About Me: Dungeons & Dragons

Like video games, I think that D&D has been a huge factor in shaping who I am. I heard about D&D when I was younger, but didn't really know what is was. I grew up in the South during the midst of the Satanic Panic, so D&D was a no-no in my house. It was basically devil-worship.

So of course, I had to play it. 

I didn't actually start learning what D&D was until my freshman year of highschool, when I saw a friend carrying an AD&D Monster Manual around. I asked to look through it and was just blown away at all these creatures that were fully detailed. I wanted to know more. 

I ended up playing my first game a couple weeks later with that friend as the DM. Me and two other friends who had also never played met him at a local game shop and set up in the back. I can't remember much about the actual game, except that there were Ettins involved (two-headed giants), but that game shaped my entire perspective about D&D. 

It wasn't about demon worship. It wasn't black magic and devil summoning. It was hanging out with friends and playing pretend. Hell I did that shit in my backyard playhouse all the time growing up. 

But the friend with the Monster Manual didn't want to run any more games after that. I'm not sure if it was because we were younger and more inexperienced, or if he just didn't have a good time, but he was out and we had no DM. Since out of all my friends, I wanted to play the most, I decided I would start DMing the game. 

That's where I truly found the true fun in the game. We didn't know the rules really, and were making up things as we went, but we played every weekend for a long time and loved every second of it. It combined my love for games, for playing pretend, and for telling stories. It was everything I wanted it to be. It helped shape me as a storyteller and as a person. 

20 years later, and I'm still DMing. There have been a few gaps over the years, but I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons every other weekend, or more, for about 20 years now. It's a huge part of my life and basically all of my friends I met through playing the game. I still run a game every other Sunday with a group that I have been playing with for about 8 years and I consider them my very best friends.

If you've never played Dungeons & Dragons (or any other Tabletop RPG) I highly suggest it. Find a group of friends either in person, or on Roll20 and see if it might be fun for you. 

That's all for now. Hope you enjoyed my stories about how I was a highschool nerd. I was the quiet one in the corner who wore black and people thought she might be a witch. Maybe more on that later. For now, thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day.