A personal account
I was first introduced to Dungeons & Dragons when I was nine years old- at a summer camp for teaching kids about technology such as robotics and programming. A pair of camp counselors sought to keep an eager group of campers busy for the hour before lunch, and I was fortunate enough to find myself stumbling upon that group of kids, sitting in front of a whiteboard. I had no idea then what exactly what was happening; frankly, I thought it was a game of Hangman or something mundane. So I sat at the back, trying to follow along.
Those counselors made the game inviting, simple, and streamlined enough for young kids to understand, only focusing on the joys and highlights of conquering a dungeon of dry-erase marker lines. Two parallel lines and a couple of weird squiggles suddenly seemed to be the most dangerous trap-filled corridor that ever came into existence, and the flaming sword which laid in the chest at the end felt like the summit of Everest. The singular sitting of that game then meant nothing- and yet, it meant everything. The group of campers triumphed over the dungeon by lunchtime, but as I stayed behind and sat in front of the whiteboard, I doubted if I would ever want to resurface from that world. Still, the day went on, and so did life.
I didn't play Dungeons & Dragons again- nor did I even think of it- for another decade. I had just finished my first semester of my undergraduate degree at Rochester Institute of Technology, and made plenty of new friends in my major as a 3D artist. I was relieved to find so many like-minded and creative folks- so many creators who daydreamed of great fantastic plots and wonders just as I did. My Dungeon Master and good friend invited me to sit and join at the table with our two other closest friends, and soon I found myself back in the world of endless imagination- punching dragons, defeating tyrants, saving cities. My Dungeon Master showed me that anybody could lend resources and make these adventures free and universal to anybody who was passionate about it- that I could do so, too.
So I started doing it myself. I gathered a group of my closest dorm friends and threw together a simple town with simple people, so that their simple characters might save the day from simple foes. One fight led to another, and characters began to have names- then backstories, and motives, and morals, and secrets. The world suddenly exploded into a whole kingdom, then into several, then into far away lands and foreign countries, and then into whole universes. Suddenly, everybody on the floor of my dorm wanted to play games of their own; students came together in "study groups" just to help each other make character sheets, sprawled on the hallway floors talking the night away about their ideas. It turned into such a frenzy that we broadcasted our final session live for all to witness the dramatic twists that had been whispered and rumored all semester.
I've been playing tabletop role-playing games ever since the duration of my college days and so much so that I even took classes dedicated to studying them and their impacts and implications towards creative world-building and game design. I started picking up new systems and developing new content of my own, and grew closer to my community because of it. When graduation came and friends had to travel separate ways to pursue careers and futures across the world, we had no idea how to capture the passion that existed when we all sat in front of the whiteboard. We were afraid that the magic and the world we built together would be lost; I refused to let such a thing happen.
The final state of the whiteboard after my first completed campaign's final battle and finale session which I ran, broadcasted live to approximately a hundred other college students and alumni (2016)