A Few Years Later, Our Hero Returns

Well, here I am after a long sabbatical away from tabletop gaming. All it took was a single mention of a TSR-era edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and I launched myself head-first into old-school systems again. I've excavated my dice, and I'm ready to start rolling them into the felt of the dice tray once more.

When I last left the hobby, I was going through some personal stuff. I was battling mid-grade depression, and what had once been a solid OSR community had at that point become toxic.

I turned my attention to board games, then visual art, and finally music before coming back to RPGs only recently. I have been playing in a 5E game (one night online every two weeks) set up by a friend from college, and overall it has been quite fun the last few months. However, I do have to quietly chuckle at myself at all the things that would not feature in a game of my own making:

- The expectation of combat, with one set piece tactical battle per 2-3 hour session.

- Battle maps.

- A general lack of mortal danger.

- The Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

- Skill checks. (A lot of them.)

- Players asking to roll said skill checks in order to do something.

One of the players has indicated that he would like to try running a 2nd Edition AD&D game on the side. He started a character creation session on Discord, which was ill-timed because I was at a real nadir with respect to my depression in the last month. I wanted to do nothing; I saw very little point in anything; I didn't know if I could stand talking to people, etc. Those who have dealt with depression probably know what I'm talking about. Those who haven't hopefully never will.

I had missed a vast majority of character creation, but I did learn that we had a Half-elf Ranger and a soon-to-be-finished Dwarven Thief. Fortunate that I still had my PDF of the Player's Handbook, I was able to open it and slowly refresh my memory. I didn't even have physical dice handy, but I rolled some stats and decided on a Human Cleric. (Maybe I'm unimaginative, but I always gravitate towards playing humans.) The rest of the following half-hour was spent re-familiarizing myself with this game which I had first learned in the late '90s, despite rarely having friends who were willing to play it.

I had merely finished character creation. Within days, I had purchased/ordered new replacement copies of the Dungeon Masters Guide and Player's Handbook. I'm digging out the small mountain of dice I own in no fewer than three tackleboxes. I'm seeking out new content sources, such as The Old Warlock on YouTube (which is my preferred content consumption platform). I'm seeing which blogs I enjoyed a few years ago are still around. I am wondering how many people looked at my own and wondered where I went.

I have yet to play my first session in this new game, but I feel inspired to run a game of my own, even if it means that I have to sacrifice some of my precious little evening time.

The sword, it would seem, has been re-forged.