I have been playing dungeons and dragons (D&D) since 2014. I've been both a dungeon master (DM) and a player but predominately a dungeon master over the years, especially in the beginning. From mid 2022- mid 2025 I haven't played nearly as much, generally sporadically around the holidays and summer time but as of recently have been playing quite frequently. I began with 5e D&D but have been branching out into other table top role-playing systems over the past few years. I'll go over a time line of my games as well as some opinion pieces below.
note: This timeline does not include all games but simply the ones I remember and played for a few sessions. By and large I am not including the many one-shot sessions I have played as they are difficult to remember them and when they occurred unprompted.
2014: My first real character was a human cleric name Geoffrey Lightbane. He survived for maybe five sessions of Out of the Abyss before the game imploded and we stopped playing. This sparked my interest in running the game for my friends as I grew up playing fantasy video games and was instantly hooked.
2015-2017?: This is far back so its hard to remember. I ran a longtime game for three friends, two of which became core players for my future games. The game started off strong but eventually, being a young irresponsible teenager I began to slack on prep and the story grew chaotic. This combined with the fact that one of the players seemed to want outs the game eventually ended.
2018-2019?: Also hard to remember when this game started and ended. This was a game I ran for four players, one of which being my brother. This game really cemented D&D as a hobby and eventually led to one of my friends beginning to run the game as well. Before this point I was practically always a DM. I had some very strong concepts for this game but I remember not being able to implement them the way I had hoped. I eventually called it quits on this game as I was burnt out of running the game and my prep to a ridiculous amount of time.
2019-2020: This game I was actually a player in. I played a half-orc ranger named Tobias Burnwelt. This game was a lot of fun and the party had great chemistry together. My friend did a great job running and create a vibe for the world. We played a particularly memorable dungeon fighting a snake person death cult. The game eventually ended as we got bogged down in-game travel sessions and then COVID and a party member graduating made it so we never played again.
2020: During the pandemic I ran a game for four of my friends in my backyard. This was a lesson in the types of players and the simple fact that some people just aren't that into D&D. Had some great moments fighting kobolds when the party was narrowly defeated and then preceded to role several natural 20s on their death saves, return to life, and kill the remaining kobold. The game fizzled out as fish men killed a player and internal issues in the party boiled over.
2019-2021: During this time I ran a three year long campaign during the summer. This was in the style of westmarches and had a dozen or so players all running around in the world doing what they will. This was my largest scale game going from level 1 to 17 and was a lot of fun.
2021-2022: After becoming obsessed with Conan the Barbarian I ran a game for five friends in a world inspired by what I read. The game eventually fizzled out after the party met misfortune in a temple filled with snake people and they awoke the Night Serpent. Looking back it was a very fitting ending.
2022-2024: This is a period where I played little, probably four times a year or less. I found this sabbatical very rewarding and it let me reflect on why I like D&D. More about these thoughts later perhaps
2024 Fall - 2025 Spring: I decided to start running for a small group of three friends with a game system I designed. This quickly made me realize how it is less about the game system and more about the table culture and how you run. This was a fun time but made me realize that if I was going to play with new players, I needed more than three to keep the action going.
2025 Fall: This has been the D&D renaissance of my life. I am running a game of D&D 5e for eight (yes eight!) players in a weekly game as well as playing online using Dungeon Crawl Classics. I've really fallen in love with the hobby again and want to continue it as I start my professional life (if I have the time . . .). I'm already scheming about future games with a more hexcrawl inspired design but more on that later. The game I'm running now is extremely tropey and classic. In the first four/five sessions the party has already delved into dungeons and fought a dragon. For the online play I've done, my character Mazadoc has already died. This was unexpected and a little sad as I've never really died before while playing D&D. Funny how my first death came 10 years in. Fortunately for me though that character mechanically sucked so I'm hoping my new one has an even better story.