How Gaming (and Nerdarchy) Helped Save Me
2014 is a year I will never forget.
In May of that year I lost my wife of 12 years to breast cancer. Then in June my father passed away from stomach cancer. In July an uncle died from a heart attack. Even a beloved family pet passed on soon after.
As you can expect, it was quite the tumultuous and emotional year. Everyone experiences grief in their own way, so I won’t compare my own to anyone else, but it did seem for a long while I was falling deeper and deeper into a well of numbness. Also, it seemed there was no way out, that I would never be able to pull myself back up to find breathing space, let alone any peace of mind.
Dungeons and Dragons and Nerdarchy
It also did not help that I live a rather isolated life. My nearest neighbor is a long rifle shot away, I’m surrounded by thick woods, and I don’t particularly have many personal friends in my area. Then there’s the fact I work from home. Nowadays it’s just me and an old, blind beagle, so I spend rather a lot of time alone.
Reading helped me some, but I’m not overly attached to television, so I turned to the world of the Internet.
Always well connected to friends online, I began to seek ways to not only fill my time, but to keep my mind from floundering along negative paths. Eventually it dawned on me I would enjoy tabletop role playing again, not only because I used to enjoy it but because it would give me interaction with other people.
Role playing games, specifically Dungeons and Dragons, had first crossed my path back in 1980 when I had been in seventh grade, what was then called junior high but I believe is commonly referred to as middle school today. I played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and other early games for years, got away from it in college, then returned to it in my twenties when I discovered new friends who enjoyed the hobby.
Eventually, between getting married and a career that ate up 60 to 80 hours a week of my life, I drifted away from gaming. I don’t believe I rolled any dice for at least 10 years.
Now with the isolation that surrounded me, I felt the yearning once again. But what to do about it? I don’t exactly live in a region in which role playing games are a favorite pastime, and the nearest city of any size is about an hour away, which is not easy to travel to because I can’t leave my old, blind dog alone.
Through my current career as a fiction writer, I had kept vaguely abreast of the gaming world, but I had not looked into the newest version of Dungeons and Dragons or any of the other, newer gaming systems. It was time to get myself up to date.
This is where the Internet came in handy. Along towards the end of 2014, I hopped onto YouTube one day and decided to search for anything related to Dungeons and Dragons. Somehow I stumbled upon a review of Dungeons and Dragons 5th ed. The video came from one Noah Antwiler (some of you might know him as Spoony), and he didn’t have good things to say. I found myself nodding along with him, buying into his negative response to the new game.
But I didn’t want to stop there. Not trusting the word of only one reviewer, I decided to keep looking. Soon I discovered a rebuttal review, and it came from the Nerdarchy crew.
How has Dungeons and Dragons Affected You?
Thank God. If not for that video, I might not have returned to role playing. The video itself kept me interested, but more importantly it provided a trail to other videos, and eventually to the Tabletop RPG One Shot Group on Facebook.
My life has not been the same. Since then I have made many new friends online, and I have gamed more in the last six months than in the last 20 years, maybe longer. Through various online groups and friends, I now average two or three games a week. I’ve discovered what are to me new game systems, such as FATE and Pathfinder and Savage Worlds (though I was an old hand at the original Deadlands). I’ve also learned to love Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, though I still play 3.5 from time to time.
If not for gaming, I’m not sure what would have happened to me. Perhaps I would have discovered an old or new love for something else, or maybe I would have continued to sink into a hole from which I could have never climbed out. Believe me, there were times when drowning myself in a bottle seemed like a good idea, but I never succumbed.
I will not suggest that everything is perfect for me today. I still have weak moments, and the occasional day is filled with remorse, but I am better than I was. I can at least wake up not fully dreading the day, and lonesomeness does not fill my constant thoughts. Even if what I’ve got to look forward to is the next throw of the dice, the next foe to be vanquished, the next treasure to be discovered, it is something. I would trade it all for the return of my loved ones, but that isn’t within the realm of possibility, so I will keep rolling those dice and portraying my characters
There are worse things. And I get to meet a lot of new people and have fun while doing it.
And you of course know the drill from here: Until Next Time, Stay Nerdy!
Greg Floriolli
August 27, 2015 at 12:30 amI discovered Nerdarchy the exact same way, by finding their rebuttal to Spoony's video. They've definitely gotten me back into the hobby. I played a lot when I was younger, switched over to D&D computer games mostly, and then gave up entirely on D&D when 4e came out. Nerdarchy and 5e have gotten me back into the hobby. I'll check out that Facebook group you mentioned. Thanks for sharing your story. Stay nerdy, my friend, stay nerdy.
Charles Gramlich
August 27, 2015 at 3:39 pmNever played dungeon and dragons. No one played it in Arkansas when I was growing up. I imagne I would like it though.
Ryan Friant
August 28, 2015 at 3:31 amD&D's as great or as bad as the people you play with. You build stories with your gaming buddies that you still tell 5, 10 years later. Yeah, it's a great hobby to be in and considering other things people can get into, a relatively cheap one!
Ryan Friant
August 28, 2015 at 3:34 amHaha, yeah, we got a lot of juice off of that Spoony vid! I can't believe you left D&D when 4e came out as a D&D PC gamer- 4e was the pencil & paper tabeltop MMO! I played a few sessions of 4e to give it a fair shake, but there's so many other games I'd rather be playing than 4th ed.! Thanks for hanging-out with us in Ted's basement.
Art Wood
August 29, 2015 at 4:47 pmIn my world filled with sorrow and dispar,. Where the people I loved had turned against me and my life had come crashig down, due to sever nueropathy in my feet. I started looking for ways to escape they world. I had always played D&D sense the 1980s but stoped on and off again playing different RPGs and CCGs like Magic the gathering. How ever my true love was story telling with the classic D&D. When 5th edition came out I started looking for reveiws and tips online before I decided to invest in the books due to the bad expeiriance I had with 4th edition. I found the Nerdarchy crew and through them I saw how awesome the 5th edition was and decided to give it a go. With Facebook and the online crew I started to expand into the local D&D community and eventualy got my current group of gamers. All of this has re-sparked my drive to write and tell stories. So for that I want to thanx the Nerdarchy crew
Tony Thompson
August 30, 2015 at 10:52 amA powerful story…thanks for sharing..a lot of us can relate to your life experiences to some degree and how a return to gaming helps soothe the soul. And Nerdarchy has some great videos.
Chris Donovan
August 30, 2015 at 5:23 pmCharles, you can always try playing online. It's becoming a very reliable, and convenient way to play.