I'm one of the apparently large number of "lapsed gamers" that 5e brought back into the fold. ...
How about you? Did 5e bring you or anyone in your gaming groups back to gaming? Where are you/they nearly 5 years in?
As a kid who was heavily immersed in sci-fi and fanstasy novels in the 70's, D&D was life-changing. Someone in the adult world had taken the things I loved seriously enough to create a game where you could play in those worlds with your friends. Seemingly overnight in the Chicago suburbs the hobby and book stores had lead figures and Judge's Guild mega-dungeons and small paperbacks with names like "Greyhawk" and "Eldritch Wizardry" with its risque cover. I was introduced to D&D in 1978 and bought the Holmes set with B1 In Search of the Unknown in 1979, playing regularly until I went off to college in 1984. I had a decent collection of core books, modules, and Grenadier figures (I had all twelve of the Dragon Lords figures although I only got around to painting the black and the brass dragons). Once I got to college the guy in the next dorm room invited me to his D&D game but when I saw the crew he was putting together I quickly realized that I would have to choose between D&D social stigma and ever having a chance to date women (sounds mean today but I'm sad to say I was a shallow and judgmental person then). I didn't play again for over 30 years, but never stopped carrying a torch for D&D. A few years after college I was aware that 2e had come out and I recall thumbing through the PHB in a bookstore. I remember thinking that the Barbarian class was stupid. Anyone could be a barbarian - that's just a background. Incidentally, one of my English professors was Dr. Roald Tweet, something of an icon on our small campus. Many years later I read that someone named Jonathan Tweet had written the 3e rules. That seemed like an unusual name so I checked and sure enough he is the son of my English professor, which if you had taken class from him, it would make sense that his son would write a D&D ruleset. For 25 years after my last D&D game I kept a box of my D&D stuff. Between the books and the lead it was heavy. With every move the corners would get a little bashed and the packing tape yellowed. Every so often I would read through one of the core rulebooks and reminisce about playing D&D as a teen. Finally in 2009 we were moving out of state and I thought, "This is stupid. You're never going to play D&D again. Just let that dream die." So I dropped the whole box in the trash on the day I packed up the last of my stuff and moved to Ohio.
Late 2015, a couple of threads spun together to draw me back to D&D. I read an article on Slate about a new biography of Gary Gygax,
Empire of the Imagination. The article mentioned that there was a new version of D&D that was gaining in popularity and that you could download the basic rules for free from the WotC website. A few weeks later, an old high school friend came to town to stay with me to see his team play in the MLS championship. He had played a paladin in my campaign, we used to paint minis together, and he still played D&D with his kids. He told me that they were excited when he told them he was going to stay with the person who had taught him how to play D&D. I downloaded the basic rules, started poring over online discussions and character guides, joined D&D FB groups, built characters even though I had no game to play in yet. I did that for about 10 months and finally bought dice and a PHB and in September 2016 went to a D&D meetup at a bar and launched my AL tempest cleric. It took a few sessions to break the habit of rolling a d20 for a random 1-10 result. When I started the dice sets didn't come with a d10. I've been playing an average of twice a week ever since.
Not five, but two plus years in I have two regular gaming groups and I am currently the DM in one of them running the Goodman Games
Into the Unknown. We are almost done with that and will move into
Rappan Athuk next. I have met more people and made more friends in two years playing D&D than I had in the previous seven years in my current city. I love the 5e rules so much more than 1e. Overall it still feels like D&D and I never pine for the old rules. Well, I wish we still had a random harlot table in the DMG. Maybe it will show up in the upcoming seafaring release. I've built up a new collection of 5e materials and painted some minis. I worry that the 5e wave will crash in a few years and I'll have a shelf of D&D books and no group to play with again.
One of the consequences of such a long lapse is that I don't share a lot of canon with those who have played in the intervening years. I never read a D&D novel, had never heard of Drizzt Durden, never read any Dragonlance, have no connection to Dark Sun, Eberron, Spelljammer. I stopped playing before Ravenloft and Strahd and had no knowledge of them until
Curse of Strahd in 5e. I don't long for the return of the Warlord, Artificer, or Mystic classes. Heck, I still think of Illusionists, Assassins, Monks, Bards, Paladins, Rangers and Druids as the "new" classes. There never was a Spellplague. The history of the Forgotten Realms is lost on me. I'm still Greyhawk at heart, and it's the setting I'm using now in my campaign. Another consequence of my D&D lapse is that my mind is not cluttered with how things used to work in previous editions and I think it helps me take the rules at face value and not get too confused or upset about how the game plays in 5e.
Before D&D I used to be a cyclist regularly riding 250 miles a week until a back injury shut me down for a year. Replacing that obsession with D&D has added about 20 pounds in 2 years.
I also have played Hero Kids with my daughter with mixed results but she likes tabletop gaming in general and really gets into fair tales and magic and fighting monsters. I don't know if she will play D&D, but I have used my D&D adventures as bedtime stories and now she is asking to be one of the characters in the story. We used the PHB to pick out a class - Druid - and some spells, and now we're creating stories together. It's a promising start.
Long post, maybe nobody cares. The OP sparked some memories...
