Us weirdos
HellHound said:
I'm one of the weirdos that took a 100% skip on second edition - at the time I felt it was a half-assed patch-kit on the 1st ed rules.
Guess I'm a weirdo, too. 2e happened to coincide with my going off to college, when I figured I had to "grow up." That, added to the
utterly atrocious art and layout of the 2e line, put me off completely (Planescape was cool, though). In the year or so after college, I picked up the 2e PHB and DMG. A few years later, I sold them. While some things had improved, too many things got worse (including the art), and it was still light-years behind (imo) games that had been out for decades (Champions, Runequest). Frankly, I consider myself lucky.
Anyway...
1. Blue Book Basic D&D, c. 1980
2. AD&D1e
3. Bunch of games from the "golden years," e.g., Champions, V&V, Star Frontiers, Space Opera, Runequest, T&T, TFT, CoC, Stormbringer, Traveller, Dragonquest, etc.
4. College years (after giving up on "growing up"): Rolemaster, Champions 4th, CoC, and WHFRP (used mainly as an idea mine)
5. Games purchased but never played in the "Storytelling/CCG" era of the hobby: CORPS and FUDGE
6. D&D3e... which led to HERO5e, CoCd20, SAS, BESM, Alternity, d20M, and even the purchase of a few GURPS books.
Step #5 was about an 8-year span of virtually no gaming, and few, if any products purchased. In fact, I sold a huge chunk of my collection then.
3e brought me back to the hobby in full force. Similarly to another poster, I now spend more money and more time on gaming than I probably ever did before. I've attended an ENWorld Game Day, my first con-type-thing ever, and joined a group in my area I found via the Internet.
As you can guess, I think that the "d20 is killing the hobby crowd" are a bunch of loons.
If it weren't for d20, there'd be about $90 a month less the hobby would be taking in.