A little over a year ago, I wrote a post about my glory days of Dungeons & Dragons (“D&D“) living campaigns. I left D&D in 1982 due to the Satanic Panic and didn’t return until 2005. When I came back, Living Greyhawk was ongoing, and the TTRPG culture surrounding it was great. A little later, Living Forgotten Realms came along, and not only did Wizards of the Coast (“WotC“) up their game, but so did my friends and I, running weekly games at up to six Washington, DC area sites for 250+ RPG Gamers’ Syndicate members, plus weeknight stuff (i.e., D&D Encounters), and for two years, a convention. The entire experience was robust, which I think is a perfect word to describe it. Because I quickly grew tired of 5th Edition D&D, all of that fell off the radar for me.

Fast forward to this past week. A new coworker saw a d20 on my desk and asked if I play D&D. The conversation turned to those glory days, and she asked if that stuff was still going on. I told her I’d look into it. I asked around my old channels and got no reply. I went to the WotC store locator, and long story short, there were no official D&D Adventure League retailers in Northen Virginia. Huzzah Hobbies still exists, but there are no D&D games on their events schedule. Everything I came back to in 2005, and last dealt with in maybe 2019, is gone. The only infrastructure is online through social media sites in which my coworker isn’t interested (e.g., Facebook), and as I mentioned above, reaching out to Facebook groups resulted in no responses. She and her husband are in a single online game via Discord but want to sit around a table and throw dice. When I explained how living campaigns worked, she found that incredibly intriguing.

Something wonderful is missing. The community seems disjointed because more than just the game itself has been relegated to technology. TTRPGs have always been social in nature.

You’re probably prone to think this is a function of my age; however, before I was an attorney, I was a database geek. Not only do I not fear technology; I love it. After all, I’m currently creating digital character builders for various games. Applying technology to game play itself is a great thing. I don’t like playing games without digital character builders (hence, my projects). Moreover, my coworker is probably 25 years younger than I (maybe more) and has been playing D&D for less than a year. She has no nostalgic ties to the early 2000s culture. She simply knows that she wants what I used to take for granted, but it’s no longer available in Northern Virginia. Despite not personally needing this real sense of community, I find that sad. Maybe there’s a timely lesson in this that applies to more than just TTRPGs.

You don’t know what you’re missing.

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