Master of dungeons.

A couple of months ago, my friend (and bandmate) Pete asked me if I knew anything about Dungeons & Dragons. I am a middle-aged nerd, so, yeah, I know something about D & D. Pete, who also has nerdy interests, had somehow made it to near middle-age without ever playing D & D. Or any other old-fashioned pencil/paper/dice role-playing game.

Even though I haven’t played Dungeons & Dragons in 30 years, I offered to run a game so Pete could experience an old-school R.P.G. first-hand. We invited a few more friends and set a play date — that was today, Black Friday.

After setting the date, I panicked a bit. Because I wasn’t sure where to start. Thankfully, the internet is much more advanced than it was the last time I played Dungeons & Dragons. I quickly found the “Dragons of Stormwreck Isle” starter kit. The kit includes a pre-made adventure (so I, as the dungeon master, wouldn’t have to create one from scratch), an abbreviated rule book (basically enough rules to get everyone through this starter adventure), and five pre-made characters (because creating a different D & D character for each player can take quite a while). Also, the kit includes weird dice, because half the fun of playing D & D is the rolling of weird dice.

Reading through the plot of the adventure, I was impressed with how in-depth it was. When I used to play Dungeons & Dragons in middle school, it was pretty much all fighting monsters. The “Stormwreck Isle” adventure includes plenty of monsters, but it also features interesting non-player characters who can help the players in their adventures. And there are puzzles for the players to solve and mysteries for them to uncover.

My initial guess was that there was way too much going on in “Dragons of Stormwreck Isle” to cover in one gaming session. And I was right — we played about four hours earlier tonight, and in that time Pete and the other three players basically got a quarter of the way through the first of three big adventures defined by the starter kit.

I know I am not a great dungeon master, but I think the players had a good time. And I was happy that they were willing to think through in-game problems they encountered — they didn’t just try to stab and shoot their way out of every situation.

One more thing — for as long as I can remember, Dungeons & Dragons rule books and adventure guides have always featured really cool fantasy artwork. “Dragons of Stormwreck Isle” continues that tradition, and I noticed that several of the artwork’s depictions of heroes were inspired by characters from the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon. As a fan of that cartoon, I’m happy to see the folks running the D & D empire these days are apparently fans, too.

Cover page of Dungeons and Dragons - Dragons of Stormwreck Isle adventure book. Top half of the page is a painting of a blue dragon and a gold dragon fighting each other while flying. Both are breathing lightning. An armored man with a sword watches. The bottom of the page includes a table of contents and editorial credits. Sitting on the page are various blue dice.

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