How'd you get into D&D?

[saranel]

First experience was with a Top Secret! game one of my high school teachers ran during my senior year. I also played a one-shot of D&D 2ed around the same time and found it confusing as hell. Didn't try again until 3ed came out when I was in college, and after that, I was hooked.

[Loudwhisper]

Baldur's Gate 2 Shadows of Amn

[Tuscarora]

I became friends with my theater/drama teacher in high school and they were huge D&D fans because of how it could be used not only to play but it also helps you in theater because you have to talk your way out of situations, or talk people into things and that can help you with your acting and, since then i have been hooked on it.

[Malefactor]

I was playing magic the gathering at the local card shop and I noticed a couple people playing d&d at the table next to me. Soon after I was sitting at that table.

[Queen]

My uncle gave me the 3.5 PHB and since then, I've been hooked. But the weird part is, me and my friends made a game EXACTLY like D&D, where you had to choose your profession, job, skills, equipment, and you had gold to buy items. It did not involve dice, or fantasy races, but that was about the extent of the differences. We were in 5th grade. We didn't even know DnD existed. We were made for the game.

[Suleimane]

I watched Dexter's Labratory as a kid and watched the "D&D" parody episode. I heard about something that was actually similar to that episode (D&D but I didn't know what that was at the time) and wanted to play it.

[Wolfhound]

The song In my garage by Weezer sums it up nicely. It was one of those sheds that doubled as a car shop/weight room. We sat there in the summer with the door open drinking lemonade, rolling twenties and playing video games like Castlevania.

[Sophie]

My (now ex) boyfriend played and convinced me to join. Surprisingly, I enjoyed DnD possible more than he did.

[fullfathomdeep]

Back in 2009, I was deployed to Iraq and was working the night shift supervising goings-on at the flightline. As you could imagine, things were usually pretty quiet at night, and so I had a lot of free time to just browse the internet. Looking for things to do to fill my 8-hour shift, I happened upon the tabletop gaming section in another forum, and decided to give it a whirl. I made my first character for a newbie PbP game, got accepted, and we were in the exposition phase of the campaign when the DM disappeared to take care of some RL things. We haven't seen him since...
I gave up on D&D, since I hadn't really gotten that "hook" yet, and forgot about it completely until it was brought up in a chat for that forum a few weeks ago. Decided to give it another go, got much more involved, and was fortunate to happen upon a MapTools game being run by a very experienced and dedicated DM.
My first possibly successful campaign starts Sunday afternoon

[WStodds]

I got into D&D because my dad got me playing the Might and Magic games at a young age, he then told me about D&D after he noticed how much I enjoyed the M&M series. I was kinda interested in D&D for a while, but it faded out over time. I got hooked on it when I started playing again in my Sophmore year of high school. At which point I was known to spend up to 35 hours a week in a basement reading D&D handbooks and optimizing potential characters. Luckily, that has stopped as of recent XD

[Akeii]

Eh, for me it involved playing RPG games such as Neverwinter Nights for the story. Then I became increasingly dissatisfied with the flat characters and NPCs that would say the same thing over and over again, so I had a major brainwave when I realized this sort of thing could be done with other people!

[L~Spine]

Roleplaying for me came primarily in my latter years of highschool and early part of college. I've played D&D on and off for about 2 or 3 years between the balance of my career studies and day to day life. In my experiences, I've come to enjoy online play more and more due to its conveniences.

[mad_gondsman]

I was always drawn to fantasy. I was heart-broken when they would replace the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon on Saturday mornings with some local public access-ish talk show.

So after I had burned through every Lone Wolf choose-your-own-adventure book, I was hungry for something new and saw a kid at school reading one of the Dragonlance series books. I read those... loved them... and found out it was a game. I was a sheltered kid from a pretty religious household.

Those early sessions were glorious and terrible, all at the same time. I think it was the advertisements in my comic books that turned me on to Forgotten Realms. I still remember blistering on the beach during summer vacation, finishing the Crystal Shard in two days. I still remember how my dad was getting angry that I was burning up batteries like mad from reading by flashlight in the back of the car.

[Randelic]

Originally Posted by Malefactor

I was playing magic the gathering at the local card shop and I noticed a couple people playing d&d at the table next to me. Soon after I was sitting at that table.

Sounds like me. I have seen them playing for quite some time now and it got me intrigued enough to start searching for some info and I came across this site. Maybe their table will have an opening one of these days, but for now I'm looking to have my real intro to D&D here.

[Tarseque]

I got into D&D when i was younger. My friend and his family played and they invited me over. My Friends dad and mom had been playing since the start I think and they just happened to be running a campaign when I was over one day. My friend told me to roll some stats and I said ok. And there began my gaming life!