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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8168967" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Never really had a stable group for BECMI or 1E in the 80s; it was mostly my brother and I futzing around with the game and playing occasional rough attempts with neighbor kids or a few older friends of the family.1. Early 90s, the first ongoing group I played with for an extended period (maybe around a year, before we moved?) was Raven McCracken's Synnibarr table in Seattle at his apartment, when my brother and I were teenagers.2. '93 to around '98 or so.  Once we moved to NH and went to college we made some friends with whom we played AD&D 2E, Vampire, and occasionally other games like GURPS. That group had shifting membership but was pretty stable from around late '93 toward the release of 3rd ed.  The group still played (again with a few membership shifts) but I dropped out for a bit, focusing more on LARP, dating, and then wargaming.  We had one main DM, an incredibly prolific and creative writer who experimented widely with settings and rules, and we eventually went almost entirely with custom character classes.3. 2002, 2003-ish?  I ran a 3E group for a few months with some other friends.  It wasn't very long-term, but it was a solid friend circle I hung out with for years, with only a couple of people overlapping with the 2E group.  Major influences on this game included The Deed of Paksennarion and Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books.4. Around 2002 several of my older wargaming buddies started up a 3E group, and that group was pretty stable for at least 8 or 9 years. I recruited one of the players from the 2E group. We transitioned from 3E to 3.5, then to 4E.  Played through several campaigns from low level to teens or epic levels. The game I ran toward the end of this was influenced by some early OSR materials; rules-wise it was straight 4E, but I incorporated a lot of dungeons and sandboxy play.5. 2006-ish off any on until maybe 2018?  A new group formed from some of the same players as the 90s group and some new folks; we played 3.5 and then 4th ed when it was new, and for several years.  That group played through several campaigns; our first 4E one had the concept of literally gaining a level every adventure, so we played from 1st to 30th in less than a year. The only campaign in which I've played a Thief the entire time, and in which I wielded the Sword of Kas in the Hand of Vecna to kill Vecna at the end!  We also played one fairly long 5E game.6. Around 2017-ish.  An old friend who had been part of the 90s group for a year or two and was one of my LARPing buddies started a new 4E group with some other old friends and LARP friends. I probably only played in this one for a year or less.7. Late 2018-current. I started a 5E group with another circle of friends, with no overlap from any of my older players.  Taking lots of inspiration from OSR blogs, adventures and materials.  My first campaign is now on hiatus but I've run another short side game, and now one of the players has just taken up the mantle of first-time DM and we've had our first session in his Rime of the Frostmaiden game.8.  Late 2018-2019. My brother started another 4E group, with a couple of brand new players, and two of us from group 5.  This one went on hiatus when a player dropped out and we were looking for another.9. In late March 2020 I started a quasi-open table 5 Torches Deep game; the way it wound up working out is that I have two small, largely stable groups playing in the same shared world/local area, occasionally interacting or competing in a shared dungeon.  This is still going.10-14. Four different online OSR games over Discord or Zoom with complete strangers I met on the internet in 2020.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  Two of them 1974 OD&D, one of those with some Greyhawk inclusions and both with some house rules, and two B/X / OSE games.  There's a little overlap in players between them, but not a lot.  All of them are open table, but there are some consistent core players who are almost always there in each.  The DM of the first 1974 game was also playing in my 5TD for a while.In compiling this I'm disregarding my LARP and wargaming years, convention games, one shots, and attempts at a campaign or brief visits to other people's games where I only played one or two sessions and didn't attend more for one reason or another.</blockquote>

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