ok i had to think about this for a minute. immediately remembered:
dsa, the german game thats kinda like a d&d, dont remember the version and amnt gonna dig through my stuff at my parents place to figure it out. its how i learned about ttrpgs, seeing some internet people play it at a meetup (i didnt get to join). i dont think we got past an attempt at a oneshot with some highschool friends and like i 100% remember sitting down at my friend's kitchen table but 0% of what happened in the game. i stil like the vibes of the sorta germanic setting over the d&d default but i'm not gonna admit it outside of a readmore because it might make me sound like a nazi, and it's probably all nostalgia for the crpg anyway.
d&d 3.5. a few games over irc (dm accused me of making a legolas ripoff for daring to pick the two weapon fighting ranger option. also i got exactly one session into trying to dm it before realizing it's a lot of work and never trying again), and a few sessions at an uhh two-week boarding school kinda experience. i basically remember nothing about any of these campaigns except for the dm throwing an. uh. thri-kreen at us for really no reason, it easily slaughtered us.
d&d 4. did, like, the first combat of keep on the shadowfell over... mumble or ventrilo or something. i was a halfling rogue and i'm pretty sure i used a shot from the rankin bass hobbit movie as my icon on whatever tabletop thing we used. couldve been the other lotr cartoon. main takeaway was that having to employ random rules to justify sneak attack every turn seems really annoying.
v:tr, play-by-post that i think lasted a few days before falling apart, on a now-dead forum. the most effort i put into a character backstory and unrelatedly the most ive pissed someone off in a ttrpg. used art of my character as a twitter icon for a while. i think this game basically only worked because the dm was really really into running it, cant imagine doing this with randos.
d&d 5. a few in-person games with my roommate, a friend, and the friend's partner and coworkers. i think we did a good chunk of the uhh middle to second half of the dragonheist thing, i remember talking a dragon into something. then covid happened and we did some stuff over discord including a oneshot two times and an attempt at another campaign that almost immediately failed because timezones stopped working out and people werent as excited anymore, huge respect for the dm for managing to keep it going as long as he did. only time i used a premade character (still no idea if the dm just had it sitting around or if it came with the game). also the time i ended up talking to npcs the most and im unsure if it was because my paladin had a pile of charisma or the other people were just fairly checked out already.
then after voting i also remembered:
shadowrun 3.01 d. i own a bunch of the books but i think i only actually ever played 1 game at a con. core memory is the dm giving me shit for not knowing exactly how to resolve summoning a spirit to fuck up the other car in a chase sequence. still have a box of i think 36d6 in a drawer by my desk, rolling multiple d6 is still, like, sensorily my favorite resolution mechanism. other shadowrun core memory is really struggling to wrap my head around the setting because as a kid growing up where i did i couldn't imagine living in urban sprawl at all, cyberpunk or no.
13th age playtest, did like 1 combat with people from an irc channel. i played a monk because the system of executing combos across multiple rounds sounded cool and dynamic until i experienced how long "multiple rounds" take in a d&dlike over irc.
i feel like there have to be one or two more games im blanking on right now but maybe that's just because i regret that so many entries in my list are basically d&d.
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
