D&D and Me

40 years of Playing and (mostly) DM-ing the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game

When I started playing D&D in 1981, I was already an adult.  I was a Tolkien fan, had read LoTR several times by then, and also some of high-fantasy pastiches the Sci-Fi paperback houses had started publishing in the late '70s. What little I knew about the game sounded intriguing. About the only other awareness I had were the reports about some D&D playing kid named Egbert disappearing in the steam tunnels.

Some friends I was working with at a NASA facility were starting up a game, and I wrangled my way in. We were all newbies, starting with the Moldvay Basic rules, then picking up the Expert rules as we rolled along. At some point, we bought in to AD&D and played a mash-up of the two rule sets.

We eventually ended up with a solid group of five. Our friendship pre-dated gaming and, particularly through the '80s, D&D was only a small part of our social interaction. We never played outside the group, and played nothing but D&D. Eventually, marriage and raising children left us little time for gaming, so we took a hiatus from 1994-2001.

I had meanwhile developed a general interest in tabletop RPGs, particularly in the science fiction genre, and bought lots of stuff -- none of which I ever played. Besides a short time playing Pathfinder with some gamers up near Baltimore around 2013 (including scenes right out of "Knights of the Dinner Table") I've never played outside my home group.

At my impetus, we restarted the Gang of Five in 2002, going with the 3rd edition. By this time, I was already the default GM -- probably the last time I had played a PC was back in the late '80s. I mixed up prepared adventures with my own home brew stuff, sometimes shoehorning third party material into my campaign setting / story arc.

As GM, I alternated between times of high enthusiasm and creativity, to periods of low interest and writer's block. On more than one occasion, I announced that I was retiring from running games, and wanted a chance (after decades!) to play a character again. No one ever offered to run a game (too complicated!) Eventually, the other four realized they could just wait me out. Sometimes the time between sessions might be as much as a year, but I always regained enough interest to start another campaign.

Part of what was flummoxing me was the complexity of the 3rd edition rules which, casual player that I am, made it a chore to create original material. Every NPC had to be exhaustively detailed with innate abilities and attacks, feats, skills, spells, multiple classes ... Whew! Not to mention rules bloat. We had started way back in 1981 with a complete game contained in only 64 pages. 3rd edition Player's Handbook and DM's guide log in at 542 pages; add another 224 pages if you include the Monster Manual. Our group were all scientists and mathematicians, so we could assimilate a ton of complex procedures and piles of detailed data but, when you crack open a beer and kick back in the evening, maybe something a little less complex would be MORE FUN.

After another period of "retirement" accompanied by lack of creative spark, I called the group to order and ran through the WoTC adventure DD2 "The Sinister Spire", last session 3 Jan 2019. Announced new "retirement" forthwith. And lo ... a miracle! One of the group volunteered to run the next adventure in the series, DD3 "Fortress of the Yuan-Ti."

After waiting decades, I'm now a PC again. I built a Barbarian, starting at either 5th or 6th level. Was enjoying playing while spending little time in preparation, besides updating my character sheet as required. Had never played a Barbarian before, and it was great fun.

After our fourth session in June, one of our group unexpectedly passed away. A dear friend for us all, for almost forty years. The game, naturally, came to a halt.

Mid-autumn, I contacted the current DM to see if we should start gaming again. He was game, but wouldn't continue running the current adventure, finding 3rd edition prep to be too much work, even for a prepared adventure. I couldn't argue with that and thought about things for a few days. I decided that if I was going to DM again, I wanted a much simpler rules set. Why not go back to the Moldvay Basic rules? I broached the subject to the remaining group members, and they were all agreeable. We would be adding a new player (the first since 1981) who was a long-time friend of all but had never played an RPG before. Needless to say, starting him off with the Basic rule set was a much gentler introduction than any of the other later versions of D&D would have been.

So, forward into the past!

I started off in January 2020 with the TSR adventure B3 "Palace of the Silver Princess." I had run this for the gang almost 40 years previously. None of us remembered a thing about it. I honestly think this adventure is a fabulous introduction to fantasy roleplaying and recommend to all.

We played through a few more TSR Basic/Expert adventures up to the end of 2020. COVID intervened during this time, and our last in-person session was on 10 March 2020. We played via Google Meet; a decent set-up, free to use, with no time limits. I grew tired of on-line interaction (I was also connecting with friends and family in the same way) and bailed out until in-person sessions could begin again.

I'm anticipating being able to return to in-person gaming sometime this spring. I'm trying to re-kindle the creativity I has in earlier days and have begun preparing a new campaign. I'll be posting notes from this effort here, stay tuned.