Which RPG have you played the most in your life?

No question, Dungeons & Dragons takes the title. I started playing when I discovered the game at age ten (I even wrote about it once), and I don’t think more than a few months have gone by since then when I haven’t been playing some form of Dungeons & Dragons. Being my first roleplaying game is certainly a part of my long love affair with D&D. But it has been useful as my baseline as I explore other games, a handy comparative as I explore new games and whether I like them.

Saying that, it’s not that a game has to be like D&D for me to enjoy it. It’s more that I want a game to give me a similar feeling to when I discovered D&D. I want a roleplaying game to excite me, I want to need to play it. I want the act of making a character for the game to be engaging. I remember very well how I felt about all of this when I played D&D for the first time, and I compare my first exposure to every other game I’ve ever played to that feeling. How close it replicates that feeling for me determines how much I’ll enjoy a particular game.