D&D General Did you get your start playing D&D, and what do you play now?

[Grendel_Khan]

I never liked fantasy as a kid, so while poking around in AD&D books was my introduction to the idea of RPGs, I couldn't bring myself to run a single session with it. Just always seemed like such hack-and-slash no-story-having nonsense (no offense to the D&D-only). Wound up doing Call of Cthulhu and GURPS and then tons of World of Darkness throughout my formative years.

Tried 5e during the pandemic and it's fun, but, to me, just unbearably dumb. Feels like you're fighting against the current to do anything interesting that isn't tactical boardgamey whatever.

 

[Gnosistika]

I started with 1e, then 2e. Now a days I run Fantasy AGE (+ most AGE incarnations) and get to play Cypher System and 13th Age.

 

[kenada]

My first D&D was 3e. I knew a friend who played it at the local college gaming club. When I transferred to that college and heard an advertisement for the D&D College Tour 2000 on the radio, I went to check it out. I still have the tat I got (a cup, a badge holder advertisement for the D&D movie, and a bottle opener with the 3e logo).

We played 3e and switched to 3.5e when it came out. After that, some new people joined the club, and we started playing indie games like Dogs in the Vineyard. I recall playing in an aborted D&D campaign, but we most did other stuff for several years. I eventually ran a few one-off adventures in 3.5e around the time right before 4e landed.

4e was … okay. There were some things I didn’t like in the lead up to its release, but I didn’t quite feel as negatively towards it as my players did when we started playing. Most of our time spent doing 4e was with the player/GM I wrote about in the worst player thread, so it wasn’t a great experience.

After 4e, I started running Pathfinder 1e and ran that for years. We tried the D&D Next playtest, which was variously okay. I did run Murder in Baldur’s Gate using it, and thought it was pretty good. After 5e released, I ran Lost Mines of Phandelver and Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The former ended in a TPK (the PCs conveniently lined up in dragon breath formation for the dragon in Thundertree). We finished HotDQ, but I didn’t go on to run Rise of Tiamat.

After that, we bounced around back and forth between systems. I ran another Pathfinder 1e campaign. This one was homebrew but set in Golarion. It ended up being the last PF1 game I ever ran. I also ran a homebrew hack of Fate set in Golarion, and we tried Dungeon World a few times. I finally shifted to a homebrew setting with Open Legend, which was just sort of okay.

I’m currently running a hex crawl, which has been run in several different systems. We started in 5e, switching after a TPK to Pathfinder 2e. I ran PF2 for about a year before burning out on it and proposing a switch to Old-School Essentials. My players were nice to agree, but I don’t think they really wanted to do OSE. We’re on Worlds Without Number now. I’m getting close to do with setting reation.

We have our second WWN session this Saturday, which will introduce the revised setting (v1 was Open Legend, v2 was 5e and PF2, and v3 is WWN). From what I can tell, WWN seems to resonate much better with my players than OSE did. I think that’s because it feels a lot like 3e in places, which is the game we played for so long.

In the spirit of the question, we’re not playing D&D, so I answered no D&D right now. Other players have run Delta Green in Savage Worlds, Mage: The Awakening 2e, Cyberpunk 2020, Call of Cthluhu, and Scum and Villainy; but they don’t seem to want to run a concurrent D&D game (or some other fantasy RPG).

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I started with 1e, then 2e. Now a days I run Fantasy AGE (+ most AGE incarnations) and get to play Cypher System and 13th Age.

What kind of stuff are you playing with Cypher? Been curious about that system for a while.

 

[cbwjm]

I started with fighting fantasy/advanced fighting fantasy before getting the rules cyclopedia for DnD and moving into that. I've played a couple other systems (Rifts, Marvel Saga system are two I can think of) but mostly stick with DnD nowadays.

 

[CleverNickName]

Started with: D&D Basic (Moldvay)

Currently playing: D&D 5E regularly, with the occasional Call of Cthulhu or Esper Genesis one-shot thrown in.

Have played: Pathfinder, Dread, Shadowrun, Vampire: Masquerade, D&D 3.X, GURPs, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill

Looking forward to playing: Coyote & Crow and LotOR as soon as the books ship.

 

[Gnosistika]

What kind of stuff are you playing with Cypher? Been curious about that system for a while.

We're playing mostly fantasy in the Scarred Lands setting. It's good fun and quite easy reskinning the classes to fit any character concept.

The GM is planning a future horror/transhuman in space where we will be scavengers that reclaim and strip old spaceship hulks abandoned during an old war.

It is not a crunchy system, so my group is having a lot of fun with it.

When I run again, I'd like to try a World of Darkness type game just to see how the system handles those setting restrictions.

 

[Aldarc]

I was introduced to TTRPGs through D&D 3e, but I began venturing out to a lot of other non-D&D RPGs not long thereafter, albeit mostly fantasy heartbreakers (i.e., True 20), when D&D wasn't really able to do the sort of fantasy or game experiences I was wanting it to do.

I realized that I didn't really answer what I play now. The short answer is "quite a bit," but I also enjoy playing different sorts of games.

With my gaming group in California, I didn't have a chance to run 4e because the person I would likely be co-sharing GMing responsibilities with was pretty dead set against it despite a large number of misconceptions he had about it. So we instead played Pathfinder 1 for several years. 5e D&D was released around the time our PF1 game was wrapping up. But the GM, that other fellow, basically burned out as a result of "world-building sickness" before we barely got into play. So I used the opportunity to run a number of one-shots of Numenera.

When I moved to Austria, my first group (i.e,. my flatmates and their friends) were Pathfinder 1 players, so I played a bit more of that. My next group were into 7th Sea, so I played a bit of that. I also played with them a several year-long campaign of D&D 5e and several one-two shots. This group was far more receptive to other games. During this time, I ran several campaigns and one-shots for Numenera/Cypher, No Thank You Evil, Fantasy AGE (Titansgrave, Blue Rose), Fate Core/Accelerated & Jadepunk, Black Hack, and Index Card RPG. I also played a bit of WFRP 2e with them as well. Sadly, this gaming group ended.

During the height of the pandemic, I ran my partner (who has never played TTRPGs) through a game of D&D 5e. They found it a bit overwhelming, and they didn't like it too much. We switched their character over to a hack of Dungeon World (i.e., Homebrew World), and they liked that much better. I also played a bit of Titansgrave with them as part of an upcoming revised Fantasy AGE core rulebook, and they liked that as well, especially the stunt point mechanic. They have asked if I would run them through games of Numenera and Blue Rose as well.

I still have an enormous back catalog of games that I want to play (e.g., Cortex Prime, Worlds Without Number, Blades in the Dark, Stonetop, Paleomythic, Tales of the Weird Wizard,* etc.), but I will likely need to find a new gaming group here, preferably one that games primarily in English.

* Upcoming game from Rob Schwalb, which is basically a Gygaxian fantasy conversion of his Shadow of the Demon Lord game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Started with D&D in 1989, technically, though an argument could be made that I was already quasi-aware of RPGs via The Riddling Reaver, but that's more like multi-player choose-your-own-adventure, and I'd never actually played it. I heard about D&D and was totally blown away by how amazing it sounded.

Within a year we were buying other RPGs, but the big difference was it was really easy to do so pretty casually, which isn't the case now. Back then if you wanted D&D books, you had to go to places that sold RPG books, which were in relatively normal large stores (like Virgin stores), so you were constantly exposed to other RPGs.

The biggest wow moment after D&D was probably Vampire the Masquerade 1E, I still remember my brother coming back having bought it, throwing it on my bed and going "read this!". I did and was blown away. Since then I've seen some pretty fantastic RPGs, but that was the biggest shock.

 

[ccs]

Along with my brother & cousin I started completely cold (none of us had any RPG xp & no one to teach us - but being kids of average intelligence + literate....) with Basic over Christmas break 1980.
Then about a year later things blurred into 1e.
After that we tried all sorts of stuff through the '80s. They quit gaming during high school. Me? I've played soooo many things between then & now...
And I added miniature wargaming to the mix! All genres. Small fortunes worth! And MTG. And Board Games too.

ATM I regularly play:
5e
PF1
Age of Sigmar/Warhammer Fantasy
40k
WWII Bolt Action
WWI/WWII/WWIII Flames of War (15mm)
Board Games