Your First RPG Character

[Crossfire]

A question in another thread made me think of this... who was not your favourite RPG character, who was your first RPG character. Doesn't have to be D&D...

Mine was a Gnome illusionist named Ardent. He was rolled up by a friend of mine who was getting me into D&D. The first adventure I ever played was with my Gnome illusionist and his druid Thandros as an NPC.

I don't remember much about the adventure, though at one point we came across a wrecked caravan and I found a small bag which shot out a rainbow when opened. Must have been a permanent prismatic spray or something, I don't remember. I was so entranced with the idea of this magic item that I was hooked, and suddenly I wanted everything shooting out rays of coloured light.

Ardent went on to adventure with a larger group of friends including my buddy's girlfriend who also played a Gnome. I remember that we had our characters hanging out and creating mischief, such to the point that my friend actually got jealous and tried to kill off Ardent.

Another funny thing... we fudged the rules so bad with another friend as a GM. He wanted us to traverse a swamp, so somebody in the group decided Ardent should use his illusion abilities to change into the form of a dragon to fly over the swamp with the rest of the characters on his back. The GM was flustered by our avoidance of the obstacle (he didn't bother checking to see if we could actually do what we had done), and announced to us that the site of the dragon over the swamp drew all the evil creatures who could see it to where we would land (I don't know why, but for some reason in his mind, all these baddies wanted to hang out with a dragon). We told him that they wouldn't see us from afar, because Ardent had changed into a psuedo-dragon.

Ah, the memories...

R.

[terrestrialboy]

My first character that I played was in a Dark Champions game. He was a speedster named Speed Demon.

He was a typical speedster character, run in, run out. I didn't play him as cocky, but more as unsure of himself. He would rush to help people, but then sometimes get in over his head. I didn't play him as the trickster or anything like that.

He was a fun character that I brought back as an NPC in my superhero games in later years (much later years).

Fun stuff.

Ethan Parker

[Jim in Buffalo]

My first character that I played was in a Dark Champions game.

Now, that warms the cockles of my heart. Maybe even the sub-cockle area.

My first character was a D&D "magic-user" whose name I took from the sample character sheet in the rulebook, unable as I was to come up with anything original at the tender age of 13.

My first Champions character was a flying battlesuit hero named "Captain Steel," whom I modeled somewhat after Ironman.

[terrestrialboy]

My first Champions character was a flying battlesuit hero named "Captain Steel," whom I modeled somewhat after Ironman.

Oddly enough, my first character I played at a convention (Kulcon 2) was in a Champions game, and his name was Captain Anvil, and he was a flying battlesuit character.

Hmmmm.

Ethan Parker

[Jim in Buffalo]

Hmmmm.

Perhaps you and I are the same person, only somehow living two different lives. Figures you'd get the cooler-sounding name.

[terrestrialboy]

I'm sensing some sort of Matter/Anti-Matter Mirror Universe Crossover here.

Perhaps you are me, but with a goatee.

Ethan Parker

[davidschwartznz]

My first (D&D) character (not counting the nameless fighter from the introductory solo adventure) was Verlandigo the Mad Wizard, a Chaotic magic-user who decided that there was money to be made by building a dungeon and luring adventurers into it. He kept adventuring, though, to keep up the stocks in his "menagerie".

[HistoryDave]

My fist character was an AD&D Ranger named Grimwolf. He got up to about 14th level when he slew a character that was attempting to raise the sunken city of slime, R'lyeh. So that he could awaken Great C'thulhu.
Not being a spell caster, Grimwolf did not understand that the spell had been completed and was awaiting its final component... a human sacrifice.
As his "sword of sharpness" went snicker-snack, dismembering the evil cleric of chaos, a great rumbling began to shake the ground around the PC's and the city and old tentacle face himself soon appeared. Grimwolf responded the only way he knew how, by attempting a god call. (Which worked) Grimwolf's diety lost the battle with the lord of slimey chaos but was soon overwhelmed by the attention of other dieties that came to restore balance. Grimwolf was taken out of the campaign to assume the portfolio of his dead diety. This was a good ending for a character that I did not wish to stop playing, and did not appreciate how cool it was at the time, as I had to create a new character. As a new gamer I could not cope well at first with the sense of loss I felt after playing that character for many months. I look back now after countless character deaths and retirements and marvel at the beginners luck as well as passion with which I played my first character. There are far worse ways to lose a character.

[Jim in Buffalo]

I started gaming so long ago that my first character was a baby.

[sersie]

This goes waaaaay back, but I believe my first character was a character from the James Bond RPG from Victory Games in High School. It was a guy named John Gardner if I recall correctly with a penchant for firearms, though I do remember the first adventure we ever did where my gun jammed on the first shot in a shootout in a bathroom in the airport. Ah those were the days.

For D&D I actually ran two characters for my "first" characters. Ariel Draygorn was a cleric of Mystra in the Forgotten Realms setting and she was protected by her companion a straight up fighter named Jeth Wyvernsbane. After switching DM's and world's at one point I had a cool storyline where I lost my powers in the new world since I could no longer commune with Mystra. I then was contacted by Isis and Hecate, the goddesses closest to my portfolio and was given a choice of who I wished to worship. I ultimately chose Isis as she was most benevolent and had to actually get pregnant and give up the child as proof of my faith since Isis is Goddess of Fertility as well as Magic...interesting stuff. Jeth wasn't left out totally as the DM had him begin to have flashbacks of ancestors from long past drinking wyvern poison from goblets ultimately leading up to Jeth discovering he was immune to the stuff. Wyvern's Bane indeed.

Those characters still live, though we had many adventures and a lot of the rest of the party died off. Memories....

[BeatGuy]

My first char was a D6 Star Wars bounty hunter named Keljor.

[de_master]

A female halfling human rogue in D&D 3E (before 3.5), in a rogue based campaign (we all had to take one level of rogue. We started out at first level and ended up at 2rd level, after five six hour session, packed with combat, traps and riddles).
The DM was a pretty imaginitive guy, but also very busy, and very fond of slow advancement and TPK for some obscure reason - so we just left him and made our own group - rotating DMs (I got to be first).

Anyway, my rogue girl was pretty neat - a NE character that hated humans, and made a pact with the other female in the group - a gnome rogue - to run off with the loot at the first moment possible (we were the only evil characters in the group, it turned out).

I don't normally play evil characters, but it's fun to do it once in a while.

[Unity]

My first character was a 1st edition D&D dwarf character called Lefty. I had never played pen and paper games before ( this was in about 1990 ), so I was modelling my character after that of the friend who had taken me along to the convention. He was playing a dwarf character named Stumpy, who seemed to delight in picking up everything ( esp. shortswords ) to hide beneath his cloak and sell to people on the street, ".... You wanna buy a shortsword?".

Lefty's only real claim to fame was killing a Lizardman king with a thrown handaxe, his first and only attack for the entire module; otherwise he seemed to content to just wander along behind his friend. The axe hit home with a critical hit, killing the King with a single blow - nevermind he had been put to sleep by the party Mage earlier in the round! We still laugh about it...
"ZZZzzzzzz.......ZZZZZzzzzz.....ZZZz!................................."

Unity

[KJToo]

My first character was a dwarven fighter whose name escapes me. I was a total noob sitting in on a D&D session in the middle of a campaign already in progress.

The party stopped for supplies and the DM threw me a nice, slow pitch right over the plate when the dwarf was considering an upgrade for his battle axe:

"Is it enchanted?" asked the shopkeep.

"No," muttered the dwarf, honest to a fault.

The shopkeep made a paltry offer, which the dwarf was (thankfully) wise enough to turn down, and the party set off for the docks to board a ship and take the sea route (much quicker than the difficult and circuitous land passage) to their destination.

The dwarf might have been better off taking the few copper pieces the shopkeep had offered and getting drunk on cheap wine. Two days into the journey, the ship was attacked by a sea monster and the dwarf — clearly not thinking straight in the heat of his first combat ever — lifted both hands high (relatively speaking) over his head and threw his axe at the creature's head. I blew my attack roll and the dwarf watched as his unenchanted axe, not worth much but the only weapon he had, flew over the creature's scaly noggin and disappear beneath the surface of the sea with little more than a splash to mark its passing.

I don't remember much about the rest of the night, but it wasn't exactly a brilliant role-playing debut for me.

[Lord Z]

His name was Dave Hogan, and he was in a Robotech campaign. The character's concept was to be a great shuttle pilot although not too bright.

Using the Veritech Pilot OCC and a very unclear understanding of the rules, I managed to make his Pilot Shuttle skill up to the game max of 98%. I blame Kevin Siembieda for not writing the skill system clearly. It didn't matter much because the GM ignored what skills our characters had. His idea of a skill check was to roll percentile dice and attempt to roll either above or below (his choice) a random number he made at the time. When the shuttle was plummeting towards the planet, Dave tried to pull it out of the spiral. The GM said, "Roll below thirty percent." Dave failed, so I announced that the shuttle's AI (which also had a 98% skill in Pilot Shuttle) was attempting the same thing. The GM said, "Roll below thirty percent." The AI failed. The other player announced that he would like to try. His character, a military specialist, didn't have the skill at all. The GM said, "Roll below thirty percent." He succeeded. I write about that GM frequently in my Bad Gamemasters series of articles for RPGTips Weekly.

Dave was a simple minded Australian country boy who got caught up in events of history along with his more intelligent and ambitious friends. I thought that the other players would need a transport character to help them get around, but this was a powerful campaign in which we had entire battleships at our beck-and-call. Dave tried to make himself useful but usually failed. He was none-the-less fun to play and did survive the campaign. He ended up retiring to a moon colony which was being ruled by a friendly NPC.