How did you get started with roleplaying?

There was an old old old chatroom called Spinchat, I used to RP on there with friends- before switching to AIM, and then MMOs- before eventually forums!

 

Table top wise, my first game was in a gas station in the middle of the night.

I had just emigrated and was working under the table for cash. I was dreadfully alone and had nobody in town yet. One night I made a random friend walking up a hill together, he was coming back into town after working as a carnie in Illinois. I was coming out of a party that started getting a lil too wild for me. Inadvertently, we were walking to the same house. Turns out my favorite street pharmaceutical rep was his room mate.

We ended up heading to this gas station for protein, sugar and carbs where another mutual friend (small town, smaller world) worked. Between us four underachievers, we figured out none of us needed work on Wednesday. So it was decided that a table top game every Tuesday night from Midnight to Six, at the Amoco in a largish midwestern college town, would be a really really good idea.

The game lasted a few years. Players came and went. Most of us went to college eventually, all of us got good jobs. Some of us met our wives through friends of friends from that circle. One of us even got things published in Dragon and contracted for WOTC...