Before I played D&D, I had sort of heard of it. I knew it was a game, at the time I assumed a computer game, and I new it was "nerdy" and had something to do with medieval fantasy.
I myself was pretty into nerdy things and fantasy. I played a lot of Dragon Warrior and owned what I would come to learn was a D&D knock off board game called Dark World. I was primed and ready when some fellow nerds in school introduced me to D&D.
I joined a campaign in progress when another played moved on. Erdrick the Druid joined, Bull the Dwarf, and a "Quarterling" Thief (who's name escapes me at the moment) to save Thunder Rift from an invasion by Drow. The game was a weird mix of basic D&D and 2nd Edition as we read and acquired more book. I was hooked, and it wasn't long until I had read and committed the core rules to memory.
My mom was worried about the rumors she heard about D&D, this was the early 90's and the Satanic Panic stories were relatively recent. After the first time we played at my house and she saw the silliness of it all, she stopped worrying.
The campaign ended a few months later in victory over Lolth. We spent the next few months planning, but never getting around to playing, our next game. Real world responsibilities prevented us from getting everyone around the table at a time, so instead, we wrote, and planned and discussed more and more of what our "Dragonlords" campaign would be like.
Eventually we realized that out planning and talking had pretty much covered the ground we wanted to, and that acutely playing through it would kinda be boring in comparison. We ended up playing a few small games, inviting others, and playing in different groups in the meantime. Then, I got a car, and that opened things back up and we started a long running 2e campaign that took us through graduation, and a summer break or two from college.
College itself saw a few short 2e games, before on took off, and a sequel game when 3e came out. The switch to 3e was interesting, we were very reluctant at first to some of the things we heard (no racial limits, open multi classing, etc.) I think we changed our tune just because it was nice to have clean new edition of set rules. Not that we didn't try to shoehorn 3e ideas into 2e instead at first. 3e games big an small carried me through the rest of college.
After college 3.5 and a lack of time pushed us back to rules light Basic, and our own Home Brew retroclone (not that the term was known yet). We would spend the next few years hopping between 3e, our HomeBrew, and Arcana Unearth/Evolved.
Then nothing for like 6 years (4e came and went in this period, so while I own the books, I never played). I did re-write my homebrew a few times based on things I learned following OSR blogs over that time (still am).
The past few year has seen my settle down in an area and find players again. We stared with my homebrew since I found it an easier jumping off place for new players. Then back to a 2e game. We were about to move to a 3e game, but a few folks moved away or had other life changes.
Mixed in there are short games of Mutants and Masterminds, Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars, etc.
Now I am back to my retroclone on Skype.
Still want to get that Ptolus game going though.....
