Hi. I'm Patrick and I live in Madison, Wisconsin.
I bought my first set of D&D rules in 1983 for $1.00 at a garage sale when I was 7 years old. I wasn't really playing by the rules until about 5 years later when I finally met some older gamers. As a teenager I abandoned gaming for awhile but always wanted to have a regular group and kept buying and reading books, many of which I still have but have never used. I drifted in and out of gaming as an adult because finding a regular group was always a challenge. I spent 8 years, off and on, playing in a Deadlands game.
In 2008 I hadn't played with a regular group in over a year and I wanted to get back into gaming, so I convinced one of my gamer friends to take me on as a roommate and that helped to create a space for everybody to play at. There are three core players in our group and we've seen a lot of people join our group for a time, but then move to another city, or have children, or get a new job, and our game has changed systems and campaigns just as often: Mage: the Awakening, fantasy setting using World of Darkness rules, Legend of the Five Rings, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Stars Without Number, Deadlands, Champions, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Arkham Horror (it's a board game but you *can* role-play it), and of course, LotFP.