My First D&D Memories

I think for everyone who gets involved with Dungeons & Dragons, they remember that first formative experience.

*The Advanced Dungeons & Dragon’s (AD&D) handbook - Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG)*

My dad had the Advanced Dungeons & Dragon’s (AD&D) handbooks, including the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG), the Player’s Handbook (PH), Monster Manual 1 (MM1) and Monster Manual 2 (MM2). He was OG (original gamer), he played in the 70s and 80s, so expect an old school story.

I’d just started high school, it was approaching my best friend’s 12th birthday and he had no idea what he wanted to do for a party.

My dad decided that we would play D&D, and he would run us through his legendary campaign from the 80s. “The Dungeons of Kallin-Thor”.

My best friend and I sat in my living room on the carpet and rolled up characters, using the 4d6 method, subtract the lowest die roll, rolling down in order, Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha.

We rolled together, and the character sheet you see is my first ever character (and one of my only characters…stay tuned).

In the olden days of AD&D, you didn’t have the choice of your character class, you had to roll and meet the requirements. I rolled quite well and had the choice of a few, but my Dad pushed me towards an Illusionist (he later told me this was because his legendary character from the 80s was a level 27 Illusionist).

My friend rolled up an assassin and named him Issiah. I called my Human Illusionist Rolzat, son of Koldov. I have no idea who Koldov is, nor did I at that time, it just sounded good to an 11 year old me.

Being 11 years old, we both decided we would be friends in the game and Neutral Evil friends at that. We thought we could mess with everyone in our group, which included my mum, my brother, my friend’s mum, my friend’s dad and my friend’s brother. We assumed everyone else would be goody-two-shoes lawful good morons…

We spent hours buying things from the Players Handbook we thought we’d need; wolfsbane, garlic, 10ft poles and high hard boots. I’m pretty sure we never used any of that stuff.

My dad told me it was illegal to read the Monster Manual, but being the 11 year old little blighter that I was, I spent all week reading it, preparing myself for the session, memorising the Armour Classes and weaknesses of so many of the monsters.

On the destined day we all went over to my best friend’s house for cake, dinner etc. Then my Dad lit candles, he dimmed the lights, he set up his custom DM screen (which to this day has various notes upon it such as – “A Demon a day keeps the cleric away” or “Miners against Thatcher”), he put on atmospheric black metal music and told us to get our character sheets out. He littered the table with pencils and rubbers.

Our characters were gathered in a tavern (I told you my Dad was OG, what did you expect?), and Dad told us we’d heard rumours of a Dungeon to the north where a great hoard of treasure was gathered. It belonged to Galid the Red Dragon (my Dad obviously took a note or two from the Hobbit).

We had no clue that a dragon would be too powerful for us, even though I had been studying, the dragons were the only creatures in the Monster Manual that didn’t have experience points beneath them, as my dad had for all the others.

We decided it would be a grand idea to go and nick this stupid dragon’s treasure and give it a thrashing. We didn’t need character backstories, grand motives… we just wanted to kill the dragon and steal its treasure.

Rolzat the Human Illusionist (me), Issiah the Elven Assassin (my best-friend), Mini Magpie the Elven Thief (my best friend’s mum), Pendor the Human Ranger (my little brother), Esmerelda the Human Fighter (my mum), Belladonna the Elven Magic-User (my best friend’s brother) and Owlface the Human Cleric (my best friend’s dad) left the tavern in search of the Dungeons of Galid.

We journeyed overland for a while encountering nothing, this is the standard I would learn later about OG games, until we hit a river and decided to pay for a barge so as to bypass journeying through the FOREST OF EVIL, which we didn’t fancy.

The bargeman wanted quite a bit of money, stating it was a dangerous time and I decided to trick everyone into thinking I was an ally by paying for the barge-trip.

Owlface came up to me and thanked me, telling me it was very good of me. I told him that it certainly was good of me and that I was indeed an upstanding citizen. This was me making everyone believe I was good, and I thought I had tricked Owlface…

We were chatting a lot to each other, about our characters and what they could do, all very jovial.

Still on this darned expensive river cruise, my dad rolled some dice behind the screen. I asked my dad, “What are you rolling for?”, he shrugged, then proclaimed that we heard a whooshing sound behind us and saw the river take form!

I shouted at the top of my voice, “WATER ELEMENTAL! We need a +2 weapon to hit it! Run!”

Of course I was right and we all disembarked, escaping the Water Elemental. My dad later explained to me that he was rolling for random encounters. I told him that the Water Elemental would have killed us all! He said matter of factly - “Danger is everywhere in this world, it doesn’t care about you.” - From then on, 11 year old me believed it wasn’t Dad trying to kill me, it was the world.

What I know now however, is that my dad was expediting the process, we were chatting too much about things that were on our character sheets and he was trying to hurry the journey towards a specific destination.

The whole reason we’d taken a barge was to avoid the FOREST OF EVIL and who can blame us? But obviously he wanted us to venture into the FOREST OF EVIL, and so we did.

We encountered some orcs in the FOREST OF EVIL, who complained that working for Galid was terrible. We decided not to question them, and killed them all instead. Here Owlface told us that was lawfully done, orcs are evil creatures indeed. Here I got an idea that he was a lawful goody, so I kept my eye peeled for his goody-faced machinations.

We found the secret entrance to the Dungeons of Kallin-Thor and this is where the game really picked up.

In the first chamber we found a message engraved in the stone running round the room, “Find the keys to the bridges. Search the home of Galid. Use the Moon to guide you. The Hammer and the Sword will triumph.”

This was exciting for 11 year old me, puzzles and clues. It was here I think, that I decided I loved D&D and would want to play it every week forever. It was the mystery, the intrigue, the sense of potential danger around every 10ft squared corner.

The session continued with a drunken hill giant called Reginald (whom Issiah assassinated), sultry nuns in a sauna, illusory forests, leprechauns stealing our gold and so on. It was amazing.

We spent weeks talking about that first session, anxiously bothering my dad to carry on the game, and we did.

It took us many game nights to clear out the dungeon, to find the moon rock which found the keys, and eventually to find the hammer, in one of the tensest moments I have ever experienced in an RPG to this day…

The corridors smelt of garlic, the passageway was totally dark, but in the darkness we found a secret door. It opened to a dimly lit chamber where an old man sat across from us, drained and ill, a hammer on the table in front of him. “Take the hammer away,” he said. We didn’t know what to do, we wanted the hammer as it was part of the riddle, but we’d missed something (garlic hint)…

After much deliberation we took the hammer and in doing so awoke the old man, from his slumber, to full power, sharp teeth and pale skin, a vampire! He cackled, went invisible and charged away from us! (I cast See Invisibility to glimpse where he went, I thought it was smart and bartered for XP, DM Dad agreed and awarded me a lot).

We found a lot of treasure in those dungeons, but had much trouble carrying it, the vampire later sent zombies after us to steal it back! With too many to fight, Owlface the Cleric turned undead… but instead of running away, the zombies went to his side and carried our loot around for him.

I gasped! I knew the truth, Owlface, my best friends dad, was evil too! Only with evil clerics do the undead remain…

There we forged an uneasy alliance with him, our three versus the rest of the party. The Unholy Trinity schemed the end of the rest of the party, Rolzat and Issiah schemed to rid themselves of Owlface, and I schemed to rid myself of Issiah!

Many sessions came and went, with increasingly longer intervals, we never finished the campaign. It fell apart as many D&D games do. I drifted from my best friend, parents were busy and life carried on without it, school, girls, football, other hopes and dreams.

*Our wise elder Max, aka Owlface the Cleric*

Those memories are bittersweet to this day. We always reminisce about what happened in those first sessions, they are as crystal clear to us as ever, and I believe they always will be.

And it was the memory of those sessions that brought us back together as a group.

We never revisited those characters in that group, and since then my best friend’s dad, Owlface, died from cancer.

D&D is my favourite game of all time, I’ll never stop playing it. More bittersweetness is added when you consider what I believe the truth, that I think we spend the rest of our gaming lives trying to emulate those great first sessions, attempting to recapture the magic that we once felt, but never quite succeeding.

We are better storytellers, better roleplayers, more experienced, but the first campaign always has that unexplainable magic that the newer ones can never recapture. Somewhat true of life too.

But the hook was in me, it’s still in me. And no matter how many times I don’t succeed, I’ll never stop trying to recapture those magical days, delving the Dungeons of Kallin-Thor, home to Galid the Red Dragon, killing orcs in the FOREST OF EVIL, crossing the river with a Water Elemental chasing us, taking the hammer away from the vampire, seeing Owlface turn those zombies to his side and reveal his evil!

I knew later in life that I had to pick up where my Dad left off. I had to create my own world and my own campaigns for our stories. Once I’d become a DM, I never truly wanted to be a player again.

“Remember that funny old game we played on your birthday, Ise? How about we do that, but with the grandest story ever? The longest plot? The most epic characters? This time never-ending.”

What we really believe each time we start a new campaign is that we can bottle memory and magic together in a powerful potion and drink from it whenever we wish, to remember the good times, to gather as friends, to remember loved ones… and tell the story to end all stories.

That is D&D for me.

The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

The Lyonesse Trilogy by Jack Vance