Your game trajectory

[Verdande]

For me:

~1998: Found the "E" of BECMI in a box of my father's belongings, began playing with my brother and father.
~1999: Got a AD&D starter set thing for christmas (19th printing, by the site)
~2004: Bought 3rd edition D&D, played it with brother & friends (constantly)
~2005: Bought Mage: The Awakening (or whatever it was called) and Palladium. Played Mage a little. It's a good game. Played Palladium once, realized it was absolutely awful in play.
~2006: Moved away, played nothing for a while.
~2008/2009: Discovered retroclones, especially Labyrinth Lord, played them with my brother, friends
~2010: Bought 4e, played it twice, went back to Labyrinth Lord, posted something about "Game Projectiles" or some such on some obscure forum

 

[Haltherrion]

I've always gone with the current system. I don't convert a campaign mid-course but when one ends, I roll to the next one. I have generally found the merits of the new system out weight sticking with the old one. That even applies for me with 4E which initially I despised but have come to appreciate.

This applies for D&D which I have played since 8th grade in 1978 (and one could map the normal school and college progression to the system available at the time). For non-D&D systems, I played Traveller in high school and early college. Post college, my friends and I have dabbled with other systems (like deadlands) or homegrown, low rule systems but these have just been side shows that don't last years like our D&D campaigns.

 

[karlindel]

6-18 - Choose Your Own Adventure Books, Lone Wolf Books (including Grey Star), Tunnels & Trolls Solo Adventures, and the like

18-19 - Introduction to AD&D, played in Forgotten Realms, Homebrew, and Birthright campaigns, ran a Shadowrun campaign, played Vampire: The Masquerage

20-24 - Played and Ran 3rd Edition D&D, Deadlands, Champions/HERO System, Mage: The Ascension, and a variety of other systems

24-28 - Heavy involvement in Living Greyhawk (3rd Edition D&D), ran several 3rd Edition D&D home campaigns in homebrew worlds, often played one shots of whatever system people were interested in running

29-30 (current) - Play and run a lot of 4th Edition D&D (including starting a campaign going from lvl 1-30), also pick up Paizo's Pathfinder supplements and adventures for ideas, and maintain a collection of other games that I run as one shots and will likely run as mini-campaigns or full campaigns when my current 4e campaign is over.

 

[coyote6]

Let's see, I think I was 8 or so the first time I played D&D -- I have no idea what edition it was, actually, since it was maybe an hour or two. My poor low hp (3? 4?) fighter got his arm broke by a mean guard trying to cross a bridge to get to the City-State of the Invincible Overlord.

After that, I badgered my mom into getting me the AD&D books (in some weird order), then the D&D Basic set. Then I played with neighbors & cousins for several years. We branched off into our own games -- a "LARP" (aka kids with whiffle bats engaging in fake sword fights, complete with rock-paper-scissor conflict resolutions for things where the bat-duels wouldn't work, or when the Responsible Adults had determined the horseplay was out of hand); a game a neighbor made that was basically "roll a d6; 4-6 you did it"; and a game where we rolled percentile dice and whoever was GM determined whether you rolled low enough. At the same time, we still played D&D.

Then we found a game club at the local library, and joined it. There, it was AD&D, plus Traveller, Gamma World, Champions, a little Gangbusters, some Star Frontiers, Marvel Super-Heroes, Villains & Vigilantes, and other games (some of those at the library, some at home).

I got convinced to run Dragonlance (outside of the library), which we got through the first adventure before dropping it (the pregens include non-multiclassed elves, dwarves, and halflings kender, and none of 'em using weapon specialization -- WTH?).

Sometime after that, I started a Champions game for my buddies.

By '87 or so, I was done with (A)D&D. We played BattleTech, some Mechwarrior, Twilight: 2000, Stormbringer, lots of Champions, Shadowrun 1e, and other games.

Sometime in '89 or '90, a couple-few players left for college, my cousin essentially dropped out of gaming, and there were just me and my buddy. We found out about a local mini-con put on by a game shop in Carmel, went there, and met some new-to-us gamers. We teamed up with them, and played Champions, a home-brew (based loosely on CoC/BRP/RuneQuest), T2K, Vampire, Werewolf, and eventually discovered GURPS when I went looking for a grittier system to try to run an Elementals-flavored supers game. GURPS 3e + Supers 1e; and then I saw Special Ops, then Cyberpunk came out, and then it was mostly GURPS for the rest of the '90s (with occasional trips to the World of Darkness and SR). I signed up with SJGames' BBS in the mid-'90s just to get involved with GURPS playtesting.

Eventually, I was buying AD&D setting stuff to use for GURPS, and I heard about D&D 3e's announcement. I started buying Dragon to see the previews, found this Eric Noah guy's website, and drug the group into 3e (those $20 core books were awesome).

Since then, we've played GURPS, D&D 3e, M&M, a little Savage Worlds, more Shadowrun, Exalted, a tiny bit of HERO/Champions, and a bunch of other games, besides.

And now I have to move all those damned books to a new house.

 

[john112364]

From 1978 where I started with AD&D (1e), I have progressed to each new edition as it came out. (Just as marcq said I never switched in midcampaign. For quite some time I was playing 2e with one DM and 3e with another while the 2e game ran its course.) Along the way I've played lot of champions/hero (2e, 3e and a little 4e), gurps and a lot of short term games (Traveller, Rifts, various White Wolf game, Gamma world, Alternity and many other not so memorable games.)

Wow! I used to have lots of free time.

 

[MortonStromgal]

Middle School - Lone Wolf Books
High School - Traveller, Shadowrun, Dark Conspiracy, MERPS, GURPS
College - Shadowrun, SLA Industries, Vampire, D&D, Deadlands, LOTR, GURPS
20s - Shadowrun, D&D, Vampire, LOTR, Indie Games
Now - Shadowrun, Vampire, Mage, Indie Games

Played short campaigns of other things to but things like Call of Cthulhu or Star Wars only lasted 10 sessions or less.

 

[C_M2008]

1994-1996: Basic - not sure which -it was pretty tattered sadly no longer in my possession.

1996-2002 : 2e AD&D

2002-2002: 3e (for maybe 3 months, didn't like at all)

2002-2007:Hiatus (planned some games and roled some characters but no playing)

2007-2008: reluctantly ran a 3e game, very heavily houseruled for my enjoyment

2008-2010: 4e - abandoned due to overlong combat and too many powers

2010 to present: Warhammer FRP 3e - Best of the lot thus far - does almost everything I want.

 

[Agamon]

1982: Next door neighbor gets Holmes Basic for his birthday. We kinda, sorta play, but the parts I remember are pretty hilarious...

1984-1990: (Re)Introduced to the game. Played both B/E and AD&D off and on.

1991-2000: Played mostly 2e AD&D, with a bunch of one offs with other games (Amber, Warhammer Fantasy RP, Star Wars (WEG), Marvel Super Heroes, 7th Sea, Dangerous Journeys, Alternity, ElfQuest)

2001-2006: Played mostly 3.x with some Mutants & Masterminds. Not a whole lot else.

2007-present: Played 4e, then HackMaster Basic, now starting up a Pathfinder game.

 

[Sammael]

1991 - 1995: Read articles about PnP which intrigued me; I had noone to play with, though

1995: Played Stonekeep, my first CRPG; got hooked on CRPGs

1997: Received AD&D 2nd edition Dungeon Master's Guide for Christmas

1998: Started playing RIFTS at college, followed by AD&D (1st edition, 2nd edition, Skills & Powers), Vampire: the Masquerade

1999-2000: Developed extensive house rules for AD&D based on previews and leaked info that appeared on a certain web site...

2000-2002: Ran several 3E games, but no long-term campaigns

2003-2009: Ran my longest campaign ever, set in the Forgotten Realms. Took PCs from level 1 to level 20; converted to 3.5 half-way through.

2001-2010: Also played (and, in some cases, ran) Warhammer FRPG (2nd edition), d20 Modern, Vampire: The Masquerade, New World of Darkness, Werewolf: the Forsaken, D&D 4E, and numerous one-off and short-term 3.x games

2004+: Started buying and collecting D&D miniatures (current collection count ~2500)

2004+: Started buying 3rd party d20 books

2009+: Started work on my own fantasy d20 revision, currently under development with two ongoing playtest campaigns (and one on hold)

2009+: Started playing board games (Battlestar Galactica, Arkham Horror, Descent, etc)

2010+: Started playing Mordheim, first unpainted minis are due to arrive any day now