Gamer geek since 1983 here–started in college, playing a homebrew game our GM invented (and which still stands as one of the best year-long roleplaying experiences of my life). Moved on to Runequest 2 (the Chaosium version, which I’d still like to get a game of going again sometime) and various other things the gaming club was trying out including Champions, AD&D, and Marvel Super Heroes.
These days I play a few times a month, mostly Shadowrun. I’ve played SR since the SR1 days back in the late '80s, and these days I’ve been picking up a few freelance gigs writing material for the various SR sourcebooks (which is a lot of fun but makes it a little tough to be surprised by what’s coming when I know about it months in advance!) Other than that, I’m playing in a twice-a-month Call of Cthulhu game which is just starting to get really cool as the insanity and Things Man Was Not Meant To Know are starting to appear.
Played: D&D 1st-3rd edition, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Twilight 2000, Fantasy Hero, Champions 3rd-4th ed., Rifts, GURPS, Dragonquest.
Run: D&D 1st-3rd, Fantasy Hero, Champions 3rd-4th, DragonQuest, DQ/FH crossover, DQ/D&D crossover (just couldn’t get DragonQuest to work right…).
Back in California, I was in gaming groups with Steve Perrin and ran a playtest of a D&D module for him, and I also gamed with a bunch of the people at Hero Games and was in on various playtesting stuff.
I’ve played a bunch of the World of Darkness games, D&D, Cyberpunk; maybe some other one-off things, but that’s been the bulk of it.
When we lived in western PA, my husband and I had a regular gaming group, but we’ve been without one for nearly two years now. When we want to game, we actually have to drive about three hours. grrr
I think we’d both love a local gaming group, but don’t have any high hopes for the sort of folks we’d fall in with (e.g. we don’t do power gamers, we are frightened by the people who actually think they’re vampires, etc.).
I am very lucky to have a great group of people who I have been gaming with for about seven years now (with some additions and subtractions, as you might guess.) We’re currently playing Amber (but not really ADRPG; we don’t, uh, actually use an, er, system . . .) We’ve taken little breaks now and then to play other systems, but we’re primarily an Amber group. We play once a week for about five hours.
Also, I’m about to start a once-monthly WWII-era Mutants & Masterminds game.
Mea maxima culpa. I ended up writing my modules until the eleventh hour, then driving the six + hours to get there starting Thursday at 11 PM. Then the people I was supposed to share a hotel room with didn’t show, so I ended up crashing and then driving home at 11 PM on Saturday. Yay. I literally got 8 hours of sleep out of 61 total hours to / from / at the convention. My mind was fried gouda, and thus I didn’t show up for a couple of meetings I was supposed to.
I’ve played in a few games. My longest running one was Champions, though. I’d still be doing it if all my players and the GM hadn’t flown to the four corners of the Earth. Getting new players for Champions is a bit tricky. They tend to run away when you ask them how good they are at fractions and character build optimization.
Had the lunchtime ‘talk’ about the PBEM game, and it went amazingly well. We both realized we weren’t crazy about the game as it stood right now, and started brainstorming…
And the brainstorming hasn’t stopped yet.
We’re fast-forwarding the 7th sea world almost 200 years to make it a western game. My player is giving me tons of ideas about where the family lines of various PCs and NPCs are going, as well as giving me some great written fiction for some of the ‘new’ characters and villians she sees, and I’m a fountain of ideas right now as to how the world has grown in two centuries. Wow. I’m… In a much better mood right now!
Her husband has even said that once we get the rules hammered out a bit, he’d want to run in that world as a regular table-top game! Yay! Something more for me to -play- in!
Okay, so I’m out west right now, but hubby is in DC/Baltimore. We are in the process of moving out there (a thread I will be inventing at a later time). I told him about this thread and, well, he wants to play too.
So I see a person from DC, a person from Baltimore, and a person from West Virginia. That with my husband is four…a nice group size in my mind. How can he/I contact you all?
He plays D&D 3.0/3.5 & Shadowrun for sure. I am also sure he’d be willing to try anything once. A D&D 2.0 game would be okay with him too, I think.
Finally, as I hate being a gaming widow, I may also join in. (I spent a lot of years watching other people have fun with this stuff). I have other hobbies, so maybe not.
I’ve been playing since 1984, when I was 10 years old. The core group of players - my two best friends and I - coalesced in 1988, and we’ve been playing ever since. Considering the fact that in this time we’ve gone to seperate highschools, served 3 years in the army, got married and have spent several years abroad, the fact that we still play about once a week is pretty amazing - especially when we don’t all live in the same city.
We played D&D (no A) for years, while adding more and more 1st and 2nd ed. AD&D into the mix, until we finally switched over in 1996 - we’re currently playing 3.5. Because we own everything ever published by TSR we’ve tested virtually every game world and scenario. Besides that we’ve dabbled with GURPS, and I’m working on a hybrid game combining the D20 character system with the GURPS combat system - I’ll tell you how it turns out when it’s done.
Of my two fellow players, my friend AG is almost always the DM. He’s really quite amazing: imaginative, patient and resourceful. He rules our game with an iron fist, which is a good quality in a DM - their word should be law. He also has bouts of homocidal insanity, which keeps us on our toes. I myself DM occasionally, but I’m not very good at it, having a tendency to overscript.
Ironically, the third member of our little band, the only one who’s never DMed for us, actually plays D&D for a living. He works 30 hours a week running groups of junior high kids as an after school activity for good money. He recently worked up the courage to run a game for us, so we’re currently putting together characters for D20 Star Wars (he says he’s tired of all that fantasy crap with the kids). We’re looking forward to it.
Many folks have an email address in their SDMB profile - that’s probably the best option, if it’s available. I believe the profiles, when viewed, offer an option to send an email to a person, even if the address isn’t visible, depending on how they’ve set their preferences.
Unfortunately, though, DC’s a bit far from my part of WV, if I recall correctly…
I guess I’m an old hand at RPGs, having gotten in at the tender age of 11 or so with the original 3 book D&D. I’ve played fairly regularly since then; over 25 years. I didn’t feel like keeping up with the ever changing AD&D rules, so for the past 10 years I’ve been playing GURPS almost exclusively (cyberpunk, fantasy, historical middle ages, pulp era, Tekumel, modern horror) with the same crew of folks. We usually have about a half dozen of us get together about once a month for a Saturday evening of gaming. I also get together on line about twice a month to play some old school AD&D using OpenRPG, which I recommend as a nice utility for any online gaming you want to do. It’s here
I just got done with an epic D&D 3.5 campaign and we’re about to start a Mage game. I used to play BattleTech/Mechwarrior but since I started writing for them, I’ve had less time to do that. I’m not looking forward to losing my current group in a few years when I move to somewhere warmer.
Well, I don’t think that you should close yourself off like that. I’m going to be 31 this month, and my group is all younger than I am. The oldest person I’ve gamed with was in her early 60s, the youngest (in a serious group) was 16. Oddly enough, they had about the same maturity level, possibly with the 16-year-old pulling ahead by a nose.
I’ve played since '85. Currently we’re playing in D&D 3E, because that’s what’s easiest to get players for. My sister recently dropped out to bi-weekly, so we actually have space - but I don’t think there are any dopers right here in Central VT (unfortunately!)
I have played and enjoyed all genres except tactical wargaming - I don’t think that my mind is wired right to be able to lay out tactics.
As to letting players do whatever they want (in terms of multi-classing and such) I’m all for that. The attitude has paid off, too, as evidenced by my newest player asking “so…I could have an arquebus?” While doing his equipment.
My good-natured “Sure!” was met by a group of panicked players shaking their heads, waving their hands and shouting “NO! NO!” at the player.
When they gave his character sheet back, I explained that what they get to have, the bad guys get to have. He decided that he didn’t need one after all.
I run Psionics the same way, if there is a psionic PC, there will be psionic diseases, monsters and NPCs. If there isn’t a psionic PC, they probably won’t run into all that.
Er, ArrMatey!, your profile doesn’t let me view your e-mail (it’s protected or something). I’m at sanjikrhys-at-yahoo, though, if you want to send it to me that way. That sounds really cool!
I started playing RPGs (D&D at first) in 1980. I’ve played Villains & Vigilantes, Hero System 1-4 ed. (still waiting to get 5th ed. rulesbook) Traveller, and a few others. My fave is the Hero System (I love the versatility) and my favorite genre is Superheroes. My favorite subgenre is ww II superheroes.
I currently live in Parkdale, OR and don’t have any wheels. My van died on the way from Clovis, necessitating an epic-length train ride from Las Vegas, NM to LA to Portland, and requiring, alas, the abandonment of anything I couldn’t carry (I brought one change of clothes and bought a book in Albuquerque).
I have recently got my hands on “Silver Age Sentinels”, published by some guys I never heard of, and like the flexibility the system seems to offer and the less-math-intensive character creation. Of course, I don’t know any gamers here, so I’ve only been reading the rules and trying to figure them out, but WTH, it’s a hobby!
