How I Missed 20 Years of DnD & TTRPGs

I was so close to playing DnD and other tabletop role-playing games since the mid 90s, but only started in 2017, why didn't they hook me? Why would it take so long to find this wonderful crazy hobby?

I have a theory. No, I have a hypothesis and it requires a bit of time travel, so come back with me to 1989 when I was 3. My name's Rich. I'm only slightly less adorable and this is Project Skythorn.

I'm going to look at a hobby that's passed me by for 20 years and also to share what I've been up to in the meantime.

When that picture was taken, it was 1989 and the 2nd edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons had just been released.

So I was only three then I'll let myself off not knowing what Dungeons and Dragons was. I probably knew what a dragon was, though.

Even as a kid my brain was totally primed to love DnD and role-playing games.

I was good at maths. I was really good at chess - Central Scotland under elevens chess champion two years in a row.

I even acted a little bit. I was Reporter Number 2 in our primary school play. It was a very minor part. I didn't actually do much, but the fact I got up on stage said my lines did the thing. Actually, I think quite surprised to my friends and family because I was very much the nerdy little kid.

At home we also had lots of the traditional board games, so Monopoly, Cluedo, some of the more modern ones that came out around that time like Mouse Trap or Hungry Hungry Hippos.

I'm very good at Hungry Hungry Hippos by the way.

Also on TV around that time was a show called Knightmare, which takes so many cues from Dungeons and Dragons.

If someone had told me I could play that for myself, with or without the big hat on my head, I would have fallen in love on the spot. But they didn't. And I missed it. And so I kept on going, doing other stuff.

I also began reading a lot. I'm getting into fantasy getting into sci-fi, and I remember playing those Choose Your Own Adventure books where you chose options at the end of each page.

I got them from the library and I remember you needed to roll the dice or fill in this character sheet. But I never did any of those ones because they were too complicated. You had to find a dice. You needed to write in the back of them for your character sheet. Well, these were library books and I was a very good little boy, so I was not writing in a library book, that's for sure.

I absolutely loved the covers of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. They were crazy and excellent and... aliens happening? I don't know what's going on here, but it's wonderful.

It was about the year 2000 when the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons came out. I was playing... Warhammer. I had an awesome army of Lizardmen. I spent all my pocket money on them. I painted them, got really into it. It was great and we'd fight them and we'd have battles. And there were so many rules. I remember we really enjoyed playing little tiny battles with just a few soldiers on each side. But I've never heard of DnD. I had no idea that the rules, the systems which would have allowed us to have huge crazy stories, were probably in my library as well. I just didn't know about it.

In 2003, the 3.5 edition of Dungeons and Dragons came out, and I was learning guitar, I was busy with exams at school, I was thinking about girls and the world of role-playing games and things seemed to have just passed me by at this point. While I was at university I did so many other things. I was getting into music. I went to so many gigs. I also. Read a lot more as well. Caught up with all of the standards of fantasy literature, I read Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, the Sil-ma. Silmarillion, the Silmarillion. Third, third time lucky!

By the late 2000s, we had the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. We also had Pathfinder as well, which became its own branch of the hobby, and is probably still the main rival to DnD today.

In 2014, the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons came out. That's the current edition we're on just now, and I was being a rock star. I was in a band, I was gigging and touring all over the country, having a wonderful time focusing all of my creativity, all of my energy on that. Still reading a lot as well. I got through tonnes of 1960s, slightly trashy sci-fi. Read all of Pratchett, all of Phillip Pullman, tried to read Paradise Lost. Failed at reading that.

It was only in 2016, after I left the band that I started looking around for other hobbies, other things to do. And in 2017 I played the Curse of Strahd, one of the famous Dungeons and Dragons adventures I played that for the first time ever, and fell in love with it there and then.

I played online with some friends. It was awkward and janky and I didn't understand a thing on the character sheet. But I could see the potential. I was like "ohhhh I get to use five different bits of creativity", my eternally nerdy brain loved every detail of it being able to share an adventure, a story, all the shenanigans with my friends I was. I was hooked from day one.

Now I'm a forever DM. I'm running sessions for loads of groups of friends. I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons. Pathfinder, Cypher System, Mörk Börg, which I'm almost certain I've pronounced wrong, so apologies.

As well as Dungeon Crawl Classics, which is a retro clone it gets called, which uses a lot of the rules kind of unchanged since 1970s, and makes it a really interesting experience to play in the way that people have for the last 50 years.

So back to that hypothesis, not a theory. I reckon I was trying to be cool. At all the moments in life where I really could have got into this awesome hobby. But what I've realised much more recently is it's your enthusiasm, your passion, your energy, which is much more interesting to people than whether they come across as cool or aloof. And I am full of passion and energy and nonsense for this lovely hobby. I'm very glad I'm here.