40 years...

[Ath-kethin]

24 years here! I feel like a newbie in this crowd.

My first D&D character was a Thri-kreen psionicist/ranger in a Dark Sun campaign. He had a thing for eating elves, his "appearance" line on the character sheet read "ugly as hell," and the primary combat tactic of that group was my thri-kreen picking up and throwing the halfling into battle. I do not remember any other characters from that campaign.

I have been the DM of virtually every other D&D game I have ever played. I love the game with a passion I can't fully describe, and I love the fact that after all these years I am finally able (as in I have both the time and means simultaneously) to write for it and make a little bit of money doing so. I have even made enough money doing so that my tax preparer says I can write off RPG purchases as business expenses. I have a 4 year old kid who loves the Hobbit and has an imagination I cannot believe.

Truly, this is a glorious time to be alive.

 

[Vymair]

39 years here. My first character was a wizard named Gandalf. He died several times in Search for the Unknown but more powerful character had him resurrected and held his debt. I played regularly through junior high, high school and college. I moved away and only briefly during a short hiatus back in my home town until I moved away again. I moved back for good 18 years ago and have been playing regularly ever since. I both DM and play, though I haven't DM'd much at all over the past 8 years or so, though I am starting a new campaign here soon. I'm over 50 now and it's one of more core hobbies and key to my biggest social circle. Also taught me organization skills, creative thinking and I react well under pressure. It's a been a boon to my life in many ways.

 

[Raith5]

36 years here since I started with the Moldvay basic set and have since played all the editions since. Like others in this thread, I have a learnt a lot through this game, made great friends and made some very lame characters over the years. It is a long time but I dont feel like a Grognard, as I interested most in current and future editions of the game. I havent got attached to any edition in particular and am interested in seeing how the game has evolved and will continue to evolve.

 

[Hussar]

Started in 1980 after my older brother got me into it with Moldvay Basic/Expert. Been a junkie ever since and, with only a couple of breaks here and there, I've basically played weekly the whole time. Good grief.

That's a pile of time.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Most of the players in this thread have been playing D&D longer then I've been alive...

 

[MNblockhead]

First played, I think, in '83 or '84. Played heavily through Junior High and first few years of high school, then moved on to Warhammer, and we also tried lots of other systems: Stair Frontiers, Gamma World, Paranoia, Boot Hill, Star Wars, and various friends home-brew games. Stopped playing when I went to college. Never played DnD 2nd, 3rd, or 4th edition. Started playing again when 5th edition came out. The stars had aligned. I had move the family back near where I grew up and started getting together with old high-school friends to play various board and card games. When 5th edition came out I decided to run run a campaign and have been playing regularly since. Love 5e and plan to play it for a long time and as my main game, but I've also run Paranoia and have tried various indie games (InSPECtres is a favorite).

 

[Draegn]

I began playing with my older brothers after mom made them let me play. Call it punishment for doing naughty things to Barbie. Our game was AD&D with Dragon magazine content and Bard Games content. After a few years we switched to Shadowrun. After A levels during SR3 we tried 3 and 3.5 through the Neverwinter Night games. I missed most of 4e, uni required too much time. Now the game I run is very customized. Is having a few key terms such as HP, EXP, etc enough to call the game Dungeons and Dragons?

My game was once described as AD&D 3e with the Talislanta skill set, 3e Shadowrun magic system and the Harn religion rules.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

41 for me. Started in '77 with Holmes, I was 10. Had my best friend's older brother find a game in Kansas and brought back with him called D&D. The next year the Players handbook for "Advanced" came out. So basic to advanced ok. The I realized it was a completely different game. But I liked it.
Don't remember much about my earliest characters, they were mostly disposable. My first character ever was a wizard that got killed by that stupid vampire thorn thing in B1. I played and GMed Gamma World in there too. Those were the only two RPGs I played between 77 and 85. I moved to college and discovered just how much out there I was missing - and Champions/HERO became my game of choice for decades.
I met my wife because she was the GM of the group I joined when I moved to a new area. We games solo together - and as we played HERO with the group we did different things solo - so we played our houseruled 1st edition AD&D until about 95. We also played around with Rolemaster, Mythus and some others. About that point we stopped playing any form of D&D, and just played HERO.
We didn't play 2nd ed (although we did use the Spelljammers stuff) - it got rid of things we liked (monks, demons devils) and kept or brought in things we didn't like (level limits for demi humans, Planescape, Dark Sun).
I came back in 3rd edition D&D, both because I preferred the game, and I loved the concept of the OGL and d20 license - which never achieved what I thought it could. When 4E came out, I gave it a try, found it wasn't to my taste, and moved to pathfinder.
Came over the 5th about a month ago, and am playing in 1 game (montly), and GMing 2 others already (one is every 2 weeks, and the other is solo for my wife, whenever we have a few hours free). And we still have our weekly HERO game.

 

[Li Shenron]

22 years ago in winter 1995-1996, when one of my best friends was gifted with a re-issue box of BECMI and decided to DM a game for us. I was hooked by a combination of features: the complexity of the rules (compared to any other game I knew), the mix between narrative and mechanics, and the idea of a game that was practically zero-cost but infinitely expandable. Before that, I had actually had a glimpse at the concept of RPG through a magazine article that came with a sample set of rules for a sci-fi game, so while I wasn't completely new to the idea in general, D&D actually brought it to our table

 

[Maxperson]

In 1982 I lived in Michigan. One day I went over to a friend's house and his older brother had this book with a unicorn and a few other weird creatures on the cover. It was called the Monster Manual. I loved reading mythology, Tolkien and other books of that nature, so I inquired further and was told that it was called Dungeons & Dragons. The older brother offered to teach me how to play, but his mother said I couldn't unless my father was okay with it. He wasn't. It was of the devil. A year later my father's friends held an intervention(he was an alcoholic and drug user) and persuaded him to let me move to California to live with my mother.

Shortly after arriving my mother was buying me stuff and asked me if I wanted any games. I immediately said Dungeons & Dragons. She located a game store called The Last Grenadier and bought me the core three books. I immediately started delving into them and read very quickly, missing a few things. Then I grabbed my new friend from the apartment above mine and started running games for him. One of the things I misread was hit dice/hit points. I thought that hit dice WAS hit points, which made things really easy to kill, but who was I to complain about that. It did puzzle me a bit when I came across a monster whose hit dice was something like 4+12. I mean, why didn't they just tell me that it had 16 hit points!?!?

It didn't take me long to figure out those few misunderstandings and I was off. I was drawing up dungeons on a daily basis. There was no rhyme or reason to them. I just drew passages, stuck doors with rooms of random sizes and shapes behind them. Threw the occasional secret door in and planted monsters in every......single.....room. Then I randomly rolled up the treasure and my buddy hacked and slashed his way to eventual death. Town was just a place to buy and sell stuff. I didn't really play NPCs much, if at all. They just hired my buddy to clear out the dungeons, and bought and sold stuff.

Over the next few years I met and played with more guys. As we got older, the above world started mattering more and more. NPCs were to be interacted with for more than just quest giving and sales. We started coming up with a few details for how our PCs behaved and things that they wanted. The game began evolving for us. Fast forward 30 more years and the game is still evolving for us. To this day I still play D&D with a few of those guys I first started out with back in the early/mid '80s. And my wife laughs at us from the other room on game nights(#notagamer).