How long have you been playing Dungeons and Dragons?

A year, perhaps. But then they extended the level cap to 60, and turned progression into a horrible grind. So I stopped playing.

I don’t play anymore, but I played for about two years circa 1983. I was the Dungeon Master because I had the books.

I loved it. Fed right into my ability to tell stories, be organized, draw maps, and be a control freak.

I’ve been playing since 1979.

And I still play, although I play more D20 modern than anything else. We have played one or two games with edition 5.

I never much liked Dungeons & Dragons, having started in 1980 with a different game of the same fundamental type (a fantasy/medieval roleplaying game) that I much prefer named The Fantasy Trip, and then from 1986 on with it’s pseudo-successor GURPS (the Generic Universal Roleplaying System). They’re the same sorts of games, but with different style and logic to them. I’ve played as both player and Game Master (or Dungeon Master in D&D) since 1980, and ran a computerized online role-playing company about 1989–1991, so yes, I’m a pro, though not really at D&D itself, which I still don’t like much.

With decades of play, there is no one most memorable game experience, I don’t think, and some of the most hilarious and interesting moment either involve a lot of context and back story, or you had to be there, or at least be a gamer, to get why they were great.

Playing as a game master in a game where I create and run an entire fictional world is one my favorite and most interesting things I’ve done. It presents many challenges and learning opportunities, and exercises in self-control and balance and cause and effect and creativity and it (along with my interest in games in general) greatly added to my interest in many varied subjects as well.

One game I’m fond of, which went on for years with many great points, included a great unplanned side-adventure where my character snuck into a duke’s castle in response to a series events where the duke had had a tree cut down that had a magic spirit living in it, and as things turned out, I ended up catching him alone and making him drink a potion which since he didn’t know what it was ended up turning him into a rabbit (he was a coward at heart, and since he also didn’t have much willpower, it became a permanent effect), which I then smuggled out of the castle. This left the duchy without a duke, and a child in a distant kingdom got a new confused pet.

Played once or twice as a kid, thought it was boring, never played again.

I’ll add that it’s less about the gaming system and more about the story. I’ve played many different games (1.0, 2.0, 3.5, 5.0, d20 modern, d20 past, C’thulu, Runequest, GURPS) and the common thread is that if you have a good DM with a good story, then the game is good despite the system.

Every gaming system has its flaws, and gaming is always a balance between realism and playability, and a good game master can walk that tightrope. And if you’re with good friends, then it’s all okay.

I don’t do computer games. I hate them. I don’t even play games on my iphone except for Words with Friends.

I got the Basic D&D set as a gift when I was 12, shortly before AD&D came out. I mostly quit playing RPGs when I got to college and decided that the Quest that really interested me was losing my virginity.*

I actually played strategy games and other RPGs more than D&D, especially the ones from Chaosium (RQ, CofC, et al.) and Traveller.

* In retrospect, I’m not sure going to keg parties instead of game sessions actually helped all that much. My odds of getting somewhere with the rare nerdy girl who wandered into a game club meeting were probably no worse than my odds of getting somewhere with any of the numerous big-haired bimbos, collectively, at the keg parties. (I guess sometimes I still think like a gamer after all . . . )

I started playing regular D&D when I was 14—culled many ideas from AD&D sourcebooks but had too much ADHD to focus on AD&D rules.

When I was in my mid twenties I started playing Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu games, and eventually Kult. I dabbled in various Wild Wolf games— I remember dabbling with Shadowrun as well, but kept the center of my gaming universe the Call of Cthulhu—occasionally adapting Dungeons and Dragons’ Ravenloft series and Kult.

The premise was that the universe and the world around us is much darker than the way we see it. Our brains are not equipped to cope with reality as it is, so we exist in some prison or delusion that things are better than we are, But something very dark exists just beyond the threshold. Ideas were weird rather than evil—like a curiously bizarre dream.

Kult had an excellent RPG that dealt with a deck of Tarot cards called the Taroticium that controlled reality and alternate worlds. All my characters that survived ended up going insane because they couldn’t cope with seeing reality.

@Yellowdog I love Call of Chulhu. It’s great if done right. The problem with the system is the combat, which totally sucks. So the few times we play it we’ll use a hybridized version of DnD and CoC.