A to Z Blogging Challenge: B is for Basic Set

I began playing D&D with the Moldvay-edited, Otus-decorated Basic Set pictured at right when I was but an elementary school lad.  I remember watching a group of kids playing D&D during lunch hour at school and I knew I wanted my own copy of the game.  With apologies to Despicable Me, I do believe I told my parents that D&D was "...so cool I'm gonna die!"

So, the D&D Basic Set showed up under the Christmas tree that December.

I remember the absolute awe I felt when I opened the box and flipped through the rulebook.  I remember being blown away by the map of the Caves of Chaos in B2: The Keep on the Borderland.  And I remember the confusion of a kid trying to figure out this game when his only exposure to it had been silently watching a group of other kids play from a few feet away, heh.

My biggest confusion was with hit dice and hit points.  For the longest time I believed them to be one and the same, and I couldn't figure out why my friend's 1st level fighter was so easily dispatching the monsters in the Caves of Chaos... Eventually I figured out the correct relationship between HD and HP and my dungeons suddenly became much more of a challenge.

Finally my buddy got his own copy of the Basic Set and I was able to roll some characters of my own.  Because it was just the two of us, we each ran two characters.  I was Blackpawn the thief and Glana Brano the magic-user.  For some reason Glana Brano stuck with me, and he's made many an NPC appearance in games I've run.  He's become the Gandalf or Elminster of my RPG worlds.

So yeah.  The Basic Set.  That's where it all started for me.