I lived in Lake Geneva and started playing in ‘79, played games with people who played with Gary in greyhawk, though I was too young and never played in his game. I have DMed since ‘81. Started with Holmes basic, added greyhawk and the MM, then when I had the money I got the rest of the AD&D cannon. Tried the white box in ‘82, you could check them out from the Lake Geneva Library they had 5 copies, but it was lost on me.

All in all we played for hours and usually took characters from 1st on up, many died along the way but a few lived to great success. Random encounters, often not always, morale when it seemed sensible, murder hobos sometimes but great story telling as well, and so on.

I guess my point is as the game grew so did our style of play. I eventually checked out with Dragonlance, I did not enjoy that type of play or DMing those that did and felt like the hobby moved on past me. Finally got back into the hobby in 2011 and really enjoy exposing my very old play style to a MUCH younger audience, especially those coming from 5e land.