Our little band of D&D’ers (fourth edition, to be specific) first got together sometime in 2010. I think. Maybe it was 2009. Let’s just say “over two years ago” and call it close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, shall we?

I got very lucky. I was in my mid-thirties (and am now closer to forty than thirty) and had heard horror stories of men my age walking into games filled with angst and acne ridden teens. Actually, not so much “stories” as a single story related to me by my friend Ryan, who is also my sci-fi/fantasy friend (sort of like I also have my “soccer buddy” and “politics friends”).

There were six of us to start with: three hard core gamers (including the DM); one sitting somewhere between journeyman and master player; and a newbie. And me, who was skating by on memories of playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (and also Star Frontiers – anyone remember that game? highly underrated) back when there was such a thing and when the whole franchise was owned by TSR and no one had heard of a company called “Wizards of the Coast.”

We played in the post-apocalyptic desert world of Athas. I was a half-elf mage named Cavafy (so named after the great poet and chronicler of Alexandria’s demi-monde). Players came and left. One left, ostensibly to become a DM somewhere else, but mostly, I think, out a certain frustration with the less experienced players (no doubt including myself). Another became a new father. A third’s (the truest newbie) heart simply wasn’t in it. We added a new player, a congressional staffer who, like me, was able to draw on memories of playing as a younger man, when we all had more hair.

As a wannabe writer, ideas kept rolling around in my head for a campaign of my own – an opportunity for me to take on the sacred mantle of Dungeon Master and show off my imagination (which, as I learned, was exactly the wrong way to look at it).

I broached the matter with our DM and (still) de facto leader of our band who, agreed, in theory, to let me try my hand for one or two sessions. But the right moment didn’t arrive until suddenly, it did.

A proper moment in the lives and schedules of both our real selves and our characters emerged simultaneously and we shelved the old world and picked up a new one. Mine.

And I had so many ideas. Too many actually.

It is not, I found, like writing a short story. It is more, to dip into what I’ve learned in my former and sometimes profession, more like managing a political campaign: you’re going try something, but you know there will always be a reaction from the other side and a you’ll be surprised by it a significant portion of the time.

For example, I grew enamored of the idea of “natural rolls.” By which I mean, the players roll their ability scores the very old fashioned way: 3d6 in order. Then, they would create a character based on the randomness of the scores they got, rather than shaping to scores to the kind of character they wanted to play.

Which was cool in one way. It forced the players to get out of some preconceived notions of what they wanted to be and experiment with something they maybe hadn’t expected.

Too bad I didn’t do the same thing (escape from my preconceived notions, that is). Also too bad that I didn’t do anything with the conceit of the characters being “ordinary.” Instead, I’ve wound up giving the players to option to boost their scores up a bit to make things more “normal” (for a D&D character, that is).

And the first session was, well, only moderately successful. I hadn’t developed the knack for keeping the action moving nor for seeming authoritative (which is not the same as authoritarian, which is a pretty negative quality in 99.9% of life’s little moments).

Worst of all, it was too guided. An opening session, with new characters in a new world, tends to be a little directed, pushing the characters down a path. And that’s okay. But I didn’t leave nearly enough room for player agency and that’s something I’ve been struggling with. Sometimes my solution becomes almost like those old, Endless Quest books (also published by TSR), where choice becomes “do you want to do A or would you rather do B?” rather than true freedom.

But I had done it. My first campaign, created (though only partially built as yet) from the ground up. A new world, with peoples, nations, and history.

The continent of Loa, home of a small band of (semi) heroic refugees from the now fallen Sunward Empire, which fell, despite the characters’ best efforts, on the first day of the imaginary world’s entrance into the (semi) real world on a Saturday afternoon, in the meeting room of the Alexandria, Virginia branch of the Fraternal Order of Eagles.