Your gaming experience...

[chaochou]

1. Been playing since 1980/1. First game I played was AD&D but IIRC the first game I bought was Car Wars.

2. A lot, but major long-running games have been Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon and Vampire. More recent faves have included Dogs in the Vineyard, Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel.

3. Among my friends it has always been the case that most people GM and nearly everyone has 'their' game or setting or genre. For example, I always GMed anything set in Glorantha (RQ or HeroQuest). Someone else would do Twighlight 2000 and Cyberpunk, another person for Vampire, another for Pendragon or Ars Magica and so on.

Changing games, genres, rulesets and GMs has always felt natural. I like playing with new rulesets. Not necessarily 'the latest game', just something different.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

1. How long have you been playing RPGs?

Since 1980-something. I could do the math, but I'd have to guess what grade I was in at the time, and I can't remember which one that was. I was on a Boy Scouts trip at the time, and played, I think, some basic D&D. (I had a human fighter with a handaxe and a potion of cure light wounds.) We also played Starfleet Battles. (I picked a Constitution-class starship.)

2. What systems, editions, and different campaigns did you play in?

I've played long-running campaigns in all of the following systems:

Basic D&D (Rules Cyclopedia FTW!)
2E AD&D
3.XE D&D
Pathfinder
d6 Star Wars
d20 Star Wars Revised
MERPS
Rolemaster
Ars Magica
Some version of Warhammer

I've run games in 3.X D&D; actually, that's the only system I've DMed in, now that I think of it.

There's some others that I've played in as one-offs, but I don't remember all their names at the moment. Shadowrun is one such; I really wish I'd gotten to play a real Shadowrun game.

3. What made you switch from one to another?

Mostly, it was whatever was being run at the time. At Boy Scout camp, I played Basic because that's what the guy who was running things brought. In high school, I played at a friend's house (with his dad, brother, and various others) and they played 2E and Ars Magica, with sprinkles of d6 Star Wars [C3PO]from time to time[/C3PO].

I joined my current group while they were on a Rolemaster / MERPS kick, which translated into a couple different 3.XE games, a d20 SW Revised game, and we're now playing PF.

I've run a couple games for this group - one a short campaign / adventure focusing on the exploits of a scout squad of Warforged (and their human [strike]political officer[/strike] squad leader) in the last days of Eberron's Great War and a murder mystery / investigation adventure on the civilized frontiers of the Forgotten Realms.

I look forward to running a Saga Edition SW game for the group in the not too terribly distant future.

 

[Fifth Element]

1. Since 1988, though not continuously. There were a couple of years in university where I didn't play much, and a couple of years just after university.

2. Almost only D&D. Played BECMI first, then AD&D, then 2nd edition, then 3rd, then 4th. Smatterings of Warhammer FRP and Ars Magica and Shadowrun and a few others at various times, but by far D&D is the most common.

3. Switched between editions as new ones arrived, were tried and liked. But no change has been one way. Still play 3E fairly regularly and AD&D every once in awhile.

 

[Zeverian]

1. Since 1981 or 1982

2. All versions of D&D, Rifts, Rolemaster, Traveller, oWoD tabletop, oWoD LARP (custom MET variant), Marvel Supers, GURPS, Torg, Gamma World, CoC, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, TMNT, Toon, Paranoia, Robotech, WFRP, Abberant, and Space:1889.

3. Why switch? Its only in the past 3-4 years that I haven't been playing two or more games at once. Even when I was on the Storyteller council for one of the largest WoD LARPs in the southeast I ran a game of 3E and played in other games; but now I'm old. To actually answer your question: We would switch when we burnt out a DM/GM and the guy in the batting circle wanted to run something else. This was true of every gaming group I've played with except ones playing Rolemaster I've only met 2 people willing to run it and it was all they ran.

Peace

Zev

 

[Gilladian]

1. How long have you been playing RPGs?

2. What systems, editions, and different campaigns did you play in?

3. What made you switch from one to another?

1. Since 1976, best I can remember.
2. Every edition of D&D, lots of Gamma World, Traveler, Boot Hill, Fantasy Trip, Gurps, and a host of other games thrown in. Most of these were in the years between about 1977 and 1980, when we played a LOT at the game shop, and no campaign lasted more than 4-5 sessions, as I recall.

3. Most campaigns back then ended because they were really drawn-out one-shots. We'd start on Friday night, and finish on Sunday afternoon, or play for six-eight weeks on one afternoon, and then burn out. In later years, I played in several campaigns of Fantasy Trip that lasted months, and some mutated Gurps that lasted a couple years, and many 2nd and 3rd edition D&D games that lasted months or years. Mostly they broke up when too many people had to move/graduated. Currently, my two game groups have each been together for about 3 years, playing essentially the same campaigns. (One IS the same, the other is on the 3rd campaign).

 

[drothgery]

1. How long have you been playing RPGs?

About 17 years now; I started playing my freshman year in college with D&D 2e in 1994.

2. What systems, editions, and different campaigns did you play in?

I've played 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 4e, d20 Modern, and a funky hybrid retro-clone extensively in-person. DM'd a short SWSE game.

I've run PBP games in d20 Wheel of Time, 3.5, SWSE, and Mutants and Masterminds 2e. I've played in 3.5, Star Wars d20 Revised, SWSE, M&M 2e, and 4e PBPs.

And there are some other things I've played in one shots or for a few weeks (Earthdawn, a Mage LARP, GURPS, Gama World 4e most recently).

3. What made you switch from one to another?

Switched to 3e because I'd been away from the game for two years, moved, was looking for a new group, and liked the then-new 3e rules better than 2e so I looked for a 3e game when I was trying to find a group. We kind of subtlely shifted into 3.5 after it came out, first using some 3.5 books with 3e, then eventually just going to 3.5. We dropped a d20 Modern game in there just as a changeup, really.

By the time 4e came out, we were late in the only game I've ever played that made it all the way from 1st to 20th level (interrupted by a few side treks, including a Star Wars game I ran). The guys who regularly DM were having some issues with running high-level 3.5. So we gave 4e a try, and while I really like 4e one of the other players really didn't, but we didn't really want to go back to 3.5 or something very similar (ala Pathfinder) either, so right now we're mostly playing a weird retro-clone that I don't like very much. But mostly I play what the guys who normally DM want to run.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Expanding on my #3: High School was the first time I was really exposed to other RPGs. Friends wanted to run things that weren't D&D.

 

[Rugsrat]

1. How long have you been playing RPGs?

2. What systems, editions, and different campaigns did you play in?

3. What made you switch from one to another?

1. Since 2008. Though I do wish I had started sooner.

2. Started with the Marvel Universe RPG, and that campaign actually hasn't ended yet, despite us having 3 more campaigns in the same universe start and end around it. That one's been incredibly start/stop...

Branched into 4e D&D. Then new World of Darkness. Then DC Adventures/Mutants and Masterminds 3e. And now I'm trying to start a Pathfinder game.

3. Well, from Marvel Universe to Mutants and Masterminds, the answer is because M&M is VERY good, while MURPG is... not... I lost track of the ways we'd broken the game with stupid combos. But that's much harder to achieve in M&M, since there's actual balancing of mechanics.

Most of the others were just in regards to the stories we wanted to tell. We wanted a sword and sorcery game, so we went to D&D 4e. We wanted a werewolves and Vampires, so we went to World of Darkness.

Much of my introduction to gaming can be directly blamed on my friend Mike, who is always reading new systems and getting ideas.. if only he'd read them all the way through...

Most of our campaign now are DC Adventures, though there is a strong emphasis on World of Darkness (mostly for quick-to-run Zombie games) and I run D&D 4e, and trying for Pathfinder.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

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1
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About 23 years.

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About 30 campaigns, using 19 different systems.

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3
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Because with every game I play, I feel more strongly that different game systems are useful (or even plausibly USABLE) for different things, and I have eclectic tastes.

Because at various times I've been in multiple simultaneous campaigns.

Because I have no desire to play two simultaneous games of the same type, and very little to play two consecutive games of the same type.

Because I dislike campaigns that run for multiple years - the longest I've been a part of one was about a year and a half and I felt strongly it had outstripped the usefulness of the system and the interest justified by the premise.

Because I generally find tabletop RPGs to be a field where substantive, iterative improvement is made over the years. New "technology" is added with most major releases that make them better than major releases even five years before them.

 

[Ariosto]

1. Since 1976
2. Probably -- I'm guessing -- about half of all published commercially (stand-alone, not in magazines) 1975-1984, maybe about a third of those published 1985-89 (although from 1987 I at least looked through almost all the major releases). Just a drop in the ocean published 1992-on.
3. A combination of factors, including these:

(A) The hobby was new to everyone, and of course new to me. People were inventing new flavors, and it was fun to taste them.

(B) What we played was Tom's Nine Worlds Game or Jane's La Rochelle Game. The Game Master of a campaign or scenario set up how it worked, using whatever resources he or she chose, including his or her own imagination. That is how rules sets such as D&D, T&T, EPT, C&S, etc., came into being in the first place!

(C) I and many of my friends were young enough (and a few old enough) to have a lot of time and energy available for entertainment. Of money we had not such an excess, and RPGs delivered a lot of "bang for buck".

(D) We enjoyed playing a wide variety of other games. Why should we suddenly limit ourselves to just one when it came to RPGs?