Brandon: Greetings! If you missed part one of this little series you can read it here. For those who have already read part one and for those who don’t wish to the long and the short of it is that popular culture piqued my interest in D&D and I never did get around to actually playing it. The goal of this article is to explain how I finally did start playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Part of it starts with these dice.
7 red polyhedral dice
After all of my interest and never playing D&D I was ready to make it happen. I felt that getting these dice would force the issue for myself. But wait. Why am I now suddenly buying dice? Why am I now hot to get started? It’s actually hard to pin down. I know it had something to do with re-watching Freaks and Geeks. If you have missed this show you should check it out. The show takes place in 1980 and has a wonderful D&D episode titled “Discos and Dragons”. Freaks and Geeks is streaming on Netflix as of the writing of this article.
5 geeks waiting to play D&D
The Gamers: Dorkness Rising may also have had something to do with my new dedication to getting started. It’s an entertaining movie about people playing Dungeons and Dragons that flits between the real world and the game world.
While Freaks and Geeks and The Gamers: Dorkness Rising did have something to do with my sudden urgency to role play as a dwarf or half-orc it was also that our family was playing more tabletop games than before. Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop increased our already keen interest in board games. Tarehna and I used to play Axis and Allies in college and then played Settlers of Catan and The Great Dalmuti with friends after college. We were finding games like Castle Panic and Pandemic and were spending more time playing more and more tabletop games. If anything, D&D was an extension of this activity and inevitable at this point.
But, how did I actually get started. Remember those dice? The ones pictured above? They were a promise to myself; a guarantee. They could not get me where I needed to be on their own. Nor could I, for the life of me, figure out how to get started past buying those dice. Friends to the rescue!
One friend sent me a PDF of the Player’s Handbook 4th edition. It was a good way to try to figure out what I was going to be doing. It seems so simple: get the handbook. That was how little I knew. I didn’t know that all I had to do was get the handbook to start. To an extent that is why sites promoting tabletop gaming are so important. They are guide books.
So, now I have the 4th edition PHB (Player’s Handbook) and I am researching how to play and it’s just not quite taking. There were two issues. The first issue was that I was having a lot of trouble navigating the PDF. The second issue was 4th edition. It wasn’t my thing. It felt too intricate or complicated. More friends to the rescue!
Quick side note and then back to our regularly scheduled programming. I met all of these friends helping me out as an adult. They had all played D&D when they were younger. These are the people I wish I had known when I was younger.
Back to the story! More friends to the rescue! Between two different friends I acquired, free of charge, the 3.5 versions of The Player’s Handbook, The Dungeon Master’s Guide, and The Monster Manual. My two issues were solved. I had physical books and they weren’t 4th edition. Let me be clear. I am not bagging on 4th edition. I am simply stating that it was not for me. Physical books and 3.5 edition were just what I needed.
3.5 edition of PHB, DMG, and MM
To be continued…
Look at that! I can’t believe this is happening. If you check your rule books you’ll see it’s time to end this installment of “Brandon Rambles about D&D”. Up next: A short discussion of games actually played and some tantalizing RPG alternatives to Dungeons and Dragons. Thanks for joining us again and see you next time!
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