Why I Roll d20s

I'd love to say that the story of how I started playing D&D and why I don't play other RPGs was a long one. Fortunately for all three of my fans, the story fits nicely into a single blog post that is easily readable in a single sitting. TAKE THAT LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVELISTS!

In high school, I was a quite the geeky dude. I loved Star Wars, loved Star Trek, and played my share of video games. I even dabbled in some board games like Axis & Allies and BattleTech and had just started getting into anime. For all the nerdy hobbies that I had, you'd think that there wouldn't be things that I would look down on or avoid. Keep in mind that this was the same young me that secretly loved Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. All that said, this proto-nerd of my past self hated two things. Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.

My loathing of M:tG stemmed from my lack of understanding. Sure I knew that Magic players, like D&D players, weren't really using magic or conjuring dark spirits. I simply couldn't understand why people would pay a lot of money for little sheets of card board. The idea was so alien to me at the time that the whole game drew my ire. It wasn't until college and living with a lot of other Magic players that I was turned and became a fan of M:tG myself. My dislike of D&D was similar in a lot of ways. I didn't care to play a game where I pretended to be an elf gayly dancing through the woods. The idea simply didn't appeal to me.

I'd also had a marginally bad experience with D&D in the past. My mom had let me and my brother get a old D&D set from a garage sale. We cracked open the book, got out our dice, and tried to play. We really didn't understand the rules, the monster stats, building characters, or anything other than the pictures in the books. We tried "playing" but it just ended up that the "DM" (my neighbor) would just drop rocks on our heads or send dozens of Carrion Crawlers to kill us. After a little while, we got bored and abandoned the game.

Flash-forward to many years later: I'm still in school, and have taken up board games as a legitimate hobby. Board games were new and awesome, beyond the primitive concepts of Monopoly, Risk, or Clue. El Grande, Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, and a host of others brought me into a whole new world. Eventually, we tried out a game called Mage Knight.

Miniature war games had always fascinated me. I loved action figures and Legos as a kid, and these kinds of games seemed like playing with toys for older kids! War gaming was not an easy hobby to get into, and I'd always been stymied by a lack of funds and artistic talent. I couldn't buy the legions of figures required for games like Warhammer, and I didn't have the time, patience or ability to paint said figures.

Then along came Mage Knight, with its pre-painted miniatures and low entry cost. It was glorious! I became a rabid fan, buying up the figs I needed for my armies, and playing when I could. Sadly those days were numbered, as several of my playing partners moved away. I was left with no one to play with and my figures sat on a shelf collecting dust.

Eventually this friend moved back to attend law school, and he brought with him a renewed desire to play Dungeons & Dragons. As it turns out, many of my friends here had played D&D in the past, but there was a decided lack of interest right after college. Reluctantly, I decided to learn how to play. To my shock, many of the concepts and mechanics that I had loved in games like Mage Knight were present in D&D. I learned that D&D had actually started as a tactical combat game, and that the Role-Playing elements had been added later. At its core, D&D was still all about fighting enemies on a board and that was all I needed to get hooked.

Since my first poorly-build Dragon Disciple archer to my new and awesome Goliath barbarian, I've played a lot of D&D over the last few years. We've made the transition from 3.0 to 3.5 to 4th Edition. By my estimation I've played about 30 characters and built many more for indulgence or as NPCs. I've even been a Dungeon Master on a few occasions. All this because D&D is essentially a miniatures game, and that's what I love about it. I've tried other RPGs, and while a lot of them have interesting settings I find that their lack of structure turns me off of them. I love that in D&D, I can build a wizard that will take advantage of a large group of enemies, or a paladin that does his best to keep enemies off of his less-sturdy allies.

I tell people that I like my RPGs with a lowercase r. While that's still true after 5 years of playing D&D, I've also started to embrace the backstories and motivations of my characters. Sure they might be a means by which I justify some cheesy power-gaming build, but that's still growth in my book. Playing D&D is one of my favorite things to do with my friends, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Finally, here's Lady Naga...