What's been your longest break from playing RPGs?

[Dragon Snack]

Took a break from '86 to '90. We just stopped playing after I let another player run a session (we all DMed, but I was the defacto DM by then) and he TPKed the group of 5th level characters with wolves. No plan, nobody got mad, we just stopped cold turkey.

In '90 I played a whopping 2 sessions of 2nd edition, but it just didn't have the same feel. I also played someone elses character in one of my fraternity brothers OD&D games (he ran it when he was home on break) for a session.

Then a coworker suckered me back into gaming around '96 or so. We bounced around systems, played some board games and a CCG (B5, until they came out with a 2nd edition which killed my Human deck). Then we found WEG d6 SW, which we played for a few years until WEG went under (probably after they went under, but after we exhausted the ideas we gleemed from the system). Bounced around some more and then when 3rd edition hit, we went whole hog on it (I was in 4 D&D groups at one point before 3.5 came along).

So, a 6 year break if you count the games I was in in '90, but it was really 10 years. If we are talking D&D then either 10 years or 14 years...

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

13 years

From 1988 to 2001. Came back because I got hit by a car and needed to do stuff other than outdoor pursuits for awhile.

 

[noretoc]

I have been playing since my freshman year in Highschool. 1987. No break at all. I still play with some of the same people, but the group has changed a lot.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Longest break would have been from about 1996 - 2003.

Gave up on D&D in about '93-'94 (couldn't stomach 2nd edition any more), played a lot of shadowrun/battletech and then stopped playing entirely. Got back into it with 3rd edition after checking out the player's handbook and going "Wow".

Been playing pretty solid ever since.

Now if they would just hurry up and release 4th edition so I could stop buying books and use the dozens upon dozens I already have

 

[jdrakeh]

2002 through 2004, for varied reasons throughout that period.

 

[Ace]

10 years or so. I sold all my gaming stuff (not as big a deal as it seems) and walked away.

I am on a sort of hiatus from actual play on an indefinite basis at this time, I have played three times in two years.

 

[Sound of Azure]

I had a year's break from gaming due to work reasons (I moved to a remote island on the Great Barrier Reef), although I played neverwinter nights on my PC to get my "fix".

I have to be honest that a lot of my time on the island was spent being a "bard" (romancing the ladies, bluffing a lot, reading poetry, being ineffective in combat, etc) in my off time anyway.

 

[Li Shenron]

Around 6 months not playing at all, 12 months without DMing.

edit: not counting a few years of nothing between playing OD&D a couple of evenings in high school and the coming of 3ed, which marked the "real start" for me

 

[Moggthegob]

10 years, the ten between when I was born and when I started playing.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

In college we would break for the summer but I would still prep stuff for the next fall (and I bet I played in some pick up games during those summers). But the longest period probably would have been when I was in grad school for two years in a place I was unfamiliar with and without a car. It was rough. Though, where I was living was Milwaukee and I was living about 6 blocks from GenCon. So I did get to play every summer while I was there.