20 years of playing D&D

pemerton · Jul 12, 2013

The first RPG I had was Traveller (Christmas 1979?) but I couldn't work out how to play it. After getting into Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks I got Moldvay Basic in November 1982. So that's a little over 30 years for me.

Hussar · Jul 12, 2013

Started in about 1980 with my older brother getting me into things. Branched out into a lot of other systems in the 80's - Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, TMNT, others, and then did mostly DnD in the 90's. The Oughts saw a lot of branching out again after a long time of 3e.

It's always good to play and read other games. Broadens the mind.

Guest 85555 · Jul 12, 2013

I started about 1986, but was rather young. My friend had a neighbor who was a grade ahead of us and they invited me to play (I thought they were talking about a video game). Got hooked the first day. My first campaign wasn't actually D&D, it was a science fiction RPG. But we went into D&D a few months later. All I remember is getting killed by zombies.

When the 2E PHB came out in 1989 is when I really got into gaming and started GMing as well. I pretty much ran Ravenloft all through that period. I loved the boom of settings at the time. Everyone in the the group ran something different: a homebrew, dark sun, al qadim, planescape, etc. my groups in the 90s played a lot of other games as well like TMNT, Tales from the Floating Vagabond, Star Wars, call of cthulu, torg, etc. TORG made a good impression on me.

Orius · Jun 25, 2023

A little thread resurrection here.

I've now reached the 30 year mark or will in a few days.

ichabod · Jun 25, 2023

Damn. Made me realize I got started in middle school, which would have been 40 years ago.

John Quixote · Jun 26, 2023

Orius said:
A little thread resurrection here.

I've now reached the 30 year mark or will in a few days.

You started 5 years before I did, so I'll just be hitting my quarter-centennial come this fall (though it's been long enough now that I can't remember whether I started playing in August or September; all I know is that it was very early in the school year, the second week or so of my freshman year in high school).

Longspeak · Jun 26, 2023

I started gaming in '79, aged 12. I started with D&D but didn't stick with it. By the third year of High School. I played several others. By early 90s, I had left D&D entirely for other games. Picked it back up in 2018. So I have maybe about 15 years of D&D, Maybe 10 years when we were exclusive.