I mentioned we’re learning to play Dungeons & Dragons as a family. It’s sort of weird that I’ve never played, because I grew up dreaming over my brother’s Monster Manual and Player’s Handbook. I was way too young to play with him and his friends, though. He’s seven years older than me, so when he was making cool hex maps and running campaigns in high school I was just still in elementary school. By the time I was old enough to play my brother was off working on his PhD and D&D was kind of old news, so I really had no one to figure it out with.

The game’s history is surprisingly complicated, but when I was growing up it was seen as a)super complicated to learn, b)so, so nerdy and c)possibly Satanic or crazymaking. I am not making this up. I had a friend in college who claimed she’d had to quit role playing games because they made her unable to tell fantasy from reality*. Also, a lot of kids in our church growing up weren’t allowed to play D&D because it would lead us to occult studies or something. Of course, I was never worried about being Satanic (such an interesting religion) or about being a huge nerd, but the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons play system looked way too complicated to learn on my own.

Eventually I lost interest in that kind of “swords and horses” fantasy altogether. But guess who just loves swords and horses? Mr. Robot and my kids. Also my youngest sister and her husband, who gave us the 5th Edition starter set for Christmas. Mr. Robot loves table top games, the more complicated the better, so he read through the rules and story and tried to be the GM.** He lasted about half an hour as GM. There’s too much hands on acting and decision-making involved, especially when you’re playing with kids, and his circuits fried.

Which means I’m now the GM. I should have been GM from the start. Mr. Robot loves to explore and be surprised in a mostly low pressure environment, while I’m both compulsively organized (let’s make index cards for the monters’ stats!) and happy improvising characters and battle scenes. So I bit the bullet and finally started learning all those fiddly rules I’ve avoided my whole life. This part is exactly as boring as I always suspected, but I’m getting the hang of it.

Our first game session was a glorious trainwreck that got my son’s character (a dwarf druid) accidentally killed right after trying to kill his sister’s character out of spite. The kids were annoying as hell and played like drunk monkeys instead of respectable elves and dwarves, but they can’t wait to play again this Sunday. They’re set on doing this weekly forever.

I’m still not in love with swords and horses, but I like GMing so far. It’s not as good as being John Constantine, but it doesn’t completely suck. I’ve also picked our next adventure, because the starter pack only takes two or three sessions to play. We’re going to take a stab at the Curse of Strahd–I’m hoping it’s a good compromise between Mr. Robot’s swords and horses fixation and my deep need to put vampires in everything. With a little luck, both our family and their characters will have fun leveling up.

*We actually became good friends for a while. Good enough that I’m quite sure she was weird before she ever picked up a 20-sided die. 

**If you’re not familiar, in D&D most people are adventurers, each with their own character, and one person is the Game Master (GM) who reads the story and represents all the monsters and characters the players interact with.