A DM is Born

            So, back in the spring I came up with a ridiculous idea – I was going to see if my parents would be interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons. I had played a couple games over the years and enjoyed it, but all of them died out very quickly because it was just too hard to get everyone together at the same time. Colleen had also played a little and wanted to try some more, which is where I came up with such a crazy idea.

            I started by asking my mother, since she’s the busiest one in the family (she’s a minister – if you've never spent much time around ministers you should know that they are always working, even on their days off). I explained the game isn't just about the fighting – it’s a storytelling game. I was shocked when she actually said yes.

            Then my brother dropped by, so I jokingly told him about it and asked him if he was interested (in the past he said he’d never want to play). He said sure, as long as I could convince his wife. A few texts later, she was in.

            Without even trying, I’d gotten four family members interested in the game. Last was my father, who, when he came home from worked and I asked him, said “yes” without a hesitation when I asked him.

            That was about when I realized that I had just accidentally convinced my family to play D&D, which meant something else – I needed to be the Dungeon Master, the person running the game.

            For those of you unfamiliar with the game, when playing D&D you are either part of a group of adventurers playing through the game, or you are the Dungeon Master (DM) who has to create the world, the story and control everyone and everything in the world who isn't one of the adventurers. In other words, it’s a lot of work.

            Luckily I was able to cheat a little. Because I've never run a game before, I decided that I would alter a pre-made adventure rather than making one from scratch. This way I’d know that I was running the game properly and it would be far less work.

            Even so, I knew I’d be teaching a group who were almost all new to the game while learning how to run the game, so I was a little worried about how it would go. I also wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy the role.

            Well, tonight (last night, for you lot reading this on Monday) we had our first game and I, for one, had a great time. I haven’t gotten feedback from everyone else yet, but the rest of my family seemed to have fun as well. This was particularly gratifying because the beginning of any D&D game is extremely slow and full of a lot of work for everyone, but when you have new players there’s a lot of new explaining to do that makes it even slower. Luckily everyone learned quickly and the pace picked up fairly quickly.

            It seems that I make a decent DM and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. With any luck, everyone else will continue having fun as well and this will end up an ongoing thing. On the other hand, that means a lot more writing for me – not to mention I’ll have to start writing my blogs earlier in the week. Hey – that means this may even work out well for you!

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.