I first started gaming in the 90s, when there were two versions of the game to choose from: Dungeons & Dragons, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition. Like (I'm guessing) many gamers, I learned how to play the game on the Dungeons & Dragons basic game, and then, without giving the "kiddie version" another thought, I went out and bought up all the AD&D rules I could get my hands on. (This will henceforth be referred to as "mistake #1.")
In high school, my friends and I were very happy with AD&D. All of our best-remembered, beloved long-running campaigns were played with the 2e rules, in homebrewed settings and with notebook-sheets of pencil-scrawled house rules that made this campaign feel like Final Fantasy, that campaign feel like a Raymond Feist novel, and the other one feel like whatever that DM felt like running that month. Back then, we ran the game with a simple philosophy: role-play, damn the rules, ignore as much of the PHB as possible (I don't think we even had a DMG or an MM for several years), and make everything up as you went along. If the DM pre-planned too much of the adventure (or, horrors, used a module), that was the worst sort of failure.
When 3e came out, I was the one to jump on the bandwagon and grab the new books. Caught up in the hype, I was enamored with the slick new rules that seemed to cover everything and finally make sense. Easy multiclassing, feats and skills, and always rolling high seemed like the dream had been realized: at last, we had the perfect RPG system. And so, I dropped 2e like a bad habit and converted the rest of my group to 3e. (This will henceforth be known as "mistake #2.")
As the years passed by, my 3e games became less and less and fun, and I didn't understand why I just couldn't run a good campaign anymore. Later, I realized that it was because I actually cared about the rules now. I knew the rules backwards and forwards, I gladly ran adventure modules, and I encouraged the players to min/max their character builds. My DMing style had changed so utterly (and yet so subtly) from 2e to 3e that I didn't even get that I just didn't "get it" anymore. As the house rules piled up and became more and more radical (close to the end, I actually tried to run 3e without feats and AoOs), I just got so totally fed up and disillusioned that I dropped 3e altogether. This was about a year before any 4e rumors started flying around, just to place things in context.
I might have given up gaming altogether in hopeless frustration (or, *shudder*, taken up playing "Castles & Crusades") if I hadn't stumbled on a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia in the "used books" bin of my FLGS. That was my gaming salvation. I was astonished at the simplicity of the rules, the fact that this Cyclopedia appeared to continue those D&D basic rules that I had first cut my teeth on (nostalgia can be extremely powerful), and the odd similarity that the RC rules seem to bear to the original Final Fantasy game on the NES (again, see the point about nostalgia). I knew that it was the game for me after about ten seconds of flipping through the book.
Since then, I've found my soul again. My campaigns are back to being fun. My players actually role-play rather than character-build. I can wing an adventure and it's always a hoot (but I did learn a thing or two about running modules and tactical battles from my 3e days, and so those things have stuck with me, and I think I'm a better DM for it). It feels like I'm just playing plain old "Dungeons & Dragons" for the first time, and I've never enjoyed gaming more.
And since Labyrinth Lord has been published, I can use the OGL to do the same for my house rules and main campaign setting, which is also a blast.
4e... I don't know. Nobody's offered to DM a game around here, so I haven't had the chance to play it. I would have to try playing it before I even considered DMing it, but from what I've seen, it's like "3e... to the X-treme!", and so it probably wouldn't fit my play style at all. The best I can say for it is, "no comment."
