Per this tweet, today seems to be a good candidate for celebrating the release of D&D, so I'm marking the 49th anniversary of its release.

Alas, I'm not playing much lately, due to a combination of several factors, chiefly being busy with work and too exhausted to have much of a social life on weekends. But I'm planning something for next year, the last Sunday of January, where I hope to have a game going.

My own origin with the game extends ahead by about ten years when I was living in Japan, either 1984 when I first played, or 1985, when I was sold or gifted a copy of the David Cook Expert Rulebook for basic D&D—the Erol Otus cover and a copy of Dungeon Module X1, The Isle of Dread. Very shortly thereafter I would buy my first adventure, either from the Stars and Stripes Bookstore on base in Yokota or possibly the base Exchange: Dungeon Module X2: Castle Amber.

Since then, I've been hooked on these books. I used to borrow from behind the counter at the base library copies of the Players Handbook, the Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and the Dungeon Masters Guide and read them while I was waiting for whatever reason. But I didn't get my own (used) copies until much later (though I started collecting used modules whenever I could much earlier).

Since then, I've been embedded in the first edition of the game, eschewing first out of ignorance and then sensitivity to cost to subsequent editions of the game. I assume the play has been mostly the same, I just have the budget for the books I now have and a few others. 

The state of the collection has been such that there's still gaps, mostly AD&D modules I still don't have. Whether these will ever get addressed depends on eBay, I guess, though lately I've been learning to be content with what I have. I don't have all the Mentzer BECMI sets (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals) or modules from that era, either, since what the Stars and Stripes Bookstore sold as current was old TSR dead stock. Learning to do without has been something I've just had to do.

Even so, I already have quite a bit, enough to keep a table entertained for quite some time. More than I'm currently able to run.

Hopefully that will change sometime soon.