I never wanted to DM again. I tried it once, very briefly, in a home VtM game with two players, each with two characters, and killed them all, in what I thought was an easy fight. I had no idea what I was doing, and it was a hilarious game, but I felt like a failure. Raised by a perfectionist mother, I never wanted to feel that way, so I decided, then and there, I would be forever a player, never a DM/GM/Storyteller again.
Background. D&D players like to spout how long they’ve been playing and all about that Original Red Box and what not. That wasn’t me. I didn’t know DnD existed when I was a kid, or rather, I didn’t know it was a Game. I, like many of my generation, watched the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, but I didn’t know it was anything more than that. Not until college, when my first and second boyfriends got together and started creating a Gaming Guild. They pulled me into a Palladium fantasy game, and soon after, an AD&D (2nd ed.) game. I’d played MUDs and MOOs before, in the early internet days, so it was slightly familiar territory, but we told even bigger stories, and with more friends. I was hooked, and played in multiple RPGs every semester through college.
Fast forward approximately twenty years, and I have a regular Tuesday night DnD (mostly) game that I’ve been involved in ever since I graduated (with a quick jog off to another state for a few years, but then right back again). Oh, and I also discovered Critical Role at a particularly low point a few years ago. Once again, I was hooked by a new fascination. The world of Exandria was rich and new, and when the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount came out, just as the Pandemic began, I bought it and immediately began dreaming of stories I could tell.
That first year of the pandemic, I tried a lot of new things, stuck at home, like most of us. I learned how to write scripts for comic books. I tried my hand at drawing again. And I did the RPG Writers Workshop: Write Your First Adventure with what is now the Storytelling Collective. A thirty day bootcamp to publish a one-shot adventure. And I did. But, as a writer, It wasn’t just a one-shot, it was part of a trilogy of one-shots (of course). So, then I wrote and published the second, and by the end of that year, the third. Each one better and tighter than the last. At least in my opinion, sales do not necessarily agree. 😉 I was going to edit them all for cohesion and to apply all the things I had learned to all three, but then we entered the second year of the pandemic, and motivation disintegrated.
2021, however, did bring vaccines. My Tuesday group, which had migrated to Discord the year before, all got vaccinated, and made plans to get back together in the Summer. We started back in person as the temperatures rose, enjoying a few months of togetherness. Until Delta hit, and school started back up. The parents in our group requested we get back on Discord until the Children were vaccinated, so we did. During these few months of in-person gaming, however, we occasionally chatted about Critical Role (not everyone watches, but enough), and a couple of them mentioned wanting to play Echo Knights out of the Wildemount book. I, tired and unthinking, mentioned that I had a story in mind, to tell in that world, and they all jumped on it.
This is an unusual group, not just for its 20+ years longevity, but for the fact that everyone takes turns DMing. Everyone in the group has run a game for the group at one time or another. Everyone except me. They’ve been trying to get me to run something for a very long time, but no pressure, they always have other ideas. Right now, there are at least three other ideas floating in their respective heads, as well. No pressure, they say, but you’d be great at DMing in that world, it’s clear you love it so much. Sigh.
So, there you have it, folks. A slip of a tired tongue, and I’m going to DM a game for the first time in almost twenty years. Because the story in my head really wants to be told. This blog will follow the my adventures in writing and running this story. For a running account of the story itself, check out my DnD Adventures Blog: Ravonlocke’s Adventures.