gamegoblin

I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons around the age of five.  Initially, my dad was the Dm and my mom played with my brother and me. Our first forays were less than impressive, as we played pretty much by the rules at the time.  Character mortality was high, but we were loving it nonetheless. As time went on we also had a few characters continue to survive, and they continued to rack up small amounts of XPs.

Then, one day, something magic happened. One of them became 2nd level. It was my
brother’s veteran character, a fighter named Spider (he was 7- cut him some slack).  He
got more hit points and everything, and I was amazed and a little jealous (little brothers
are like that).  It also became clear to me why we had been writing down those XPs at
the end of each night- until then I had just that was how we kept score.  I thought, “You
mean our characters actually get better?”  The game that I already loved had just
hooked me even deeper.

It wasn’t much later that I finally had a 2nd level character. I was so happy, I felt like I
had just passed some sort of milestone. His name was Fruit Fly the Elf. Not only was he
the first character of mine that survived to 2nd, but he was the first character to own a
magic sword, too.  These were old-school low-level games, so we had 3 or 4 magic items in the entire party.  A magic sword, even a +1, was a pretty big deal.

It completely changed the scope of the game, and the concepts of campaign and character development and ongoing stories worked their ways into my young brain.  Each of the characters began to develop their own stories, and experiences.  We began to
make up stories for them, and tie them together in various ways.  One of my other early
success stories was Fruit Fly’s younger brother, Strawberry.  Strawberry was special
because he had died while at first level, but had been restored to life through a ring of
wishes, after which he survived to second level.

We continued to play, and I remember that Spider, followed by Fruit Fly, went on to become our first 3rd level characters.  This marked another milestone, because that was
when Dad decided to bring home the Expert OD&D boxed set. The original boxed set only gave details for characters up to 3rd level, so Steve and I had rather felt like we had “won” the game.  The Expert rules allowed our characters to advance to 14th level, and even mentioned that the maximum level possible was 36th.  It was truly engrossing, to think back on all of the adventures that we had undergone, and to think about what adventures lay ahead of us. It was exciting, and even a little intimidating to think about
the length of time it would take to get there.
That facet of the game, ongoing character development, was certainly the primary feature that made the game so special to me.  The characters that survived were the ones that you grew to love and appreciate, and they seemed more real with time. You had history with them, and could refer back to that for their thoughts and opinions on
things.  It was a whole lot more fun than Monopoly.

Who else remembers their first character to survive to 2nd level?  Post a reply and let us
hear your story, too!

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