Your game trajectory

[Filcher]

Hoping this isn't a repeat thread. If so, please delete.

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What was the course of your gaming interest? I'm interested in seeing how/what people went through, and what they are playing now.

For my part:

BECMI - Grades 3 - 4
AD&D/2e - Grades 4-6
R. Talsorian C'punk - Grades 7 - College
Way too much mudding - College
3.5 concurrent w/ L5R rpg - Master's program
4e - since release

Some flirtation with WFRPG, Shadowrun and WoD in the mix, but nothing beyond character creation and a session or two.

 

[jasonbostwick]

Didn't really start playing Tabletop games until 2005, unless you count some vague homebrew lego systems I made up when I was 8.

Pre-2005 - PC FPSs (particularily Half-life mods), RTSes, and some Console RPGs.
2005-2007 - Got into D&D with 3.5e (though we didn't really know the difference between 3.0 and 3.5 and mixed the books freely)
2007-2008 - Heavily, heavily houseruled 3.5e based on Star Wars SAGA Edition.
2008-2010 - 4E
2010-Present - Warhammer Fantasy RP 3rd Edition

Trajectory wise, if my group stops playing Warhammer I think it is more likely we'll go to Pathfinder than back to 4E, unless Essentials is mind-blowing.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

For those of us not American what do grades 3 and 4 mean, 'cause I can never remember.
I never heard of D&D until my late teens circa 18/19 and then in the context of text adventure games in computer magasines this would have been the late eighties in Ireland. Then I came across the Red Box basic set and tried that out.
Did a postgrad in TCD and discovered that tey had a boardgames club and D&D was mentioned as an activity. Joined but at the time no-one was running games. They were all playing wargames so I joined in that. Avalon Hills Russian Front was my first game and got my ass handed to me.
So that followed up with more wargames, Then later some rpg activity restarted AD&D, TFT, Palladium, WHFRP, MERP some other bits and bobs in between to the background of more and more complex board wargames.
Some Napoleonic minis later.
Post College, I move back home and very little then on occasion I ran Palladium, WHFRP, played some MERP. Burned out as DM and that followed a long period with very little gaming. Mostly tri annual meetups with college buddies.
Got Back in to D&D3e but was never comfortable running, though I ran stuff for my nephews. 4e came and I love it, running a campaign for the nephews (not as regular as I would like but I run at their schedule) and so far having a good time.
Still meetup with the college buddies, mostly boardgames but the original college palladium campaign still continues even through 3 system changes (palladium, D&D 3.x and 4.0). I still get the odd wargame in.

 

[Filcher]

For those of us not American what do grades 3 and 4 mean, 'cause I can never remember.

Oops. Sorry.

For me, I was 8 years old. The babysitter brought over Keep on the Borderlands, I died to a pit trap and was hooked. A week later his parents decided that D&D led to Satanism, so I inherited the books.

Still meetup with the college buddies, mostly boardgames but the original college palladium campaign still continues even through 3 system changes (palladium, D&D 3.x and 4.0).

That's awesome. Must be an amazing campaign ...

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

Age 12 - Basic D&D (Red Box, Mentzer edition)
Age 14 - D&D Rules Cyclopedia
Age 16 - AD&D 2nd Edition
Age 18 - Vampire: The Masquerade and Heroes Unlimited
Age 19-25 - Vampire, Werewolf, Rifts, a little AD&D 2nd Edition here and there, and a couple of one-offs with other systems.
Age 26 - D&D 3.0
Age 29 - D&D 3.5
Age 32 - D&D 4E
Age 34 (Current) - Went back to D&D 3.5, still playing D&D 4E occasionally, Vampire: The Requiem, Pathfinder, and dabbling in a few other systems here and there.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Oops. Sorry.
snip...
That's awesome. Must be an amazing campaign ...

Odd would be a better word, at this stage no two of us quite remember the same things.
My character is an artist, a magic using sword wieldng frustrated artist.
"How can I paint with these damned undead ninja assasins turning up"

Though I did get to paint with a world famous artist last session (Who is 2 demons or is possesed by them, I'm not sure of that relationship , but they owe us a favour)

 

[Mark CMG]

There's no way I could really break it down fairly. Just over the past couple of years my regular group has maybe played close to a dozen different systems for various lengths of time and between cons and gamedays I have probably played and handful more. That's leaving aside the wargames, miniatures wargames, boardgames, card games, and whatever other tabletop games I may have played. Rock that all the way back to the early seventies with roughly the same pattern, sometimes a bit less, perhaps some years even more, and you'd have my trajectory. Yet there are still dozens of systems I have never had the chance to play, yet alone run. I've played all of the D&Ds at one point or another, most for long stretches.

 

[Mark CMG]

For those of us not American what do grades 3 and 4 mean, 'cause I can never remember.

Education in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Desdichado]

• Age 6 or so: brief flirtation with OD&D. Not much interest.
• Age 9-10 or so: "got it" with the B/X sets.
• Hiatus
• Age 12-15 or so: AD&D. Turned off by D&Disms. Flirted with Star Frontiers, Top Secret and many other games too.
• Hiatus
• Age 22-25 or so. Was on the fringe of the hobby, reading magazines, browsing books in bookstores, but not buying or playing much except some Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
• Age 25-28: Rediscovered gaming for real when a friend of mine had a copy of Top Secret SI out in his apartment. Played several times with some friends. Also acquired quite a bit of MERP and Traveller material at this time, although didn't really play it. Was the "anti-D&Ders latte set RPG.net hanging out type of gamer during this period.
• Age 28: d20 came out, first in the form of the 3e books. Forgave D&D all of its past sins. Played a lot more than I ever had before. Picked up all the other d20 games that WotC put out at the time too: Cthulhu, Wheel of Time, Star Wars, etc. As well as a lot of third party stuff, some of which was junk, some of which was Arcana Unearthed and Mutants & Masterminds.
• Age 31 or so through age 35-36: Disillusioned by the release of 3.5 so soon after 3e, as well as everybody else who put out updated versions of books that I already had. Wandered a bit playing other games, including a bit of Savage Worlds, more Cthulhu (d20 and BRP), Shadowrun, Dread and other games too. Ran the first games for my kids, including a Star Wars game loosely based on The Window and some 3.5. Adopted houseruled d20 Modern as my system of choice.
• Age 36-present: Gradually made my peace with some of the D&D elements, and otherwise worked on a bunch of houserules to make it more what I wanted. 4e comes out. I completely ignore it and continue houseruling 3.5. Incorporating some Trailblazer, Pathfinder and E6 stuff gets me almost where I want to. Still working on a few details, but am mostly settled. Through all this hunt for the "Holy Grail" system, I continue to play mostly 3.5 D&D, though, including some Paizo adventure paths like Age of Worms and Rise of the Runelords.
• The future: No foreseeable change in those plans, although I might dabble a bit more with Savage Worlds and/or FATE in place of d20. Am still uncomfortable with a bunch of d20isms, especially the difficulty in running such a tactical game when I don't really want to mess with battlemaps or minis.

 

[Gilladian]

Age 11 - OD&D, followed quickly by basic
13 - 1st edition, mixed with a lot of other games over the next 3 years, including gamma world, TFT (I helped playtest the earliest version of what became TFT), and traveler.
16-18 - mostly DnD
19-20's - some homebrew games, Gurps, supers, etc...
but by my mid 20's all 2e all the way. Then 3e.

When 4e came along, I just never jumped over....nor did the pathfinder bug bite me.