Guess I'm strange, my first char was a shadowrun character. A troll street samurai/yakuza bodyguard. Eight feet of stupid (Int 2) that, after I had made him, turned out to be pretty much impervious to conventional weaponry as his main skill set. He liked to fire big guns with questionable accuracy and sometimes punch the hell out of things if it got to that. He tended to scare the hell out of most things we ran into due to the aforementioned ability to shrug off most weapons fire but in reality was too damn nice for his own good.

His crowning moment was bringing down a skyscraper on himself in a 'you go on' moment... and then living through it.

Mine for 3.5 was a Human Fighter in the Lot5R world. It was a awesome fighting all the different creatures and dying, thats when we discovered the revolving door on death..... Ha death sure hated us

My first Shadowrun character was a Troll Physical Adept. Threw saw blades for throwing stars

My first shadowrun character was a technomancer who I wanted to be able to hack stuff without having to go into hot sim. So he ended up as a cyborg controlling himself via a shunt with 5 IP and free mental actions every round, and like +5 to every dice pool just cause.

I never played that character, and i'm glad I didn't.

My second character, the first I played, was a cybered-up-the-butt infiltrator/face with a bomb in her head and being used as the catspaw of a big shadowy corporate magnate guy, 'reality TV' style. She got turned into a dog by an angel, which destroyed all her cyber and bioware, and simultaneously awakened her, so she became a mage. Yeah. PLOT ARC.

My first PC was a level 1 human fighter for Tunnels & Trolls. Played her in T&T's soitaire adventures up to level 7 I think. First PC I played with others was a level 1 female human thief, AD&D. First combat she saw involved spiders. She and a paladin were clearing out an abandoned house and were attacked by spiders. My thief didn't roll less than a 15 on the dice and the paladin didn't roll above an 8 on the dice the whole combat. I ended up asking the other PCs for help dragging him out of the house after I killed all the spiders. I think there were 6 of them and while we both got bit, I made my poison save and the paladin didn't.

Elizabeth W.

I'm pretty sure my fist character was a Ranger in Palladium. I was so confused by the damage description for the greatsword. It said 3-18 damage, we thought it meant 3d18 damage and we didn't have any 18 sided dice :P

Ah the innocence of youth....

First Character.. Elven Ranger whose name I forget. This was 2nd edition AD&D time. He got killed by goblins. A level 2 ranger cannot kill five goblins in melee it seems. Drizz't seemed to make it seem easy in those days. Lol. Then came a number of useless AD&D characters. I was young and played ideas, not things that actually did what they were supposed to.

I then went on a long Hiatus and rejoined half-way through 3.5e.

My first character then was an Living Greyhawk character named Kore'dyslan Wraithstrike. He was a Spellwarp Sniper based assassin who shot nasty split rays from the shadows. He went from 1st to 19th level and gained a rather amusing victory over a high level Wizard NPC by using Antimagic Field and grabbing the guy after falling from a large building on top of him.

He then went on to gain the Shadow Template from an adventure to some strange realm and eventually slayed the evil demi-god Iuz.

He still sits on my HD waiting to play some Lich (old since Living is no longer running) Greyhawk.

Elven Sorcerer named Cronus. I wanted to run wizard, but when I saw all the paperwork involved I figured I'd stick with the sorcerer until I grew more familiar with the game.

It's funny, but the people who actually grok the necessary reading to be a wizard and who put it off til they know more about whats what, are usually the ones who'd do the best with the wizard class anyway, even without experience. It's the guys who fail to understand that a wizard is about preparation and versatility, and run forward casting magic missile, and don't bother securing their spellbook, and use up all their spells in the first fight then spend the rest of the session whinging, that are frustrating to run games for.

My first RP experience was playing MERP (scaled-down RoleMaster for those unfamiliar) with a smattering of characters in one-off adventures. My first long-term character, though, was an evil wizard. Took him from level 1 up to 18 back in 2nd edition. There were a couple breaks (once in low levels we switched to play a Dark Sun campaign for a while, I recall), but we kept coming back to it. After a while I split from the mostly-good party and set up shop in a kingdom of my own, picked up a lizardman lieutenant. I got conned into putting on a helm of opposite alignment (long story) and ran around as an emissary of Bahamut for some time. In a side campaign, in one of our breaks from the main campaign, the lizardman went on a quest to find a ring of wishes to restore me to my rightful evil-wizardy glory. Restored, with Tiamat now in my corner, and mighty pissed at the former party member who'd tricked me, I drew him into a climactic battle which ended in mutual death via suicidal staff of power usage.

Good times.