28 years and counting

It's approximately 28 years since I started playing Dungeons & Dragons and I'm not planning to grow out of it soon. To the best of my recollection, I started with a copy of the Fighting Fantasy book The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain which I received as a stocking filler and promptly ignored. After all, what sort of 11 year old boy wants a book for Christmas and anyway I was more interested in programming my Sinclair Spectrum. Fortunately about six months later I discovered that this was unlike any book I'd read before. I must have read a couple more early Fighting Fantasy books before on a trip to Hamleys with my wargaming father I discovered Dungeons & Dragons. However it wasn't Mentzer "Red Box" D&D I came home with (I wasn't exactly sure what to make of it from the cover blurb) but instead the much more exciting Caverns of the Dead floor-plan set from Games Workshop. I guess I had some miniatures and must have made up my own rules because I remember playing some sort of game at the age of 12 with a bemused and tolerant grandfather. The "Red Box" itself (and possibly "Blue Box") probably arrived the following Christmas and the rest as they say is history!