DMCF

At the time of this writing I'm less than a week from turning 35. My experience in fantasy started with reading "The Hobbit" when I was about 9. A tough read for sure, but my father told me there was a dragon in it....smart guy

I didn't actually play D&D aside from computer games and M.U.D.'s until I was 33. I started with a homebrew 4e campaign that ended after a few months but it was great fun.

Not long ago I found a local hobby store (Brookhurst Hobbies) and played a wed. night encounter. I'm hooked. Two weeks later I bought Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, had my PHB, MM, and DMG and convinced several friends to play on Roll20. I now run a game Tuesday Night and still play on Wed. I hope to DM the next season of encounters. I am also thinking about DMing a 2nd game on Thursday to meet various friend's schedules.

I'm learning a lot about people as a DM. I'm dealing with challenges I've never seen as a manager in Quality Engineering and Control in a highly regulated industry. I believe being DM is giving me a lot of insight and definitely 'leveling up" my skills as a leader in the real world. Balancing expectation, maintaining control and providing interest is a hard thing to do.

To this day I love D&D more than ever.