Hello! My name is Shawn and I’m 41 yrs old and live in Des Moines, Iowa. I’ve been gaming since 1981. I purchased Holmes Basic in ’80, but my eleven year old mind couldn’t quite figure it out. All the references to dice and only having chits was extremely confusing! Later that same year, my cousin DM’d me through the Keep On the Borderlands with the Moldvay basic set. I was hooked. That Xmas, I got the Basic and Expert boxes and all of the AD&D books. I became an RPG (and wargame) junky and bought every game that caught my eye.
In the late ‘80s I had lost interest completely in AD&D and started using Rolemaster as my main fantasy rpg. Throughout most of the ‘90s I gamed only sporadically and was relegated to collecting and reading. By 2001 I hooked up with a steady group that’s been playing once a week pretty much ever since. We switch games and DM duties every year or so. Most recently, I've been playing in two 4th ed D&D games (BLECH!) and I've been running a Savage Worlds Star Wars game.
I’m definitely NOT a fan of 4th, and really didn’t care for D20 in all of its iterations either. I stumbled across the retro rpg movement about a year ago and was quite intrigued. Fortunately, I already had pdfs of the 0D&D books, so I printed them off and have been absorbed by them ever since. I was intrigued by Swords and Wizardry White Box, but Labyrinth Lord with the Advanced Edtition Companion has REALLY grabbed my attention. This is truly the way I played D&D back in the day!
I love James' blog and publications (I own them all!) and look forward to seeing the final version of the LOFTP RPG. Now, I just need to convince my hard headed players that old school does not equal dated.