Boredom Genesis

Being an adult sucks. There just isn’t enough time to do all the things you want to do. Trying to gather other adults together to pursue shared interests just increases the difficulty.

The Mighty Red Box

I've been playing Role Playing Games since I was a wee laddie. For Christmas 1985. I received the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, a.k.a. The Red Box, and I have never looked back. (Thanks, Mom!) I’ve played RPGs in grade school, in high school and in college. I’ve played games on the road, over the phone, on the internet, at home and at work - I even played D&D, on my lunch break, when I briefly worked at Wizards of the Coast - how’s that for geek cred?

But, as the years have gone by, as I and my circle of friends have grown older and our days were overtaken by jobs and responsibilities and “real life” - it’s gotten harder and harder just to find a group to game with, much less find a day and time that’s open on everyone’s schedule. We’ve all tried, and tried, and failed and got together once, and tried again. Add to that the complex subtleties of group chemistry and finding game genres and gaming styles that agree with everyone - it can be a real undertaking. Role playing, especially D&D, might be more popular now than it has EVER been, but somehow that hasn’t helped.

Layer on a three year global pandemic, and, well… it didn’t get easier.

I literally NEED to play RPGs. I need to write adventures, imagine scenarios, roll dice and re-re-re-erase my character sheet. Call it an addiction if you will, but if I don’t play now and then, I get cranky, depressed and, I hate to admit it, unpleasant to be around. I don’t need to play every day or something, but every few months is about enough to maintain me. No, I don’t want to play a board game! If a board game has a rule book that’s longer than an RPG, why wouldn’t I just play an RPG?

So, like any addic… gaming devotee… I turned to YouTube. I watched others play RPGs. It’s okay, but it didn’t really scratch the itch, ya know? I thought back to the old days, in my teens and twenties, TSR and others were doing anything they could to keep gaming going. There were Choose Your Own Path books, and books where you had a real character sheet and rolled dice and full sized solo adventures. Magazines (remember those?) often had short solo adventures. I remember using the random dungeon tables in the back of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide to build a ten level dungeon on the smallest graph paper I could find. Surely solo RPG play must still exist… ?

Sun Tzu said: If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by. (He probably didn’t say that, but what do I know? Nothing is real.) In answer, I say, if you put enough keywords into YouTube, you can find anything you are looking to find. I’m still looking for the right keyword for this week's lotto numbers, but I was able to find some neat solo wargaming and RPG games and YouTube creators. I attached my face to the screen and binged all I could! There is some amazing content by some incredible creators. I was hooked!

Now, in all my years of playing RPGs (does the math… ‘85 to ‘23… 38?!) I’ve usually been the one running the game; the Dungeon Master, the Game Master, the Storyteller (I soon get to add “Judge” to that list - more on that soon.) In the last 20 of those years, I’ve wished I could somehow make my living running games for others. Twenty years ago, that was a Fantasy! But, with the advent of the internet, social media and content sharing sites like YouTube and the new found popularity of D&D, a full time game runner can indeed make a living. Watching those creators got my creative juices flowing. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could be a full time paid gamer, too?

It’s a nice dream. For the moment, I’m a working stiff. I have a good job with a good paycheck. This new creative outlet will hopefully allow me to run and play games. Roll dice and erase character sheets. I’m even taking up miniature and terrain painting because… why not? I want to share this all with an audience of friends, most of whom I haven’t met yet. Give back to the community and to the other creators who have inspired me.

I think this is going to be a lot of fun!