…in the beginning, there was pre-teen me, and my geeky awkward friends. We liked fantasy, science-fiction, and games. However, none of us had ever heard of D&D. I probably owe the owner of my friendly local hobby store a lot, but I think it was him who first pushed me to give D&D a try.
At the time, the current iteration was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (ADD&D 2e). I looked over the book, and the warrior charging on horseback grabbed me. I bought the Player’s Handbook, and didn’t look back.
My friends and I were young, and basically had no idea what we were doing. None of us had older siblings or parents who were gamers, so we were basically trying to figure this stuff out on our own. The results were comical in retrospect, but we had fun.
One example was when I had a druid that had an aurumvorax as an animal companion at level 1. (My friends were generous DMs.) We made excellent use of the Monstrous Manual if you ask me. My pet and I slayed countless beasts and monsters.
Most of our gaming was wildly out of proportion, but we had a blast. Sometimes all we did was roll up characters and plan out towns, but it didn’t matter. We’d found something we thought was fun, and ran with it. To date, I don’t know how many of my old friends still play D&D, but I do. I even have 2nd Edition books in my collection. To be fair, I probably always will.
Pulp Culture Museum 
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