Too Old for D&D?

Is there such thing as being ‘too old’ to play Dungeons & Dragons? This is the question I’ve been asking myself lately, and honestly I don’t see a specific age as a requirement. When I was growing up I played with a few of my friends, but I was never as involved as I wanted to be. Now that I’m older (and have my own place) it has become my goal to get a weekly group going. While I know that there are numerous tools that turn this tabletop game into a digital adventure, I miss being able to sit around an actual table and I miss the interactions and bonding that happens. I’ve seen a lot of my video game industry friends stating that they’re heading off to their weekly D&D night, and it makes me crave the entire experience even more. Silly? Maybe, but I love the creativity that comes from playing this game.

So I did it. I went out and bought the player’s handbook, the dungeon master’s guide, and the monster manual (plus two pounds of dice. I mean come on, you can never have enough dice). I downloaded an easy 5e adventure to whet my appetite, printed out character sheets, and asked a few friends if they wanted to come over to play. First session is creating characters. While I have played the game before (AGES ago) I’ve never been a DM. I’m excited about it. I love making up stories and describing locations. I love drawing maps. I am eager to see how players interact to certain things, and responding in kind. Since I’ve never DM’d before I figured the best way to go through the learning process would be to use an already created adventure, which is a lot shorter than a campaign. There are some more complex ones that you can purchase on Amazon, but I just did a quick internet search for a free one that used 5e rules. I don’t want things to be horribly complex, and I imagine that for my first few runs I’ll be quite lax on the “rules”. I’d rather players get creative and get into the story and involved rather than trying to enforce a lot of regulations.

Once I get more comfortable with how things flow, I’m looking forward to creating my own campaigns. I have a notebook ready for.. well, notes, and I’ve already begun planning out what stories I want to run, npc’s to fill my towns, and I’m looking forward to picking up some graph paper so I can hand-draw some maps. That’s right, I said hand draw. Who even does that these days. I know there are other bits and bobs that may be important to pick up along the way (like a play mat and miniatures) but for now those are not essential. Lets just see where this goes.