Wednesday, August 3, 2022 Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons – A Timeline of D&D in My Life.

1983-1984. My older sister Leslie starts playing D&D. I know nothing about it except that it’s some sort of role-playing game that she really enjoys. Her character is an elf that she named Druella, and typical of Leslie, she keeps a journal written on Druella’s behalf in the first person. She sends me copies of this journal periodically as she writes more pages. I put them all together and stick them in a file cabinet, too busy to read them and frankly, too uninterested.

1985. D&D starts to get some bad PR. There were some kids that were getting too immersed and were becoming mentally unhinged. My husband and I are engaged to be married and I am living in a house with several apartments, one of which is occupied by a young man who is very deep into D&D. I chat with him a bit about it and am alarmed at what now seems like a rather dark game. He is quiet, socially awkward, and seems to fit the stereotype blooming in my mind of the kind of person who should not be into D&D. I offer up some cautions to him, but don’t really know him well enough to go further.

1987. Leslie passes away. I still haven’t read or responded to the Druella Journals. I forget about them.

2013 or so. Our older sons started getting interested in D&D. Definitely had mixed feelings about it and not sure if it’s a good idea.

2014-2018 By now, our four older boys are all out at the same college out West. They are starting to become part of D&D groups, some of them even taking turns at being Dungeon Masters. I tell my oldest son about the bad PR from 1985 and he pooh-poohs it, telling me that he was aware of it and that D&D didn’t create the mental problems that anyone might have had. He tells me more about the game. It’s kind of intriguing. Plus, it’s a game that requires actual people doing creative things together, face to face. As opposed to video games. And it’s been a great bonding experience for the boys. I give it a tentative thumbs up in my mind.

2018. Suddenly, I remember my sister’s Druella journals. Why didn’t I ever read them? I had this wonderful part of her life just sitting there and I never bothered to read it. Leslie was a very creative person and a great writer – it will be like unearthing new treasure from her life. I race down to the file cabinet to get the journals out. They aren’t there. I look in other files. Nope. Did I give them to her son, my nephew? That seems vaguely possible. I call him. He thinks I gave them to him many years ago and will look for them. Phew! But he calls back. He can’t find them and wonders if they got lost when he moved. I asked him to look again, but he lives in a small apartment and it seems unlikely that they’ll turn up. They don’t. Every so often I look again in my files, but it’s all been in vain. This brings a surprising amount of grief.

2021. One of my sons offers to set up a short D&D game for me to try it when our family gets together in the summer. I forget to reply to the text and he assumes I’m not interested, so the opportunity passes. I’m wishing I had tried it.

2022. I find a set of 100 postcards depicting D&D art from over the years and decide to buy it to send one per week to my two oldest sons – it’s actually two identical sets of 50 postcards. The artwork is interesting and often fantastical. As I send them out, I still think I’d like to try playing the game at some point. Maybe it will happen in 2022!

Thus concludes my D&D Timeline, which was no doubt very tedious to those of you who care nothing about Dungeons and Dragons. Thank you for hanging in there.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning after looking for the Druella Journals one more time. Maybe there’s a place I haven’t checked yet!