Hi Natasha, welcome to theRPGsite.

I've been RPG gaming for 24 years. For me it started in the 6th grade with Nintendo and Dragon Warrior then in 7-8th grade we started playing board games like HeroQuest and Dragon Strike. In 9th grade, we started playing actual RPGs with DnD first edition (I found a Red Box at KayBee Games on all places) before moving to ADnD second edition for most of high school. In college, I played Earthdawn, TORG, Shatterzone, and I ran Earthdawn for 17 years from that point. After college, we played GURPs, Feng Shui, DC Universe, D20 Modern, and a lot of DnD 3.0 and 3.5 as well as me GMing Earthdawn. And by playing a lot I mean it, as we ran five DnD campaigns up to Level 20-30 before they ended. We tried DnD 4e but we didn't like it at all.

Recently in the past four years we have picked up Savage Worlds. Played through a campaign of 50 Fathoms, a session of Suzerain, and about to complete Deadlands the Flood in two weeks. I have GMed an entire Shaintar campaign and I just started Necessary Evil on Sunday.

Since 1979. A cousin introduced it to me when I was 9. I was GMing regularly a few years later, and ran my first small RPGA conventions when I was 15/16, have run others since. Also "taught" RPG for a month at a private school. Now do research on the effects of all forms of RPGs.

I run/play scores of systems, far too many to list. Prefer ROLE-playing over ROLL-playing, but do not care for overly abstracted systems. For example, the Serenity RPG was passable, though still pretty abstracted, while the Firefly more recent version is just to dang abstracted. They took it too far for my tastes. All my players agree, and have voted to abandon the newer system and go back to the slightly older one, while continuing their current campaign.

I have periodically been running between 9-12 groups per month, though I do have periods I have to wrap up those campaigns and drop to just 1-2 when research and other priorities have to take precedent from time to time.

While I still love old school Rolemaster / MERP (Middle-earth Role-Playing) the most, I emphasize the RP-ing over focusing on the mechanics, while still enjoying having the options for detailed mechanics as part of the fun. And it quickly gets those players that have been taught by the trend in new systems to be afraid of elementary math, to quickly "get over it", and before long they aren't even thinking about it. :-)

I was first exposed when I was about 14 .. I guess that would have been about 1998. 17 years or so.

Its only really been in the past couple of years however that I've become considerably more involved in things I'd say.

28 years.

Since about '82.

Since 1978

26 years. good god.