When I was younger I played a lot of D&D.
That’s not strictly true. I only played a little D&D… probably about seven or eight games when I was in Grade 4, and again a few more when I was in high school after the whole “D&D is a pathway to Satan” nonsense had passed. I played a lot of other roleplaying games, though… basically once or twice a week, every week, for the entire time I was in middle and high school. Years of campaigns, stories, and game systems.
After I went to university I basically completely stopped. RPGs are a way to tell stories with friends, and although I had a few friends in university I never really gelled with any of them enough to want to play a true RPG again. That lasted until just recently, when my partner decided they wanted to start playing D&D.
The last time I played D&D it was “first” edition (technically “D&D Basic”, since my friends never played enough to get to “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” where there were way more charts). It is currently on its 5th edition, and probably going to release a 6th edition in the next year or two (probably).
The reason I bring it up is because RPGs are basically guided storytelling, and it was that element of the game that I was always drawn to. I like telling stories, in case you didn’t know, and at their core, good RPGs are all about that collective storytelling experience. It’s kinda like being a writer, in some ways, although being a storyteller in a D&D game is less about “telling” and more about “learning”… although to be honest, that’s quite true to my specific writing style already. While I usually have some idea of what I want to happen in a given narrative, most of the time the characters or the story surprise me at least a few times before they’re done!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!