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My Secret Life Playing Dungeons & Dragons and Other RPGs

Hello and welcome to Nerdarchy readers. Nerdarchist Dave here and this article is going to be a little different than most I’ve written. It’s going to be a lot more personal. RPG Games have been a part of my life for a long time now. I was first exposed them at age 5, but it would be a few years later before I’d start playing Dungeons and Dragons regularly with some friends.

Gaming was great for me. It was a way to escape the real world and immerse myself in a fantasy one where the monsters were less scary. In the real world I grew up in the party house. There were drugs, alcohol and violence on a regular basis. It wasn’t uncommon for the police to show up. At an early age I learned not to have friends over because I never knew what they’d see or be exposed to.

One of the few good role models I had in my life introduced me to gaming. His name was Steve and he was taken from us at an early age of 19. He was 5 years older than the rest of us and would play sports with us. It was after a game of backyard soccer that he asked the question, “Do you guys want to play Dungeons and Dragons?” I think only one other kid had even heard of it. For me at had been years, but I remember the mystery and wonder that red box had contained for me. For a time games like D&D, Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Supers games, and many others offered some solace. But soon even my made-up worlds wouldn’t be enough.

What happened after I stopped playing Dungeons and Dragons

After Steve got sick we kind of stopped playing and I started finding other things to occupy my time. I sure didn’t want the kids from school to know I was secretly a nerd. I fell into one of the cliques. It was the ’80s and I was metal head. I started falling deeper and deeper into the wrong crowd, or maybe I just was the wrong crowd. I was 11 years old when one of my mom’s boyfriends offered me my first beer.

That would lay the foundation for what was to come later. For a while I lived in these two worlds where I’d be kind of normal outside my house and could escape into made-up worlds, but at home I’d be allowed to hang with the grown ups drinking and playing cards. This is all relevant because when it came time for me to decide if I was going to be a gaming nerd or loser I had to choose between what I thought was socially acceptable and what I considered social suicide. Either way I’d use my choice as a way to cope with the madness in my home life.

I took the path of what I considered easiest and less uncomfortable of the two choices. It would be years and a whole lot of pain before I’d play RPG games again. I often reflect on what would have happened if I would have just embraced who I really was and had the courage to not worry about what other people thought of me. For years I lived in internal conflict due to this.

My choices would lead me two places that would shape the rest of my life. First I got arrested and I was terrified. People were throwing out terms like 15, 10, and 7 years in prison. No, I didn’t kill anyone. I was arrested with PCP and 42 hits of LSD. It would all fit in the palm of your hand, but in the end that didn’t matter. I was a drug dealer and gonna have to pay the piper.

My career lasted about two months. Apparently I wasn’t very good at it. I had hard choices to make and was even considering fleeing the state. In the end I decided I wanted to take my medicine and be done with it.

Best decision of my life. The whole process took over a year and in that time I decided I was going live a different way. That was about the time I met my now wife Steph and her little brother Ted.

As you might imagine I wasn’t well received by her parents. Long haired, tattooed and dressing kind of like a biker. I think I made quite the impression. Heck, Ted still wears his hair long to this day.

I walked in dating his sister looking like a reject and then I proceeded to school Ted and all of his little nerd friends in chess. What they didn’t know at the time was I secretly yearned to be like them.

Nope still not playing Dungeons and Dragons yet

Ted, Nate and Ryan would become part of our core gaming group, but that comes later. You see I still had to go away to prison for five months and yup, I got lucky. Next I did 18 months in an early release program. Then I became a productive member of society more or less. What can I say, I am a work in progress. It’s at this point I wanted more from my life then to just grind away at job.

So I reached out to handful of people and started a D&D group that is going on 20 years now. Sure, some of the players have changed. They come and they go, but 19 years later Ryan, Ted, Nate and I are all still gaming together. To me that’s powerful.

It feels good to still be playing Dungeons and Dragons!

If you are wondering what the point of this article is, it’s simple — don’t make the mistake I did don’t be afraid to be who you are even if at your core you are nerd. Go out there and love what you love. Remember stay nerdy and keep playing those RPG Games!

Growing up gaming