My TTRPG Journey

February 22, 2026

I've been playing table top roleplaying games since the early 1990's. I lurked around the TTRPG aisle at Hastings—a now defunct entertainment store much like Barnes and Noble. My parents went to town every Friday or Saturday. I grew up in a rural area, so going to town was a logistical luxury you looked forward to and often planned the week around. I spent a lot of time reading from the Rules Cyclopedia back then. They had a mangled copy, so I never bought it. But I read it every chance I got. That's still one of my favorite versions to this day. Great tables and clear rules. I still use it as a reference for my games. You can find it on DriveThruRPG these days for about $10. I highly recommend it, if you want access to the classic D&D rules in a single book. It's a great way to learn the game, and it's a great reference for experienced players as well.

Then came the revised copies of AD&D second edition. I wanted that Monster Manual. Once I saved up and purchased the Monster Manual, I could create monsters. Those monsters were my characters. I'd roll them up and then write little stories about them. I didn't really know how to play the game, but I was having fun creating characters and imagining adventures for them. The adventures were often very simple and consisted of some action scenes. Mostly it was just the answer to the question: what if this monster fought this monster? Who would win? It was a great way to learn the game, and it kept me engaged until I could afford the next book.

I did that for a while, until I could afford the Player's Handbook. Then I could create characters to play with, but I didn't really know what to do with them either. There were a lot of rules, many of them were optional. I didn't have anyone to play with, so I just made up adventures for my characters and played them out by myself.

I also picked up the Introduction to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons boxed set around that time, which was a great introduction to the game. It had a starting town called Freedale. It also came with this new thing called a compact disc. With cues in the DM guide it came with, you could play the proper track that would narrate the situation. It was pretty cool, but also a little cheesy, even back then. I loved it. What it really showed me was a stripped down version of the game that was more accessible to new players. The character sheets were simplified, and it came with pre-generated characters. The card stocks were inspiring. It was a great way to learn the game, and it kept me engaged.

Then Council of Wyrms boxset came out. You could play as a dragon! I was sold. I saved up and bought it as soon as I could. I was obsessed with that particular module and setting. I came up with a short story about a tournament of dragons which periodically took place in the Isles of Ios. It used AD&D second edition rules, but it had a lot of unique mechanics for playing as dragons. It made the proficiency system, which became the current skill system in D&D 5th edition, matter a lot more. You could learn to fly, breathe fire, and do all sorts of dragon things. It was a really fun way to learn the game. I still have some of the pieces of that boxset, like the cards with character sheets on one side and art on the other. It also introduced the half-dragon race, which sort of became the dragonborn in 5th edition. I might write some more about that boxset in the future, but it was a really fun and unique setting that I still have fond memories of.

I played solo most of the time. I rode to school with my parents, so I got there really early instead of taking the bus. Sitting in the cafeteria, I'd roll up characters, and monsters, just filling my notebooks with ideas. There was only one friend I made in junior high who even knew what it was. He had older brothers who played, but we never played. Satanic Panic was a big deal back then, so it was a bit of a taboo. We didn't talk about it much, but we both knew what it was. DnD and Mortal Kombat on Genesis with the blood code were the source of anxiety for some parents back then. What a time.