Dungeons and Dragons and Why I Stopped Playing

At about twelve or so years old, my history teacher gave me my first set of polyhedral dice. I'd never seen such strange looking dice that they seemed magical in of themselves. Only a few days later, I would assemble my friends after school and Mr. Cruz would host my first ever session of Dungeons and Dragons. We were off to investigate a mysterious illness that plagued the town and turned its residents into zombies. While in a tavern collecting clues, such as a mysteriously sick looking piece of food which I ate and subsequently threw up, we were beset by the zombies. Our wizard pressed his thumbs together and bathed the area in flame, setting the zombies, the tavern, and us on fire as we fled the town in search of safety.

From that session came my new obsession. I would ask my parents to buy me a Dungeons and Dragons book, not knowing that this was a 5th Edition and my teacher was running 3rd Edition. I still remember Dragonlance, how one of the characters remembered their friends because elves don't grow beards and the hourglass pupils of their mysterious magic-user. I'd bother my friends in running pseudo-adventures in the fields where they would ask me to guess a number in their head instead of rolling dice. I retained this all the way to high school where I'd find Dungeons and Dragons played among the outskirts of the school grounds, among the ones that weren't given a place elsewhere.

Eventually, I'd buckle up and become a Dungeon Master, the one behind the screen acting as the world. And those sessions were tragic. I really had no idea what I was doing, even with the Dungeon Master's Guide added to my arsenal. The concepts of plot structure and plot improvisation, the preparation of maps and monsters and magical items, the wrangling of schedules and free time and friends, these unspoken hurtles came full force and many of my "campaigns" would last barely a handful of sessions. It hurt. It felt like I was doing something wrong, that I didn't really get Dungeons and Dragons, that I lost the magic.

That wouldn't stop me from trying though. I took to games online where I'd run, play, and learn with strangers enough that they'd become friends. Some of the nebulous concepts of before became sharpened. I liked running campaigns that lasted only six to eight sessions of explosive impact, letting my players run wild in an even wilder world. I learned which magical items and monsters felt correct to use. I learned esoteric rules like two spells being casted as long as the bonus action is not used to cast either. I learned how I ran games, I learned how to create interesting encounters, I learned how to get everybody together and sit down to play. I even started to learn other systems outside of Dungeons and Dragons and ran them too! However, I also learned that after every session, other Dungeon Masters don't feel my same sense of exhaustion.

After each session, I wouldn't stick around long to talk to whatever group I was with. I'd say goodbye and when I was alone, found the nearest bed or couch or sometimes floor to lay down on and do nothing. It felt so good to do nothing then, to not have to participate in the rest of the world, to not be asked of anything except to be.

Here is the thing about being a Dungeon Master that Mr. Cruz never taught me: you have a lot of responsibility. The responsibility to schedule, to learn, to mediate, and you have the responsibility to make the game fun. The truth is that Dungeons and Dragons is a fragile game. Its wonder and magic is easily broken by poor schedules, by bad players, by inexperienced Dungeon Masters, by differences in what people think is fun, and this list can go on for very long because so much of Dungeons and Dragons relies on the impenetrably complex dynamics of human socialization. More than the fantastical creatures, or spells, or blades, the heart of Dungeons and Dragons are the people that come together because of it. I couldn't shoulder the burden of keeping it beating.

Board games, with their cardboard and wood and cards and dice, became the new core that centered my nights with friends. They asked much less of me: teach people the rules and they can handle making things fun. No more spinning plates to tailor a certain experience, I can place out a different board game for that. No more having to create something only to have it unfound or experienced in a way it shouldn't have, I didn't even have to make it in the first place. No more having to schedule and reschedule because somebody was missing, I can rely on games to survive missing players. On any given game day, I could be a trader, or a fey, or a hero, or a dragon, and sometimes as I laugh with my friends at a move they made I think about how this would've made a good adventure in Dungeons and Dragons. But, here's one final thing that Mr. Cruz never taught me: it never really was about playing Dungeons and Dragons, it's about who I played it with. 

And to my friends who have pieced together who I am through my anecdotes, who have noticed I have quietly substituted in board game nights, who I have not told this inner turmoil, please know it is not your fault. Any time of day, I would love to play in a game of Dungeons and Dragons or any other TTRPG for that matter.

I just don't want to run them anymore.