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What It’s Like to Run a Dungeons & Dragons Game After a 35-Year Hiatus
Enter a world of dangerous monsters & perilous traps — and that’s just the prep work.
If you’ve watched Stranger Things, you know me.
I was that teenage boy sitting behind the dungeon master’s screen, poring over tables, rolling dice, and consulting rulebooks full of monster statistics and spell effect.
Unlike the TV show, instead of monsters and adventure I had parents telling me to stop wasting my time with those silly games and get serious about things like college and a real career.
Which I did, though not quite to their hopes — I’m not a doctor, lawyer, scientist, or bestselling writer. But I did quit playing video games, read fewer fantasy books, and stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons.
I got rid of my many manuals, threw away the character sheets, gave away my pile of Dragon Magazine. I stopped drawing swords and dragons on my notebooks.
I buckled down and got serious and they must have been right because I successfully raised my four daughters, earned a degree, and a successful freelance career.
But as the decades passed, I noticed something about my professional friends:
