Welcome back, paladins and rogues. It's D&D day. We've got all the dankest Dungeons & Dragons memes you'll want to share with the PCs before your next meetup. This week, we asked experienced DM Gnarly Rot to talk about his experience playing the game over the years.
Memebase: When and how did you first get into D&D?
Gnarly Rot: I was 11 or 12 when I played D&D for the first time. I am and have always been a fantasy nerd, and thankfully, I had three other fantasy nerd friends, one of which had the books. At that age, the avatars were particularly seductive—we would often take the games outside and wake each other with play weapons. I've been playing off and on again ever since, though sometimes with very long gaps.
Memebase: What's your earliest D&D memory?
Gnarly Rot: This isn't my first memory, but it's one of my favorites. I was 26, and I hadn't played D&D for almost a decade. There was a huge blizzard, and some friends and I decided to get snowed in together. One friend suggested we play D&D, and we played for the next three days straight. This experience got me back into the game as an adult.
Memebase: Do you have a favorite class?
Gnarly Rot: I almost exclusively DM now, and I prefer this experience to playing. It's a lot of work, but satisfying. However, I like to play mages. They're slow at first, but at higher levels, mages allow for more interesting combat than melee classes. I'd rather turn a monster into a duck than hack it to death.
Memebase: Are you currently paying D&D? How's the game going?
Gnarly Rot: I just started DMing my third campaign in so many years, all part of a large world building project. Some people have now played all three games and so the lore is starting to get fairly expansive, allowing for a lot more role play and harder puzzles.
We just finished the second session. The PCs have all just met each other. They have all been given separate missions that correspond with their respective ideologies and material interests. This game centers around the inevitable centralization of a vast undeveloped land stuck between an empire, a powerful city state run by several cabals of mages with different interests, and a strong native religious culture propagated by druids in the service of a fungal network with essentially godlike powers.
Memebase: Why is D&D special to you?
Gnarly Rot: I use D&D as a consistent writing prompt. I'd like to write a novel eventually, but in the meantime, the games give me practice writing dialogue, developing characters, and world building, all with additional benefit of an attentive audience.