How I got into DND

Hello my name is Tony and a common question I get asked is “How I got into D&D” and “How long have I been playing D&D?” or some variation of the question… So I figured I would write a little blog about it. I started playing D&D when I was between 12- 14 years. I couldn’t tell you exactly how old because those years’ kind of just blur together for me however; I was pretty young. One day I had gone over my friend’s house (Lets call him “L”) who lived across the street from me and had found my friends playing mid-session with dice and paper sprawled out across the bedroom floor, it was a beautiful mess. The DM lets call him “DM” was indeed the forever DM and the one who introduced D&D to the whole group. There was a total of 4 people playing with me watching, DM, L whose house we played at, L’s sister who we’ll call N and last one who we’ll call “J.” I was eventually the 5th player to join the game however it took little convincing to start playing. My friend group was a bit older than I was and considered maybe too young or immature to play at first (or maybe they were just messing with me, who knows.) I understand completely because they were right for at least the first few sessions. We’ll touch on that in a bit. So with me being the youngest, L was 4 years older than me, J was 3 years. N was L’s sister who was older by I think 5-7 and the DM who was N’s boyfriend being about 10-12 years older than me. ( I think could be little more or less) I think they were concerned that the age gap between us they didn’t want me to derail the game.

So for a few sessions I remember watching and listening in and was immediately fascinated by it all. They were playing 2nd edition / Advanced dungeons and dragons and I remember flipping through the players manual when they weren’t using it trying to learn a following along as they played. Everything was theatre of the mind back then, we never used maps unless there was some confusion, everybody was usually on the same page. The DM had been playing for years and was honestly very good at DMing. He was very articulate, was able to describe the environment with just the right amount of detail and not ramble on. Point out various key areas/clues without ruining the immersion or giving away puzzle answers or spoilers. When I remember back to playing with them I don’t really remember me sitting in a room on a floor but instead remember it from the POV of my character spelunking through dungeons.

If you know me, you know that my favorite class today is Wizard with fighter being second however my first character ever was a Ranger whose name was “Elu Thingol ( I forget how I spelled it exactly).” He was a wood elf and very much inspired by link from legend of Zelda. Yes, I was THAT player. My first few sessions I definitely had some very common player flaws that you read about a lot on reddit today. I wanted to be the hero! I wanted to do cool, flashy combat attacks that would clearly kill me if the DM didn’t take pity on me and I was over excited every session acting like a little kid because well I was one. I think after a few sessions I was able to get my footing but with such drastic age difference between the players I was always the odd one out but we made it work, or they were nice and tolerated me for a until I gotten older and became more socially aware. One of my core DND memories with my first character was getting this awesome long sword called “Razer Edge or Ice Razer”” It was Sword made up of ice and had cool Ice shard ability when I crit with it. It’s similar fifth edition weapon called “Frost Brand” and basically when I crit with it essentially casted Ice knife on the target. Eventually when Elu died I was sad and I believe I even cried that night when I went to bed, mostly I was really bummed out about losing the sword. The party never recovered it when I came in with my new character.

SO, one two skip a few years I was able to play more and more with some games here and there in high school and into college. I eventually tried other gaming systems, I only really ended up liking one of the which was GURPS. I won’t get into too much detail but I did play that one for a little bit. I even messed around with my own RPG system for a few months but just decided that I really liked D&D and stuck with it however; My games stopped once in my junior year in college. It was hard to find games and my interest and hobbies had expanded. Eventually I got into streaming and YouTube and you could say that it was a launch pad to what I’m doing now with DND404. The last edition of D&D I played was 4th edition. I didn’t really dive into 5th edition until Dan, Jared, Alec and myself decided to start DND404!
Well…that’s my story. There are a lot more stories I could go into with my years of playing but those are for another time. Feel free to reach out with questions about this article on our socials, and thank you for taking the time to read this little story about how got into DND.

Roll with confidence,
~ Tony.