My memory is pretty horrible (swiss cheese between my ears) but I think I was 10 when I started roleplaying. My mother bought me a D&D boxed game. I think Hero Quest was somewhere in there too. Then we bought the I.C.E. Lord of the Rings RPG box set, and got the 2 expansions for it and played those.
From there we bought the Rolemaster Standard System and although we butchered the rules horribly we had a lot of fun, which is all they should be about anyway. My brother and I were always the guys that knew the rules and ran the games, but I was always better at it. I prefer playing to running games, but I normally get to wear the GM/DM hat.
The group fell apart (people "grew up" and moved on) and I was without a group for awhile. There were some 1-shots of Rolemaster, but nothing stable.
Then I got the Magic The Gathering virus for awhile, and many of my McDonald's paychecks went to buying collectible crack in the form of cards... I still have them all and play from time to time. Mainly it was hanging out with the other people that played that was fun, but I still enjoy building deck strategies when I am not glued to my computer, hehe.
In college I had hoped to find a gaming group, and the only one I found was a group that played Vampire: the Masquerade. Now I am normally good at ignoring how people look and try to get to know them underneath, but even for me these people were downright creepy... So after playing once, I never returned. So college was without games, which was a surprise for me. I played a few games of Magic the Gathering, but nothing consistent.
I got married, and found a gaming group in Pittsburgh
www.gaspgamer.com
GASP (Gaming Association of Southwestern Pennsylvania) was a real beacon for gamers, and it became my once a month gaming fix, and still is. For anyone near Pittsburgh we have a yearly convention in Nov that is small, but great, as it is made for gamers by gamers.
Anyway, GASP exposed me to D&D 3rd edition, and then later D&D 3.5. I played lots of D&D games in various worlds over the years and had some very consistent players.
Recently I've am very disillusioned with D&D and with WOTC (Wizards of the Coast). I've been looking at a lot of free RPGs, and have been using them, plus a rules lite version of the D10 dice pool White Wolf game engine for fantasy 1-shots. I've also fallen in love with HARP (High Adventure Role Playing) which is I.C.E.'s new game (which is like a lite version of Rolemaster influenced by D&D).
The group I was a part of was a D&D only group, and it got too me, so it was funny when I was the one bailing from a gaming group, when it had been me for soooo many years that worked so hard to keep so many failed groups together.
So all that being said, I'm a gamer through and through, and it is really my main hobby. I've only ever played in Middle-earth using the Lord of the Rings rules when I was a kid, and have never returned to the lands of Tolkien. Maybe I will run a game in the future set in Middle-earth set in the 4th age, who knows.
Anyway, thanks fellow gamers for the replies. Being a gamer is sometimes like having a rare disease, in that you try to keep it in the closet for fear of being labeled "weird."
I take pride in my Geekdom.
