These boards seem to me to have a lot of, let's say, very experienced gamers, and I was curious if that's actually the case.  What version of D&D did you start with?  Also, how do you think that has shaped your view of how to play RPGs?

I started with Holmes Basic and moved to AD&D after about a year, not realizing it was a different game.  Gary's writing style in the 1E DMG has affected my gaming style more than anything else.  It set a tone very like Lieber and Moorcock's writing, and that set the direction of my games for quite a long time.

My first rpg in 1984 was MEGA (Messagers Galactiques), a special issue of the Jeux & Stratégies magazine. It gave rules for time-traveling, dimension hopping, teleporting investigators that had to solve problem in the megaverse. Semi-structured rules system but the magic was a mess. Never found people to play it with.

Then I discovered The Dark Eye, and for a while me and some friends had lots of fun with it.

The second 2 games I bought in 1986 were GW Call of Cthulhu 3rd, and AD&D.
Cthulhu (and that version of the rules) is still one of my favourites.

MEGA and TDE were available in regular bookstores, but for the American games you needed to find a dedicate store; I think there were 3 at the time in Belgium.

AD&D I liked as a player, but I found the rules overly complex, illogical and convoluted, and you needed to switch between the PHB and the DMG to find certain things. But I played it a lot in a group where we alternated GMs and so also played RQ, CoC, MERP, Twilight 2000, JB007, Toon, ...
I had a lot of fun with AD&D and AD&D 2nd as a player, but never got around to DM it myself (as character sheets were really hard to get in the pre-internet days).

D&D really started to feel playable for me when 3ed came around (but just until level 6, after which the bookkeeping for the players and the DM became too much of a chore).

So how did D&D shape my views? Fun system(s) but it has never been my all time favourite. I prefer my games more rules lite.

Basic/Expert with the AD&D monster manual mixed in shortly thereafter, and then the rest of the AD&D trilogy as it was available.  Not long after that, I ran a short Runequest game using the borrowed 2nd edition version.

I think the biggest influence of this was the time, location and means, not the edition.  Very limited funds.  No internet of course.  So a handful of Dragon magazine articles was my exposure to the wider group of players.  No local game store or even kind of distant game store.  Knew one other person who played and was never part of his regular games. Loved board games.  Got my games from mail order. I was already deep into LotR, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, The Stainless Steel Rat, and general mythology.  I did discover Vance through the magic of Appendix N.  That is, "D&D" and RPGs in general looked interesting from an already established interest in fantasy, myth (and history).

So it was a lot of figure it out as you go, with fortunately some forgiving players that were also learning with me.  They had a really good sense of humor about all the screw ups, which helped immensely. I at least had the sense to talk about the screw ups with them and work out a solution together (usually for "next time", not retroactive), which also helped.

That background--and Gary's instructions to follow the rules as written AND change whatever you need to change because it is your game, which was very confusing to me early--shaped how I viewed rules to this day:  Try them as written to see how they work, then do whatever you need to do to bend it to your game.  I'm faster to change a rule now than I was then, but that's largely increased confidence from experience. 

The Red Box was my first actual D&D game which I got for my 10th birthday (before that I'd just go out to the big stone outcroppings in the forest behind my house with the wooden sword my dad made me and climb about pretending to be the hero from the Dragon's Lair video game).

However, in terms of formative experience, a month or so later my parents let me pick out an adventure module and I chose DL-1: Dragons of Despair (I had no idea there was a difference between AD&D and BECMI at the time and my saved allowances bought me the AD&D core by the end of the year). The basic rules were similar enough though I could make it work with my friends on the bus and, most importantly for my formation, it had the pre-gen heroes and recommended their use, so you were starting out with level 4-6 PCs who didn't die at the drop of the hat and had REALLY GOOD ability scores.

The formative bit, at least in regard to the OSR people love here so much is that the idea of starting at level 1 with random stats was alien to me. During the time I was involved in AD&D I made PCs for my players by starting everyone at level 4-6 by asking them what race and class they wanted, assigning an 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 (plus a 12 and 11 once I'd gotten Unearthed Arcana and added Comeliness and Social Class as ability scores) assigned in whatever order made sense for the class and gave them max hit points and everyone got to pick a couple of nonmagical weapons and armor and we were off to the races.

Then the asshole DM from hell I've mentioned previously almost drove me from the hobby and destroyed any affection I had for what is now called OSR style play, but fortunately I found the Robotech RPG (ads for it were running in the back of Dragon that I had a subscription to at the time and the local hobby shelf had a shelf of all Palladium's products at the time) and some friends to play it with. And Robotech reinforced my sense that what came to be known as "Big Damn (Robot) Heroes" style play was valid... and nothing else in the Palladium line as we expanded into Heroes Unlimited, Palladium Fantasy and Rifts really disabused any of us of that sentiment.

I didn't return to D&D until 3e when some friends of mine got involved in the Living Arcanis program and started running "game days" at the local community college. Heroic-tier Point Buy plus starting with max hit points for the first three levels (you didn't start gaining additional hp until level 4) was right up my alley.

4E finally allowed me to pull off my favorite fantasy concepts without house rules in D&D for the first time ever; a proper adventuring fighter in lighter armor and who wasn't defined by their magic items (i.e. what you actually saw in film and television), wizards who could use simple magic whenever they wanted even at level 1 (again like you'd commonly see in media outside of D&D) and no need at all for some pagan cleric to actually keep you healed up (yeah, I still have resentment from that asshole DM... but also a pagan warrior priest in every party is such a D&D-ism that I was glad 4E allowed to be killed, dismembered, burned in a pyre and its ashes poured into the bottom of a Porta-John).

And now I have my own system that mostly reflects my preferences in gaming (there were a few things I preferred that playtesting shot down, but overall its the closest I'll ever come to a perfect (for me) system).

I started with OD&D in 1977. LBBs, GH,EW (no BM).  A Holmes book, and MM soon thereafter in 78.

How it shaped my views is probably a very lengthy story. Some key takeaways:

The game is a construction kit, not a finished product.

Your setting informs the rules, not the other way around.

Every DMs game should be different. There is no one true way- that's boring.

Play the game you like. If you like heavy story and minimal dice go for it. If you want maps and minis and procedures for everything, go for it.

Rules lawyers are not tolerated (they can start their own game and bother everyone)

If you use a published product, hack and change to your heart's content.  Canon be damned.

Be open to new things and ways to do things to get the experience you want to have (again-there is no one true way)

2e was my first exposure to the hobby, but shortly after it was my uncles' Basic set I found in my grandmother's basement that made it really stick. Strangely enough, there were three slide rules in the box which were probably used for war games—I did not put that together until decades later.

I found the hobby later than most, already in my mid teens. My brother and cousin would run 2e, I would run us through Basic whenever I could. Dozens of goblin villages were destroyed...

After a few years, I moved to RC from Basic before leaving TTRPGs behind for around 10 years at the dawn of 3e. Mostly stayed away from 3e and 4e, but started to engage with the OSR and eventually playtested 5e. I started running OD&D, which has been my main game for nearly 10 years now.

Today I play in three 5e games and run my bastardized version of OD&D in a fourth. I can have fun when I play, regardless of version, if I am at the right table. I play 3d6 in order Champion Fighter in every 5e game assuming optional feats and variant human is permitted

When it comes to what I run, I run what I enjoy which is generally my deeply altered OD&D game. I have also GM'd mini campaigns with several other games like LOTFP (original and play test rules), metamorphosis alpha, star adventurer, SW and several others.

Basic D&D influences everything from what I choose to run to what characters I choose to play.

My first exposure to Dungeons and Dragons was the AD&D Coloring Album.

http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2011/10/greg-irons-advanced-dungeons-and.html

Although I didn't realize it at the time, it introduced me to the concept of the Mythic Underworld.

https://saveversusallwands.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-dungeon-as-mythic-underworld.html

Bits and pieces of that idea permeate my Dungeon Mastering.

After that, I moved to Moldvay Basic and then Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

My first D&D was 2nd ed. It didn't influence me that much because I had already played Runequest, Drakar & Demoner, and MERP, and I actually think we had more fun with those.

OD&D way back in 1975. It set the tone for how run games and the style of play I like best.

AD&D 1E, back in the mid 1990's.  So many rules.... "if" you played it RAW.  We didn't.

Moldvay Basic is not on the list?

Moldvay Basic is what I started with in the early 1980's.  And it spoiled me, because 40 years later its still my favorite RPG, but now I use the OSE tomes at the table.

Banged up copy of Holmes my cousins gave me.

Holmes, then AD&D. Never made it to 2E. We moved on to Dragonquest and Runequest.

Looking back, what probably influenced us the most was the movies of the 80s: Beastmaster, Excalibur, Clash of the Titans, Ladyhawke, Conan, Dragonslayer.

In 1977, a friend came back from Math Camp and told us about a game he played there. This was OD&D. His excited descriptions set our imaginations on fire. Without rule books or dice, our group began using pencils and graph paper to create mazes filled with monsters. We wandered through these using nothing but theater-of-the-mind and had a blast.

Eventually we found a place to buy the White Box and tore into it, hoping to finally understand the rules. Wrong! We didn't understand more than half of it, but we were already experienced with filling in the blanks from our imagination so that was no big obstacle. When we first got the 1e PHB, we immediately recognized that there were bits we wanted to adopt and other bits that we wouldn't touch with a 10' pole.

I still play weekly with two surviving members of that original group. Our views were shaped by the fact that we recognized early-on that our own imaginations were as valid as anyone's, not to exclude Gygax himself. We interpreted rules as being suggested guidelines for the DM. Nothing more. We approach every game with that in-mind. We understand that the complexity added by modern editions does nothing to improve the game, but certain simplifications introduced by modern editions did make it better. In the end, though, a good adventure hinges on the imagination of the DM and the decisions made by the players, not the mechanics or the modifiers.

God Bless the OSR and get off my lawn!

Quote from: Crusader X on September 04, 2021, 04:25:19 PM
Moldvay Basic is not on the list?

Moldvay Basic is what I started with in the early 1980's.  And it spoiled me, because 40 years later its still my favorite RPG, but now I use the OSE tomes at the table.

I thought Moldvay was the "B" in BECMI.  A quick bit of searching showed me that I was incorrect - sorry.