D & D memories

I had seen the little white boxes at the Ye Olde Hobby Shoppe in the Garden City mall for quite some time. I picked them up from time to time but never did buy a set. I didn’t get the original blue Basic rules in 1977 (I do have it now – but bought it much, much later), and saw the hardcover Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks but again passed them over – mostly due to price.

I’m trying to work out the timeline in my head. I thought I had gotten the 2nd edition Basic set while in elementary but, based on publishing date, I must have been in the back half of grade 7, in the beginning of grade 8, or the summer in between. My memory gets mushy about dates sometimes.

I used to mail away for a lot of things. I still love getting stuff in the mail. I remember that I knew my postal code by grade 2 from all the offers I had mailed away. I recall getting the Yaquinto Attack of the Mutants minigame based on the ad in the comic books. I don’t recall if this was before or after the first D&D ads appeared.
http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4265
Based on the ads, I convinced my folks to let me buy the red Basic Dungeons & Dragons boxed set at Eatons in 1981. I got the blue Expert set later when it came out. Both had the plastic dice and the all important crayon for filling in the numbers. I still have these dice and can pick them out of my assorted dice I’ve acquired from various sets over the years.

I recall reading the rules and module and we played with Trevor and his brothers. This was how I met Jeremy – he came with an ‘existing’ character (that he and Trevor had created) to take on my crazy dungeon I had designed. His character, Yremej, had been outfitted with all the cool magic items they could find – basically making him a PC version of Thor. (This is why we no longer allow characters from other campaigns.)