then casts some sort of Wizardlock on the door.

Well, he waits till the screams of "ELF OPEN THE %'&%'&%'%& DOOR!!!" die out, sleeps a day then runs out and actually makes it out of the dungeon alive and with enough gold to get the party brought back (I think there was also a group rule of paying a real dollar per resurrection until piza money was collected, at which time we ordered a spicy pie).

If I recall correctly, setting fire to a library the other PCs were searching might have been the final straw, though. Played a Ranger who was a wannabe Druid after that, and was amazed at how much my gaming persona changed. RPGing is a wondrous and strange hobby indeed.

The first character I've ever played was an elf from the old redbox D&D basic set. I played him through the 'Expert' blue box and into the next level of their rules in the aqua box... by then we'd started AD&D and I converted him over to that system. He still shows up from time to time as a high level wizard in campaigns I run.

I'm relatively young, compared to the median of RPG players, so the first tabletop RPG I played was the Star Wars d20 system, during my sophomore year in high school or so -- about 7 years ago. I played a Duros computer hacking expert with his handy-dandy probe droid, and even though I ended up being too busy to play regularly, I had an insane amount of fun my first time -- one of my top 5 sessions ever probably, mostly due to the skill of the GM.

Since then, some of my favorite PCs have been a swashbuckling Basque pirate, a satyr fighter/bard with a fondness for drink, an aspiring naturalist bard/fighter hoping to following in the footsteps of his literally world-famous adventuring uncle, a half-elf sorceror whose favorite pastime was annoying party members by talking to his raven familiar in languages no one else understood, and perhaps best of all... (deep breath)... a collegiate academic who unlocked psionic power by Learning Things Man Was Not Meant To Know in an ancient tome, subsequently attracted the unwelcome attention of an eldritch horror, wore prescription goggles to prevent losing his glasses in a fight, and "chased the dragon" in opium dens to gain minor prophetic visions or risked possible overdose with the same for a temporary psychic boost in dire situations -- all while fighting Nazis for control of magic treasure. (A good campaign, that.)

Since that first Star Wars game years ago, I've played Alternity, D&D of various stripes, Savage Worlds, and Dogs in the Vineyard, all for varying amounts of sessions and time. I've read/bought books for quite a few more that I've never gotten around to playing, just because RPG theory and mechanics are fascinating to me, along with the worldbuilding that typically accompanies each system.

Ok first got into gaming in 1995 as I finally met other people who where into it. The first character I played was Shalizan, an Elven Nethermancer in FASA edition Earthdawn (wich is a fantastic game I have to spruik - see www.earthdawn.com for the current version by Redbrick), he was from a merchant family who didn't really approve of his decision to become an adventurer. He started very shallow and over the time we played actually got goals, ambitions and a complete backstory. He last surfaced about 3 years ago to have a glorious death as an NPC an hatch the start of an epic campaign. Other than that I have had many many memorial characters, most of whom I could probably name!, as well as lots who either weren't interesting or the games didn't last long enough to make them so.

First character EVER was a human mage (2nd edition AD&D) that I played for one session and then became the founding member of my "Folder of characters who will never be played again".

First SUCCESSFUL character ever, however was a Half-elf Fighter/mage (still AD&D) who developed a couple of rather unique atributes. First, he Blinded himself (would have been permanant but thank god for healing and sympathetic DMs) by messing around with a bunch of magic rings. Second, thought he could hack it as a front line fighter despite constant evidence to the contrary (though Stoneskin and a ring of Vampiric Regeneration that was later Stolen by a fellow party member helped with that). and third, I became our team's battleship by virtue of a nearly endless supply of magical firepower (at one point I memorized 15 castings of Magic Missile at 7th caster level, and cast 12 of them before the day was done).

My first character was a level one sorcerer... He didn't last long, in fact he barely survived our second incounter. Got down to -9 HP before the rest of the party got him out from under the dead ogre. I don't even remember if we made it to town...

The first character I ever played was in an online chat freeform game. She was a homebrew mage crossed with a hunter. She only lived for a couple of months... My first tabletop character (D&D 2nd Ed) was a human. I made the choice as I believed playing a human healer was enough to start with to get my head around the rules.

its amazing how creative people are my first character was a 2nd gen D&D booster kit type thing i was a dwarven cleric and i killed skellingtons,my most memorible was a ninja and me and a babrbarian hellknight rode around in a giant ship stealing and rapping girls (I KNOW REALY IMMATURE but hey i was 12 i've mature...im 16 now.) but yea he was cool my most memorable one was the necromancer in the game i created we were bounty hunters and we cut up a fat women and i ate her (i was a ghoul,they need raw flesh)...pretty dumb but i havnt met any amazing DMs

Started when I was 8 in 1978. My best friend's brother Phil Assenmacher was the DM. It was the boxed set before the Blue and Red box. He just said if you could be anything what would you be. I said, "A Jedi Knight". He said okay. It was D&D, so I was a fighter. His name was Selborn (ripped from LotRs). I'm pretty sure he died in the first room of the Caves of Chaos from a green slime. We may have fought some giant centipedes first (which at the time I pictured as big as horses). I was hooked.

We always made up character played for a hour and then I had to go home for dinner. First time I DM'd was for my parents a year later. I forgot to have them buy weapons (other than bows) so they died in the first encounter (against hell hounds) and never played again.

I played most of TSR's other games and have mostly been a DM ever since except for 3 or 4 years when got into Magic the Gathering. I always go back to D&D though.

i was 12 and it was a veritech fighter pilot. we didnt know what we wer doing and the game sucked. but we thought it was the coolest.

My first character was an Assassin in Palladium Fantasy. It was discovered during the two years (out of game time) of playing the character that he was insane, a clone of the man that killed his master (which explains why he was crazy), and unpredictable.

At the age of 12 or 13 I played a power-hungry half-elf wizard named Rutherford. Although, at the time, I considered myself a good guy (LG) I spent a great deal of time engaged in reprehensible activities, including rapine pillaging, bad poetry and going from village to village in a flying island which I would lower to squash the locals to jelly (sometimes even if they met my ridiculous demands.) I don't remember actually having any real motivation for this except pre-adolescent malice and a shameful love of meaningless slaughter. Age has slaked my imaginary bloodlust somewhat.

I can't remember what the characters name was, it would have been back in 1980 or '81 (age 10 or 11). Though I do remember he was killed by a lightning bolt from the heavens because he angered the Gods (A$$hole DM) by refusing to go along with their idiotic plan (talk about railroading). So my first character didn't even make it to the Caves of Chaos.

The first memorable character that actually involved some role-playing and not just hack 'n slash, monty haul, juv. crap would have been in 1989. The DM made us roll on the NPC trait tables and use those for our characters. So I ended up with a half-elven hillbilly alchoholic ranger whose goals in life were to make fun of the overweight wizard (Isengaurd the immense) point out all of the Palladins flaws and mistakes, sexually harass the female cleric and use the haflings head as a table for my wine bottle. My character got penalties for being sober. This character actually made it to fifth level before being killed.

The character after this one, a half-orc assassin lasted for 5 minutes game time. Walked into the local Inn to meet up with adventuring group and bumped into some guy coming out. Got into an arguement with the guy, ended up peeing on his boots, he cut my throat with very sharp dagger. Died in a pool of my own blood and urine, yeehaa!, Stupid 10th level palladin!

I didn't play for a few years after highschool and when I did start again, I was the A$$hole DM for a long time. I think I learned more about role-playing characters from being the DM than I ever did from being a player.

My first character was a halfling archer (a Dragon magazine character class) that I made back in 1981, when I was in 6th grade. I had never read (or heard of) JRR Tolkien and had no clue what a roleplaying game was.

Luckily the DM guided me through character creation and Azak the Archer was born. After that we dove into Pendragon, the Dr. Who RPG and many other games... I was hooked!

My first few scores of characters were unmemorable, the DM of the group I joined believed in the wholesale slaughter of PCs, hey it's what made me hate hack'n'slash and monty hauling. Basically the gaming day started out by making 5 to 10 'quick' PCs each, then the DM would entertain himself with slaughtering us. DM's favourite quote was "It's my job to defeat you."

Looking back on that I'm surprised that I kept on gaming. I guess that I liked the fun we Players had trying to destroy the maniacal DM's plans.

I quickly dumped that group and found another, where I meet one of the best DMs I every played with. Guy believed that you had to have a back story so that you knew your PC and what it would do.

The first thing Guy did when I joined his group was talk to me about what other gaming I did and liked, yea right, can we say clean slate please! He asked me if I wanted to learn how to ROLE-play and if I was up to a real challenge.

Always being game, excuse the pun, I said yes.

He asked me to pick something that I would never think of playing normally.

PC Background So I created an orphaned female who became a thief out of need to keep her little brother fed. Kat, her name, was trolling the local market one day and picked the wrong pocket, it was the Tower Wizard. She really needed to remember to look at who she was going to pilfer from!

The Wizard had her tossed into the dungeon, a few days later he came by and told her that she was to be his new servant. It actually worked out well for her. For the next year she did her work in the Tower and showed that she had a talent for magic as well. The Wizard, spent 2 more years training her and even paid for her to bond a familiar.

Born was my first multi-class, a Mage/Thief, and first female PC (I thought it was pretty daring as a 12yr guy in a gaming group of 12-17yr guys)

She lasted until M5/T7, when I retired her, well OK Guy moved out of town and the other DM in the group wanted new PCs to start fresh.

Still have her somewhere in my gaming gear... along with Thorin and a few others. :-)

Playing her taught me a great deal about how to role-play well and watching Guy DM taught me what good DMing was all about!

1977 ... I made an Elven Ranger. Not that stereotypical way back then. We played two sessions ... everyone died in the dungeon except for my Ranger. I was SO new to D&D that I had no idea what to do with all of that loot!!

another amazing character was this guy Havok we played in the future and he was a street punk but he was psionic...we got into this huge fight with the russian maffia and i didnt die but the two scions i summoned did....its cool though ^^ i allso remember Urlaqyn named after shadowrun's Hurlaquyn he was a Dragon with Ivory scales and tribal tatoos he was psionic too then there was nightwolf a native american...banished from his tribe and besought by a dragon i took refuge in lundun and was given this mysterious energy bow and a shadow wolf....probably my most memoriable characters....

Damn...i want to play so bad now :(

played a barbarian named conan in a ad&d game back in 83 or 84 can't remember exactly when. unlike the conan of fiction, my conan survived for a whole half hour before being impaled by a dozen arrows. ouch

Well, my very first character was an Elfquest elf, called Crescent. I'd never played any rpg's before, though I wanted to, but I didn't know anyone else who did. Then a Girlfriend at work who knew I read EQ asked if I wanted to play the game, so I went for it. It only lasted one evening, but I loved it, and I was hooked. My first long term character, (well, relatively) was a Chtulhu character, Colleen, who was a children's illustrator, who read a curse and transmuted into a Y'golonak and was promptly shot by all the other PC's! *sigh* happy days...