30!

Another post about another role-playing milestone. I started playing DND 30 years ago this year.

I know that I started in 1979 because my grandmother Annabelle gave me my 1st ed. ADND books that year for my birthday. Whenever my grandmother gave a book as a present she signed and dated it.

Earlier that year in the summer, the kid from across the street (we were 11 at the time), asked me if I wanted to play a game called Dungeons and Dragons.

There were weird dice. I was a half-elf. I had a magic sword. In an underground cavern next to a lake I fought a terrible monster. I slew it and got a magic ring. It turned you invisible.

I remember walking across the street to go home that evening. A thousand fantastic thoughts raced through my head and one real-world concern, "How was I going to get to play again?". For the next four years of my life that would be my central preoccupation. If I wasn't playing DND I was trying to figure out how I would get to play again.

In the years since, that overwhelming urge to play has waxed and waned. I have gone many years without playing at all, while at other times been completely immersed again.

These days I am playing regularly and starting to share the game with my children. Despite all my years spent in fantasy land, that's something I never dreamed of.