Well, they say time flies!

[Aldaron]

For some reason, I just glanced at my join date for these forums. I feel like I've been here for a while - I probably would have said "four or five years" if someone had asked. Nope...

November 2000. I'm going to think about that for a minute...

14 years.
I turned 34 in November 2000. I just turned 48.
My son was coming up to 4 years old. He turns 18 in February.
Momentous events in my life and in the world have been pretty concentrated - 9/11, the War on Terror, Timor Leste independence, Iraq, Afghanistan, three Olympics, four Commonwealth Games, global climate change becomes a well-known "thing", the Large Hadron Collidoer doesn't destroy the world , one change in government in the USA, two here in Australia, Hurricane Katrina, the GFC, there were three Popes, the Boxing Day Tsunami, Fukushima, the ICC was established, my father's death, the Higgs-Boson discovered, North Korea conducts nuclear weapon tests, exploration of Titan begins, the Wenchuan Earthquake, the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, my nephew's death, my mother-in-law's death, the child sex-abuse scandal rocked the Catholic Church, smartphones, tablets, I finally left behind my nursing career and took up full-time teaching, the Black Saturday fires kill nearly 200 people not far from where I live, SARS, swine flu, the end of the shuttle program, the railway terrorist attacks in London and Madrid, the Boston Marathon Bombing, "Cable-gate" & Wikileaks, the "Arab Spring", ISIL/ISIS/IS takes over from Al-Qaeda as the dominant Middle-Eastern threat, the rise and fall of an entire Star Trek series, the Lord of the Rings films, the continuous occupation of the ISS, ...they have all happened in that time.

I'll now return you to your regular programming....I just had to share my moment of epiphany!

[Owen E Oulton]

I know what you mean --- I was 42 in 1999 when I joined. Now I'm 57. Since then, LUG was bought out and the license transferred, my Relic campaign realy took off and continues to this day, the company I co-owned lost its office and my business partner and I split, I had a heart bypass and a stroke, forcingme to retire and move into a nursing home, my Dad died. The world has changed - the afore-mentioned 9-11, Iraq and Afghanistan, private space flight and the retirement of the Shuttle, the first black US President, Japan just can't get a break from Mother Nature, the rise of 3D movies as a valid artform, the Russians recreate Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland in the Ukraine and it looks like KrystalNacht is about to be renacted with Muslims filling in for Jews, a Pope retires for the first time in half a millennium, the new Pope, Francis, is apparently getting tough on paedophile priests...

To quote Sonny and Cher, "and the beat goes on..."

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Get ready to feel older:

I was fourteen in September 1999. For a long time, Trek was the only RPG that I was interested in, and if it weren't for the LUG game I'm not sure I would've gravitated toward RPGs as a whole.

Somewhere around there I did the layout for the Klingon Spacedock book, after a crash-course in InDesign.

It was 2001 before I found a regular gaming group. In 2003 I finally managed to play a few sessions of CODA Trek. It mostly sucked, but that wasn't the game's fault. I also finished the Romulan Spacedock supplement layout in 2003. In 2004 I joined another regular group, which I am still in.

In 2006, I started illustrating for money. My first published work was in "Cathulhu," Worlds of Cthulhu #4. My first paid layout work was 2007's Aeternal Legends, a job I got using the Romulan Spacedock layout as a portfolio piece. (Being able to handle massive, multi-page statblocks is seen as a valuable skill in RPGs.)

Somewhere around there I took over Beyond the Final Frontier and put out one issue. Then I gave it to Patrick, because there was no way in hell I was going to get everything done for it that I wanted to do.

In 2011 I started freelance illustration full-time. In 2012 I mentioned to one of my regular clients that I do layout too and was rewarded with a never-ending torrent of RPG layout jobs. One of them was Ennie Award nominated for the art.

So now, fifteen years later, I work full-time in RPGs. I blame LUGtrek for most of it.

[Dan Gurden]

Gah. Stop it all of you.

Theres me slap bang in the middle. 27 back in 1999 and now I am 42...

No need to recite the litany of world changes. But for me its all about change since 2007 when I got married and had the girls; Now 5 and 2.

For me this is still a hobby despite the production of several additional supplements of LUG trek, and friends in the industry I have never really ventured further into this and just wind myself up driving a desk for a living... Unfortunately in gaming its all gone a bit downhill as I have no group anymore.

[C5]

Joined in 2001, a few days before my 25th birthday, and one year after I began my first job for a consulting company.

Now I passed 38, the once scarce white strands in my hair are now on the point of taking over, and I recently completed my thesis in computer science.

I had joined the boards after some time lurking to ask a few questions about LUG Trek. I spent a lot of time here in the 2002-2003, exchanging ideas, trying to convince people that the shape of the NX-01 did not mean that Entrerprise was a crappy series, and getting DS9 spoilers, which was only then being aired in France.
At the time, I had a very active group with friends from engineering school, mastering LUG then CODA Trek, and otherwise playing mainly the Old World of Darkness. This group remained active as everybody but me got married (some of the wives even joined), but disbanded once babies started popping up and almost everybody moved away from Paris. And so the huge Trek campagin I had been building in my mind was condemned to nothingness (it would probably have been derailed after the first game session anyway but still).

Time went on. I took acting and martial arts courses, left my consulting job to work in research, learned to play Magic: The Gathering from my thesis advisor, tried to convince people on these boards that the size of the Enterprise meant that Star Trek was a crappy reboot, began using Facebook instead of e-mails to connect with acquaintances, met more French people able to distinguish a Dalek from R2D2, went from finishing 4 or 5 computer games per year to 1 or 2 at best and remained resolutely single.

Now I've been playing rather regularly in a D&D campaign with co-workers for the last couple of years, had to explain to same co-workers that there were other Trek series than "the old one with Kirk and Spock" and that Khan did not always look like Benedict Cumberbatch, bought the Doctor Who RPG out of sheer fanboyism without the slightest hope to play it someday, spent more time on TV Tropes, and began using phones that have more in common with a tricorder or data pad than a TOS communicator.

And after all of this, the last time I was in the US for work and happened to catch a rerun of a TNG episode, I still enjoyed it as much as I discovered the series years ago, even though it was the first season. Though nostalgia may have played a hand in this.

Whew. Did not mean to blow such a wall of text.

[PGoodman13]

May 2002. I'd just turned 36, and was entering into what turned out to be a disastrous relationship (or was I already in that? I've slept since then). Dad was still alive. I was on one of my hiatuses from game writing, feeling largely creatively bankrupt, and was thinking of chucking in the towel as a writer. I'd rediscovered my love of photography.

Now I'm 48. Dad died, the disastrous relationship reached its inevitable disastrous end. Another doomed relationship happened, but at least that one ended on friendly terms. I've since authored a lot of fiction in game books, a couple of stand-alone fiction pieces, and two children. I've got a fairly successful marriage, a gorgeous wife, and more fiction on the way. I took over a fanzine, have done almost nothing with it, but I did put up a website that some people find useful. One of these days, I'll post some of the material that people have sent me recently.

So yeah, I feel old. But in a good way.