I've never been a sports guy. I played soccer and baseball when I was a kid, hated it with a passion, and spent a good portion of my teens and early twenties dismissing sports as useless distractions for lesser minds.
That is the kind of thing you say when you think you’re cool. In my thirties, I can safely say I am not cool. I can also say I was wrong - about a good many things, but for now let’s focus on sports…
When you're a kid who prefers reading books to running laps, and writing poetry to dribbling balls, it is easy to conflate the jocks who kick your ass with the institution of athletic competition. Make no mistake, the people who excel at sports are jocks, but not all jocks are jerks. More importantly, the athletes who compete in sports are not the sum total of sporting events. As an institution, sports encompasses a vast network of fans, families, businesses, and friendships. Sports are not important because we all care so much about what ball is going where, but because of how these events bring us together, give us something to cheer for, to argue over, to obsess about, to relieve our stress. Whether we're talking WWE, NBA, or golf, sports provide an organized forum to compete and collaborate without bloodshed. Usually (see: football hooligans, the madness of).
I didn't realize this until I'd left college, because for the first time in my life there was no group of friends to bullshit with. I had no social network when I moved back to California; everyone I knew was everywhere else, trying to figure out how to be an adult. When my brother invited me to form an improv troupe, I jumped at the chance. In retrospect, it had less to do with needing the stage than it did needing people to connect with. My kind of people: the weird, funny people to talk movies and books with, to banter with, to compete with.
I needed a team.
Again, in retrospect, this is all so obvious. My improv group in high school was called "Comedy Sportz." I thought it was a joke, mud in the eye of the jocks who ran after balls and threw us into lockers. But it was only half a joke. We weren't athletes, but we did travel from school to school, competing in games with set rules and facing off using a combination of skill, talent, and good timing.
You Meet In A Tavern…
When Casey invited me to join a game of Dungeons & Dragons in 2017, I thought my improv skills would come in useful. I was also a fantasy reader, a born bullshitter, and a writer; it seemed that D&D combined so many of my interests. But D&D, like the stage, is not a solo endeavor. It is collaborative, a game that lives or dies by the quality of its players and how well they work together.
Bea helping me DM a Dungeon Crawl Classic for some first-timers. Everyone died.
Through Casey, I was introduced to both new and veteran players who had the patience to walk me through character creation and the many, many rules of the game. Compared to previous iterations of D&D, Fifth Edition is incredibly streamlined, but for a complete newbie to tabletop play, I thought I needed to digest an entire encyclopedia just to toss a flagon of ale at an innkeeper.
Fortunately, this is not actually the case. The most complex parts of 5E involve fight mechanics and casting spells. When you're not doing that, you're either rolling dice, exploring dungeons, or trying to convince the DM your character is charming enough to sneak past the guards. Most of the game is playing make believe, and no one needs to be taught how to do that. You’re born doing that.
I'm lucky, in that I found myself in a group that prioritized roleplaying over combat, and that took the game - but not themselves - seriously. I also lucked out in that my first Dungeon Master, Parker, was not only patient but the most knowledgable D&D player I've ever met. And while a lesser DM could use this knowledge to shut down any maneuver that doesn't stick to the rules (these folks are called "rules lawyers" among the initiated), he is not above bending a rule or two for the sake of a good story.
My first adventure involved a mountain, a mine, a horde of treasure, and a vicious black dragon that ended up murdering three-quarters of our party. It was about six months in to our campaign, a game we'd played perhaps every other week, and rather than join the dragon our group of heroes valiantly opposed him. My female barbarian was melted into goo by the dragon's acid breath, with no hope of resurrection.
I was astonished by how emotional the experience left me, how righteous I'd felt defying the dragon, and how deeply the loss hit me. Two of my fellow players also met their ends in that underground lair, while Jesse, Casey's brother, chose to bargain with the dragon in hopes of preserving his dead friends' memories. He entered the next campaign with crippling PTSD.
It was that first TPK (Total Party Kill) that solidified my love of this game. I drove home that night exhausted, but eager to roll up a new character - maybe something that could actually do magic - and continue the story we'd begun half a year ago.
Some of these dice have been in jail a long time.
Since that night, I've played with other groups and even DM'd my own games. I now own far too many books - most from fifth edition but a few from previous editions that I've adapted for my own adventures - and a literal cabinet full of dice. I have opinions on which classes are underpowered and which are always fun to play, I have advice for new players, and always offer to run a game for people curious about the hobby. I've been playing D&D consistently for half a decade.
Now, that's nothing compared to the veterans, those who can remember when Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren developed Chainmail from existing war gaming platforms (the system that would eventually evolve into D&D), but I feel comfortable here. Part of this thing that isn't a sport but binds so many disparate people together - particularly in the current era, when it's more popular than it's ever been.
The Plague Years
When the COVID-19 pandemic truly kicked off in California, it was March 2020. I and the rest of my company were ordered to work from home until further notice, and the newest version of my main group had just started Descent into Avernus, a campaign that would take us to hell(s) and back.
We hadn’t even made it to hell yet, and I was wary of transitioning our game from a physical space to an online platform. Back then, I couldn't have known our collective quarantine would last for years, and I much preferred taking a few weeks' break to giving up our in-person sessions. But as COVID only got worse, I was willing to brave the digital realm for a chance to escape my increasingly claustrophobic reality.
Dungeons & Dragons helped me stay sane during the pandemic. It was not my sole source of mental health, for I benefited from a very patient wife and a very cute baby, a cozy home and an adaptable workplace. But it gave me a place to lose myself and my worries in a very dark time, a goal to strive for, and a very silly firbolg druid through which I extolled the virtues of jam and exercised my right to kick demons in their thorny asses.
A city in my homebrewed realm of Aurelia. Madeline bought me special markers to draw my maps.
I have my group to thank for that, a gallery of heroes. Heroes, not because of their creative character choices or combat prowess, but because they have always given this hobby a high priority. Anyone who has played Dungeons & Dragons will tell you that finding a group of people who can meet consistently is like finding a herd of bonafide unicorns. It is difficult to synchronize the schedules of three people, let alone the six that compose our main group. Harder still to keep it going for years.
I have played with other groups, managed other groups, and I’ve been doing this long enough that I know they ebb and flow like the tides. Yet my main adventuring party remains steadfast. We are a team, and I am old enough now to appreciate how rare and special that is. This pandemic has tested our collective sanity, and I have seen the heavy toll it has taken on friends, family, and co-workers. I know people who have lost their jobs, their relationships, their loved ones, and even apart from this damn plague, it’s no secret that the world kind of sucks right now. D&D doesn’t fix any of that, but it makes me feel good.
It’s a fun, often silly, and exhilarating adventure, just making shit up with my friends in a hundred different made up worlds. I owe a great debt to Parker, Casey, Jesse, Han, Orlando, and Zaid, and anyone else who has joined me in my many quests.
Still not a sports guy, but I get it now.