Editions of D&D you have played the most in your life

[Sacrosanct]

My timeline:

1981-1983: B/X
1983 to 1989: 1e with the occasional B/X
1989-2012: Mostly 1e with 2e elements included. Sparse 3e here and there after 2000
2012-present: 5e


So 1e is the clear winner here, with some elements of 2e being used (like bard class and thief skill progression system and priest spheres)

 

[happyhermit]

"Basic" in one form or another, started with it and played it on an off until 5e. Tried every edition to varying degrees but basic is the only one I kept coming back to consistently (usually when things started to feel bloaty or cumbersome).

5e is really adding up the time spent though.

 

[houser2112]

Editions earlier than 2E: never played because I wasn't aware of RPGs in general.

2E (1989 - 1999): By far the most played for me. I was in a group that played almost every week without fail for 6 hours, and a few other groups that played less often and less intensely. These are my high school and college years, and represent the most free time I'll ever have. I'm very nostalgic for 2E for this reason, not on the merits of the system itself, which I only liked because I didn't know differently and 3.0 hadn't come out yet. I played this edition for a few months in 2010 as well when a friend who, despite being an avid player of 3E/4E/PF wasn't comfortable DMing those systems.

3.0 (2000 - 2003): "Almost every week" group switched to 3E when it came out. I instantly fell in love with the system for its open multiclassing and expanded character options; the sorcerer in particular because I always hated fire-and-forget vancian casting. 3E still had vancian casting, but at least I could eschew the "fire-and-forget" part.

3.5 (2004): I left "almost every week" group when I was invited to a co-worker's 3.5 game and discovered that it was possible to have a DM that wasn't a control freak (refused to consider miniatures when his combats clearly required them, hovering over you while you take your turn, refusing to allow you to keep your character sheets between sessions). Sadly, this group didn't last that long due to life happening to all of us.

4E: I wasn't gaming at all when this edition came out, but perusing the books in B&N didn't inspire me to go out of my way to find a group. "Avid player of 3E/4E/PF" later described it to me as "a fun little game, but it's not D&D", which squashed any feelings I had that I didn't give it the chance it deserved.

PF (2010 - 2014): I was involved with two non-concurrent groups (first was "avid player of 3E/4E/PF" deciding to run PF; I joined the second as a result of first group fizzling yet again due to life) that played PF for about 6 hours once a month. I "discovered" Dreamscarred's psionics rules at this point. I vowed to never play a non-psionic character again, DM willing.

5E (2014 - present): PF group did a trial of 5E that I declined to participate in because it didn't really appeal to my tastes (the bad: lack of character customization, "bounded accuracy", and Concentration outweighed the good: the spellcasting system looking a lot like 3.5/PF psionics), and I didn't want to spend my precious gaming time (wife isn't all that supportive of this hobby, but that's a topic for a therapist, not a gaming board!) in a system I perceived as inferior to PF. When they told me they were switching over to 5E indefinitely (if not permanently), I joined them; partly out of laziness, but mostly because good groups are hard to find and 5E isn't horrible, merely not ideal. I still game with them, via Skype, despite moving away.

 

[Oofta]

I've played them all, so a SWAG at which one I played the most (which is not the same as my favorite, which is 5E)

1. 3.x if things hadn't gotten so wonky after 14th level or so with spellcasters, I probably wouldn't have moved on to 4E. As it was I was close to switching back when 5E was released.
2. 4 - I thought this was a decent edition at lower levels, but also never quite felt like the D&D I grew up with. That, and higher level combats were simply too slow.
3. 5E - only because it hasn't been out long enough. The few issues I have with it are easily worked around or house ruled.
4. AD&D 2E - had the books for a long time sitting on my shelf, but no group. About 2 years after I finally got a group again, 3.0 came out.
5. AD&D 1E, ahh the glory years of my teens.
6. OD&D, simply wasn't out all that long when we started, we switched to 1E when it was released.

 

[JonnyP71]

1) AD&D 1E - way more than any other, this was my teenage game of choice, and I still prefer it to any other version of the game
2) 5E - lots of hours put into this over the last few years
3) BECMI - quite a distant 3rd, this was the 1st version of the game I played when I was 11/12, and still drift back to it occasionally
4) 2E - it appeared around the time my teenage group broke up, left school and spread across the country to go to Universities
5) 3E - a couple of sessions was enough to tell me I didn't like it (confirming an opinion formed while playing NWN)
6) 4E - 1 session, no need for any more. If we play a game with this 'style' then I'd go for 13th Age.
7) 3.5E and OD&D - never played either

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

For my part, it’s probably 2e. I ran it from 89 until about 97. From 89 until 93, we played a ton, too, with multiple campaigns running both sequentially and at the same time. BECMI, 1e, 3e, C&C, and 4e all account for no more than 2-3 years apiece.

5e is going strong, and I suspect it could rival the run of 2e, but we’re what, only two years or so into it (once the core three were all out)? But chances are, I’ll never have as much time to game as I did during 2e, before adulthood.

 

[Dax Doomslayer]

Although 1E and 2E kind of blend together for me to some extent, I believe for me it'd be:

1). First Edition
2). Second Edition
3). Fifth Edition (Fantasy Grounds is a beautiful thing - I'm playing much more now than I have in years!!)
4). Third Edition / 3.5E
5). OD&D
5). Fourth Edition (I barely played this - not so much because of all the usual reasons but friends moved away and it was a busy time for me)

 

[Swarmkeeper]

1982 to 1983: B/X
1983 to 1992: 1e
2014 to present: 5e

In terms of pure table time, 5e is way ahead. My memory tells me I was mostly grinding out random dungeons from the 1e DMG as a kid. Lots of "lonely fun" in the mid-80's [sad trombone]...

 

[Gradine]

1) 3.5. I'd say 3.X but I played maybe one session of 3.0 and literally none of Pathfinder. 3.5 was the prevailing system when I was in college and that was the time of my life I played D&D the most. 4e was out by the time I was doing my second-longest stretch of DMing (which was only about a year, from 2013-2014) but I couldn't get my players into at all, so we stuck with 3.5.

2) AD&D 2nd Edition. This was the game basically for as long as I was old enough to really play it, but I still didn't play much (my older brother only let me watch his games, and most of my actual play was online; good ol' AOL chatroom dice rolling functions!) This is probably going to be overtaken by 5e soon, unless you count CRPGs in which case this edition will hold the top spot for a verrry long time, what with the Eye of Beholder games and the Infinity Engine stuff (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment).

3) 5th Edition. This is easily my favorite edition so far and it would take a serious glut of PF-esque splat to make that change, and I'm usually the DM so I can always just ban books if I need to (it's not like my players are rushing out to buy every new player splat... or really optimize their characters at all). I just haven't gotten to play much of it; I ran maybe three sessions of it before my daughter was born, and I've run two sessions of it in the last month, and I've had precious little experience actually playing it. But now that I've got a regular game going it's probably not going to be long before it takes over AD&D 2nd, and hopefully it'll take my top spot eventually.

4) 4th Edition. I was a huge 4e fan when it first came out. I ran my group through the playtest that came out with the pregens and they were... less impressed, though eventually we did end up running a short summer campaign using it. I can see the objective flaws and the reasons why a lot of people didn't like it, but if nothing else I wish at least that the At-Wills for every class stayed (and not just as cantrips for the spellcasters).

5) 1st Edition. I think this is what the original Hackmaster was based off of, so I'll go with that? I ran a handful of Hackmaster sessions. They were awful, because the original Hackmaster was virtually unplayable (it was more a parody than something meant to actually be played). I heard the newer edition was actually a pretty neat game, but I never got a chance to check it out.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

1. Third Edition (plus variants)
2. Second Edition
3. Fifth Edition
4. Fourth Edition

Fifth Edition will likely eclipse Second Edition soon, but it has a long way to go before it can compete with the constant weekend-long Third Edition marathons I was able to do in college.