Recently a friend asked how I got into playing D&D. They asked a follow-up question: Why am I still playing the game more than 40 years later?
Maybe my answers to those questions might spark your own thoughts on the topic as well.
I was first exposed to D&D when I was 12 years old. A good friend of mine on a camping trip asked if I wanted to play this game with he and another kid. This was in 1980. He gave me a character sheet (already filled in) and some dice. He said, “You’re playing a dwarf. You have a morning star, and we need to go kill some orcs.”
That’s where it started. Needless to say, I was hooked.
Thinking back, I wonder: What was it about the game and that experience that made me become so enraptured with the game?
I think it stems from the fact that a lot of kids have pretty vivid imaginations. I know I did. I lived in a sort of fantasy world [in my mind] so D&D took that sense of creativity and imagination and made it real. It gave me an opportunity to do something with others, not just inside my own head, that was quite fantastical. It was empowering, too. I felt very powerful being able to do something against a monster that was scary. I didn’t know what orcs and other monsters were.
And yet, I could do something that had consequence. It was quite empowering.
Why D&D Still Inspires Me
45 years later, I’m still playing the game. I’m a dungeon master quite frequently, and it’s still something that makes me feel that same joy. I still love that fantastical ability to do something that you can’t do in real life. It’s a way to do very adventurous, fantastic things without consequence. I can do something very dangerous and risky without the risk of losing any limbs or blood of my own and so forth.
I also really like the problem-solving nature of D&D. It’s like when you watch a murder mystery on TV and you really get into the story trying to figure out how was it done, and who did it, and why. D&D is kind of a big problem solving sort of thing.
D&D is very much that same way. In fact, I think ‘problem solving’ should be the fourth pillar of D&D. You’ve got social interaction, you’ve got exploration, and you’ve got combat. I think problem solving is kind of the fourth pillar of that, and it kind of permeates all the others. That greatly appeals to me. That kind of aspect of D&D is fascinating.
There’s also the social aspect. You get to do these things with other people. There’s something about a group activity that makes it more fun than doing something solo, at least for me personally. That has always appealed to me as well. A shared adventure, a shared success, or even a shared failure, is always more memorable than something done in isolation.
What Keeps You Playing D&D?
When you think of these two questions — How did you get into playing D&D, or any other table-top role-playing game? And, why are you still playing it? — Think about a third question: What brings you joy in that experience that makes you want to keep doing it?
