The meek and nerdy are now the bold and mighty. D&D has surged these last five years or so, largely because of a new, more accessible rules set and the (surprising to me) rise of live streaming (among other things, including celebrity admissions of fandom). People now willing to sit and watch a bunch of cosplaying nerds have a great time for 2+ hours at a time on Twitch, then go out and want to try it themselves. Who could have predicted this? What time to be alive. 12-year-old me would like to crit a few bullies in the nads for all the pain they put us through in ’83. Roll for initiative, jocks (and save versus my continued, but mighty, scorn).
(I started playing again about 5 years ago after 25 years off, mostly as a way to bridge the gap between our youngest and eldest children, and I even wrote an article about it for the Walrus. I now teach workshops to parents on how to play with their kids. Imagine sitting around a table for hours having a laugh over an exercise in shared story-telling. No phones, no computers, lots of eye-contact, pretending to be elves, and laughing. It’s the creamy middle ground between introversion and extroversion.
Bookninja 