How many years have you been playing RPGs (including GMing)?

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How many years have you been playing RPGs (including GMing)?

  • <5 years

    Votes: 3 1.8%

  • 5-10 years

    Votes: 5 3.0%

  • 11-15 years

    Votes: 3 1.8%

  • 16-20 years

    Votes: 3 1.8%

  • 21-25 years

    Votes: 4 2.4%

  • 26-30 years

    Votes: 4 2.4%

  • 31-35 years

    Votes: 23 14.0%

  • 36-40 years

    Votes: 41 25.0%

  • 41-45 years

    Votes: 54 32.9%

  • >45 years

    Votes: 24 14.6%
  • Total voters
    164
Silverlion said:
How much in total have you spent on the hobby?
Click to expand...
Less than a house*, more than a Rolls Royce.

My first rpg related purchase, without really knowing anything about rpgs:
Screenshot_20240105_115457_Chrome.jpg
Reverse engineering those stat blocks without context was fun.

My first real gaming session (as a player) was in 1987.

* I hope.
 
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Started with Mentzer Red Box D&D (still on my shelf) in 1983... followed by Traveller Starter Set (also still on my shelf) and then RuneQuest 2.

I first learned about D&D from the ads that used to be in the back of various Marvel Comics:

1704462081990.png
 
EmperorNorton said:
I started in 1989-90 when I was like 5 or 6 with 2e AD&D. so right at the top end of 31-35 range.

Y'all are just old though :tongue:.
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Yup, that made me feel old. lol Lets see that same time period I doing border patrol in West Germany along the West/East German & Czech borders and the wall between the two was coming down. Crazy times.

I was running my GURPS 2e/3e Thieves' World based campaign and when I needed a break from being the forever GM we were playing BattleTech, Star Fleet Battles etc. Was married to my first wife who also was in the military and we were discussing children, which did happen in 1992.

I think I'll just go sit in the corner with a hefe weisse and mutter about damn kids while shaking my fist at the sky.
 
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My first RPG was T&T neoclone my brother ran for me in 1976. I was in grade 3.

I had been playing wargames, badly, for a few years before that. Around the same time, we played Little Wars type games with our arrays of toy soldiers. There was dice, and we rolled "to hit" and rolled "to kill".

48 years. Off and on.
 
Ok, I think we need a "Winner". I know from the comments, its not me. I've been playing RPG's since 1978, so roughly 46 years. I've seen a couple references to 1976. Anyone prior to that? Who's the winner? :grin:
 
My first gaming was really 1984-1985. What a glorious time for me. I really couldn’t believe going into the hobby store and seeing Marvel and DC turned into roleplaying games. One of my favorite activities as a young kid was watching the Superfriends on Saturday mornings, drawing the characters on construction paper, cutting them out, and then doing my own scenes like 2D dioramas. These RPGs were like the next step after that. I had to get my hands on them.
 
I started in 1981 with the Moldvay red box that included B2. I still have the original dice, though my mother eventually got rid of my D&D set (including my Ad&D hardcovers) because of the satanic panic bullshit.

I’ve been playing regularly ever since, at least monthly, but often weekly during all those years. Had to keep it on the down-low while I lived with my mother, of course (the one lesson she taught me was that it was better to lie to her than try to reason with her).

Once I was old enough that I could choose to live with my dad, I gamed pretty much non-stop. Not always D&D by a long ways - I’ve run a huge number of different games over the decades.

I don’t really keep track of how much I spend each year, though it would be pretty easy. I use the earnings from my products on DriveThru to pay for any PDFs I buy, and since I have less than zero interest in buying anything in print, it works out perfectly.
 
Godfather Punk said:
Less than a house*, more than a Rolls Royce.

My first rpg related purchase, without really knowing anything about rpgs:
1704548499640.jpeg
Reverse engineering those stat blocks without context was fun.

My first real gaming session (as a player) was in 1987.

* I hope.
Click to expand...
So, doing some calculations, I was wrong by about a year. In early 1984 I already bought (and read, and imagined writing scenario's for) this.
I never played it, but decades later adapted the included starter scenario to 'Alternity - Dark Matter'.

1704548533243.png

and this

1704548573168.png

I had come across Imagine Magazine before but reading the cover I thought "How lame is this D&D? Who would want to play a bookkeeper?"
No, English was not my first language...

1704548692262.png

The first game I actually played (and 2 weeks later GM'ed) was this, of course...
Made my own campaign world and stand-up mini's for all the NPC's.

1704548912898.png

Still, that keeps me in the 36-40 range.
 

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I'm old and have played enough Traveller characters seemed ancient to me when I started and now seem young to me.

I started in 6th grade in the early 80s when my math teacher invited me to an after school game she organized. One of the other kids was running Castle Amber for all of us. And while I loved D&D then I quickly found Traveller and Gamma World. I still play with one of those friends from that game (online since we are two time zones apart) to this day.

My wife is a gamer of nearly as many years as well, though we didn't cross paths until we were in our early 20s. We have been married and gaming together for over 30 years now.
 
It’s funny when I think back to that age, I was a huge SF fan and didn’t really care about fantasy that much. So I wonder what would have happened if the local Mr. Hobby had carried Traveller as well as D&D.

When I was banned from “imperilling my soul” by playing D&D, the only other two games I could find were James Bond and Top Secret. I bought the James Bond game and enjoyed it quite a bit, but it was difficult to find other kids who wanted to play espionage games.

So I mostly stuck with D&D and didn’t even hear about Traveller until I was 17.

But I bet I would have been able to find plenty of other kids who were interested in SF, even if it wasn’t Star Wars.
 
Andrew J. Luther said:
It’s funny when I think back to that age, I was a huge SF fan and didn’t really care about fantasy that much. So I wonder what would have happened if the local Mr. Hobby had carried Traveller as well as D&D.

(...)

But I bet I would have been able to find plenty of other kids who were interested in SF, even if it wasn't Star Wars.
Click to expand...


Well, I keep saying that the dominance of D&D isn't good for the hobby...:thumbsup:

Brander said:
I'm old and have played enough Traveller characters seemed ancient to me when I started and now seem young to me.
Click to expand...
It's funny when you realize that the "middle-aged party of specialists popular in Traveller" now consists of people younger than you, isn't it:grin:?
 
Godfather Punk said:
So, doing some calculations, I was wrong by about a year. In early 1984 I already bought (and read, and imagined writing scenario's for) this.
I never played it, but decades later adapted the included starter scenario to 'Alternity - Dark Matter'.

View attachment 74355

and this

View attachment 74356

I had come across Imagine Magazine before but reading the cover I thought "How lame is this D&D? Who would want to play a bookkeeper?"
No, English was not my first language...

View attachment 74357

The first game I actually played (and 2 weeks later GM'ed) was this, of course...
Made my own campaign world and stand-up mini's for all the NPC's.

View attachment 74359

Still, that keeps me in the 36-40 range.
Click to expand...
Don't worry about. It was a long fucking time ago regardless! Hell I kept referring to my experiences back in 1978 when I started with the Frankenstein's monster of the small D&D books, Holmes Box and the AD&D 1st edition Player's Handbook and 1st edition AD&D Monster Monster Manual as the Moldavy box instead of Holmes Box. When I honestly never owned or really looked at the Holmes Box nor the later 83' etc Basic D&D books and box sets.

Too many years, too many games, too many wives, err ignore that. Too many places one lives and jobs etc. Easy to get the facts and memories wrong.
 
1980
466.jpg
 
OldGeezer (who no longer seems to be active here, but was for a while) was one of the first dozen or so players in Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign in the spring of 1973. Then that fall he moved to the Twin Cities for college where he joined Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor group and was also one of the first players in MAR Barker’s Tekumel campaign.
 
It is pretty remarkable that fully 90% of the poll respondents have been playing more than 25 years, which is to say since before the turn of the century and before the release of D&D 3rd edition.

No wonder Wizards of the Coast doesn’t seem to care about our opinions.
 
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