LvL 3: Your Gateway Drug

Hello everyone!

I am once again back with another question in my ongoing census of this site's awesome community~
We know by now, that most of us are american, and that we have a pretty wide spread age range.So, this time, I thought I'd ask you guys something a little more on topic.
Which was the first Table Top Role Playing Game (TTRPG) that you played?

I am expecting a lot of DnD, but maybe some started somewhere else~
I for example started with "Das Schwarze Auge" (The Black Eye), a german System that I do not like that much to be honest.

As always, the poll is anonymous and if your option is not one of the answers yet, you can still add it.
I chose to forgo Editions, since the poll would be humongous otherwise.

Hope all of you have fun playing and GMing here~

Thank you in advance and Happy Gaming everyone

Had very small exposure to DND as a kid, but first real game as in sitting down with mates, making characters and adventuring was TMNT RPG.

After those, the list goes ever on and on

I started with the D&D before Advanced D&D 1st edition even existed.

Well my first exposure to a tabletop system was Baldur's Gate but my first real table top rpg was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
But I have to say that I like DnD a lot more than WFRP

I started a little later, with the Red Box D&D basic set (circa 1981). I didn't actually play AD&D until the early 90s.

I started a lot later, as in 7 monthsish ago. I've played one TTRPG and that was a published Pathfinder 1e adventure. I had fun, husband was bored, the other two had fun, and GM said he probably should have just played his home brew instead of the published adventure.

I started playing Roleplaying games in the mid to late 1980s, right in the middle of the Satanic Panic. So, as long as it wasn't called Dungeons and Dragons, I could play it (which is probably why it's mostly all I play these days).

Very first game I made a character in: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness by Palladium Books. My friend had this. We didn't understand it very well, but we made a ton of weird characters. Technically the very first RPG I played: Dungeoneer for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy System. This was because it was available at my local library and therefore free! Also very simple rules, so we could grok it. It lives on as a modern rules-lite game called "Troika!".But really it was this RPG that I fell in love with: MegaTraveller. My grade 9 English teacher was our referee, and showed us what roleplaying games are supposed to look like.

1982 with DnD

I started about 15 years ago with AD&D 1e. My friends and I did martial arts and our Sensei had the books, so we started playing. Been playing at his house ever since!

Summer of '07 (or '08 idk), my friends (who are more thoroughly immersed in "nerd culture" than I am) kept trying to get me to play this game called Call of Cthulhu with them. I knew a bit about Lovecraft, and I was a big horror/mystery junkie, but I had known kids who were into tabletop gaming when I was in middle school and let's just say they left an impression. I really didn't want to play, lest I be associated with people like that. I said I'd come over to "chill, but probably not play".

My friend Mike had just gotten this campaign book called Tatters of the King. We sat around on couches in his basement, there was no table to speak of, none of us knew a damn thing about the rules or conventions of gaming. They launched into the top of the campaign, and I played coy for as long as I could stand it, but after an hour or two, I was a hooked audience member and I wanted in. I rolled up a character, jumped in, and we played the whole damn campaign in one night. We didn't sleep. We made it to Carcosa, but not all of us made it back out again.

In retrospect, the way we played looked nothing like the way a TTRPG "should" be played, and our poor GM was working out of a 200 page campaign book that he was mostly unfamiliar with. We literally forced him to keep playing until we were satisfied. "I don't care if you've never read this chapter before, we want to know what happens!!!!"

I don't think I would be on this site now if my first TTRPG exposure had been to any other game. Sandy Petersen literally changed the course of my life.

I started with Pathfinder and my group quickly tried out some other games (Traveller, Shadowrun, Savage Worlds). We did mostly stick with Pathfinder, however...
Luckily, I managed to avoid Das Schwarze Auge. When I tried it a couple of years ago, I didn't like it.

Does HeroQuest count? That was what got us interested in the concept...

Then my older brother's best friend got Redbox D&D a couple years later, and that was it...

I started with the French version of The Dark Eye. It was soon followed by basic D&D.

D&D white box in the fall of 1976. Freshman year of college. I heard about the game from a friend while we were at a wargames convention months before and tried it out at school's wargames club. Went through a pile of characters that first year but loved the game anyway.

I only recently discovered TTRPGs in general. So far, I have not had a chance to play anything other than D&D 5th edition.

That is not entirely true, you had a brush with Dungeon World ;P

You are correct. I was able to experience character creation, but the game died without even completing the opening encounter.

I also briefly participated in a Pathfinder game, but ended up having to withdraw.

Yeah, that game was a quick burn.

My first game when as a kid was a homebrew puzzle dungeon that my brother ran without any real rule set. He'd played GURPS, but I get the feeling it was too crunchy for his taste. We played free-form very rules-light fantasy games for several years with some friends, with one failed session of D&D 3E during that time.

As an adult, some friends and I decided to give role-playing another shot, and tried out a few sessions of Pathfinder. From there, we were hooked and I've tried many since then.

Star Wars Saga Edition was my gateway, followed by Pathfinder. Since then, my group and I have also played D&D 3.5 (worse Pathfinder in our minds), 4e (wasn't a fan), and 5e (love it, mostly). Just a few days ago, we began our first game for Pathfinder 2e.

D and D red box for me in 82, though my true gateway drug was the Choose your own adventure books, starting with Warlock of Firetop Mountain. That was August of 82 . By my 12th birthday on September 6th, my sister bought me D and D and I was hooked.

If we're counting choose your own adventure books, then it was the Goosebumps CYOA for me

I started back in the eighties (yes, I'm THAT old :D ) on Call of Cthulhu 2nd edition

I had like a 2 hour session of DnD over voice where my anxiety acted up and I just sat silently most of the time.

Then, my first proper experience was in a Pathfinder Living World server on Discord

Sounds interesting. Does that still exist?

Here's the server