Hi everybody! My name is Eric. I'm 41, and I play "d&d".
I was an early reader, teaching myself with Mad Magazine, Tintin, and Tolkien. I finished LotR for the first time by 3rd grade (skipping the insanely-hard-to-care-about "Council of Elrond"), and my imagination was fired up. That year, 1979, my mom got me and my best friend seats at a d&d game being run by adult friends of hers. These folks were college kids, cabbies, and/or members of Genesis Juice co-op (Eugene, OR represent!), and years later I put together that they were probably running Wilderlands, crazily mutated to their needs. I remember being allowed to go through some of the scrolled-up player maps, and seeing the colored markers and notes filling the hex map, leaving an obvious trail of history and glory, and I was going to get to play in it! Amazing and mind-blowing stuff of course for a young mind. My friend's d4 roll for his hit points at first level was the first time either of us had ever rolled the "weird" dice. Incredibly, the d4 left his hand, bounced, and somehow landed on a tiny flattened tip. "What's that mean?" we asked, not realizing that we'd never see it happen again.
After that kick-start, I ran some gonzo d&d with friends for until about eighth grade, in worlds of our creation. We were playing with 1e main three books, Fiend Folio, and the The Complete Warlock supplement (mostly for awesome inheritance tables). By high school, I had also played Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Champions, Heroes Unlimited, and Car Wars. In my twenties, I played a lot of GURPS. As a player, I played in an over-the-top (200 pts in disadvantages allowed?) Far Future game, and as a GM, I ran a 3-year GURPS Fantasy rules campaign, set in Harn.
I didn't really play role-playing games for a number of years, until 3rd Edition came out. I started reading about it, using this new-fangled "web" thanks to the front-line reporting of one Eric Noah, and I liked what I was hearing. I got together some friends, and we played a campaign that ran for years, eventually becoming a 3.5 game. A couple of players wrote and illustrated a series of comics about this campaign, which was totally amazingly cool.
After a brief hiatus, I got pulled back to the table by the Iron Heroes book, and I started a Wilderlands campaign using that ruleset. That campaign focused on the Tharbrian coast, between the city of Warwik and the transplanted town of Malador from the Iron Heroes adventure I ran. I really enjoyed the game, but the campaign was interrupted by my move to NYC, and it would be years before I role-played again.
Back in Portland after the NYC adventure, I ended up working at a software company with a lot of gamers (not necessarily role-players), and 4E was coming out soon, so I got a bunch of folks excited about a Wednesday Night Game soon after the release of the game. Again, I put the game in the Wilderlands, this time based out of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. I ran a home game, also using 4E, taking place on the Skandik coast in the same world. It was mostly fun, but it burned me out. I stopped running games, but the Wednesday night game continued for a long time, even after I left the company.
I was looking for something simpler, lighter, and the OSR stuff was pulling me. I dont' remember where I first came across the DCCRPG beta rules, but I was REALLY pumped and inspired to play once I tore through and absorbed what the game was about, and the experience it promised. I ran a couple games using the beta rules for some friends, taking place in the Wilderlands (natch, baby), in the Skandik-controlled inlands west of Ossary. I ran Portal beyond the Stars as a funnel, followed by starting DCC28 Into the Wilds, as Harley had done part of the conversion. I paused the game until the final rules came out; since then we've played two sessions, running some fresh meat through Sailors on the Starless Sea, survivors to join the established characters in Wildsgate on Saturday.
My players and I have been having a blast with the game! I like the fact that all of the first level characters have seen a lot of mayhem and death of many, many characters. It's brutal, but when something heroic happens, it really stands out and feels like true glory. A zero-level taking two hits from beastman spears, and surviving? Incredible! The hunter rolling a nat 20 and max damage to take out the chaos lord, preventing a TPK? The stuff of legend!
And we haven't even scratched the surface of leveled character play yet....
tl;dr: I've been having a blast playing DCCRPG in the Wilderlands.