Geek Confessional: I’ve Never Played Dungeons and Dragons

  1. Geek Confessional: I’ve got (a lot of) game
  2. Geek Confessional: I’ve written for Deep Space Nine, Lois & Clark, and The X-Files (sort of)
  3. Geek Confessional Update: I have the scripts!
  4. Geek Confessional: I once gave a wedding toast in Klingon
  5. Geek Confessional: The Hair
  6. Geek Confessional: I Have a Dream, Disney!
  7. Geek Confessional: I did the fanfic thing
  8. Geek Confessional: I’m a Gilmore Guy
  9. Geek Confessional: Fus Roh Uh-Oh
  10. Geek Confessional: I was brainwashed by Jar Jar Binks
  11. Geek Confessional: I’m a professional wrestling fan
  12. Geek Confessional: I wrote storylines for two wrestling companies (sort of)
  13. Geek Confessional: My First Screenplay
  14. Geek Confessional: My Second Screenplay
  15. Geek Confessional: My Third (and final) Screenplay
  16. Geek Confessional: I’m a Found Footage Junkie
  17. Geek Confessional: I’ve Never Played Dungeons and Dragons
  18. Geek Confessional: I didn’t read C.S. Lewis until I was an adult
  19. Geek Confessional: I’ve only been to one comic book convention
  20. Geek Confessional: I tried writing for dinner theatre
  21. Geek Confessional: My first “book” was a poorly drawn comic series
  22. Geek Confessional: My “second book” was a horrible YA adventure
  23. Geek Confessional: My High School Manuscripts
  24. Geek Confessional: My First Christian Fiction
  25. Geek Confessional: The Return of the Christian Fiction
  26. Geek Confessional: When Dreams Die Hard
  27. Geek Confessional: When the Time Comes to Stop
  28. Geek Confessional: When It All Goes Off the Rails
  29. Geek Confessional: A Super Conference
  30. Geek Confessional: When One Becomes “Three”
  31. Geek Confessional: Time to Get Numb Again
  32. Geek Confessional: An Honor to be Nominated
  33. Geek Confessional: The Ironic Origins of The Hive
  34. Geek Confessional: An Authorial Bucket List

By this point, you may have noticed that I’m kind of a big geek. I’m okay with being called that. It’s an accurate assessment of my personality. And I’ve experienced a lot of geeky things. But there’s one thing that I never done, and I actually kind of feel sad that I haven’t yet:

I’ve never played a single game of Dungeons & Dragons.

I’ve come close. I remember during a high school basketball game, some of my friends in the pep band disappeared into a stairwell adjacent to the gymnasium and busted out the maps and dice and had a game in between songs. When I was in college, one of my roommates bought a D&D-esque boardgame and he played it with a bunch of our friends. I actually participated in that, oddly enough as the story-telling dungeon master. And a few years ago, several of my fellow spec fic author friends who write for Enclave Publishing played the beginning of a campaign set in the Star Wars universe through a video chat party.

But the original D&D. Nope. I’ve never rolled a single die as a fantasy character.

Now the reason why I never played might surprise you. As the son of a pastor, you might think my lack of play was due to the moral panic over the game that was rampant in the ’80s. Bu it really wasn’t. Oh, sure, I heard the stories of how confused kids were being possessed by demons because they were casting spells as part of a game. I heard all about Sean Sellers, who murdered three people and became a Satanist, which his lawyers attributed to his “obsession” with the game. You’d think that I did my best to avoid D&D as a way to protect my soul.

Only that’s not it. I simply never played because none of my friends did. Or, if they did, they never invited me to join them.

And I have to be honest, this kind of bums me out. I’d love to give this a try at some point. I’m a storyteller at heart, and this seems like a great way to tell a story together.

Now I know, this might rankle some folks. After all, echoes of the ’80s panic still warble in some corners of Christendom. But this is what I’ve learned over the years: people usually overreact when they encounter something new that they don’t understand. The mere trappings of magic and sorcery in the game made people nervous and, rather than investigate it, they jumped to the wrong conclusions.

So will I ever correct this? I honestly don’t know. I still don’t know of anyone in my immediate circle of friends who are big into D&D. Maybe someday. But for now, I guess this will have to be one of my life’s regrets.

[bctt tweet=”Author @JohnWOtte has never played Dungeons & Dragons. And he kind of wishes he had.” username=””]

2 Comments:

  1. Well, you just need to get together with my husband. He would set up a game for you. Or come to the next CamasCon!
    http://www.camasmeadows.org/our-camps/camascon/

  2. I never played it either, but my boyfriend at the time was majorly into it. He even made a “character” for me, but we never actually played the game itself. Yeah, I’ve always been THAT kid who would rather make up a storyline and physically play it out with my friends, or boyfriend in that case back then. *LOL* Imagine bows and arrows to play with, dressing in “costume”, and acting out different scenarios that ended with laughter and kissing. I never feared magic since I was/still am a huge fan of Christopher Stasheff and his books that were SMART AND ENTERTAINING with amazing allusions to legend and history with scientific things perceived as the magic that I connected with easily. My Hubby did play D&D, but he wasn’t into it. I don’t think you need to mourn the lack of that experience that much, Writer Bro! IMO, what you have written beats the socks off of any D&D character that I would ever want to see anyone else play, especially with FAILSTATE!!! If anything, THAT series needs to be made into a full video-game! *HUGS* I got my In-Print Proof for BREAKING THE SHACKLES and am reading the FINAL one more time before uploading changes for the 287 page Paperback to be LIVE for sale on Amazon. I’ll do a final edit for the E-Book to match the Paperback as much as I can. Almost there! LUV YA BUNCHES IN JESUS WITH HUGS & PRAYERS! Hope you get over your D&D-Fail-Malaise easily *grins*
    Tonja Condray Klein – http://www.eirinth.com

Leave a Reply