I don't really get the bug for things. I have exactly one tattoo, only a small handful of Funko Pops, and whether it be board games, vinyl records, or shoes, anything I own that might be deemed a collection is minor and manageable in size. I watch most of the big franchise movies, whether that be Marvel, DC, or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars, and kn🗹ow more than the average person on the street, but less than the biggest fan.
That's how it goes for most things I enjoy, whether that be video games, regular movies, celebrity culture, football, or any of my major interests. The only thing I approach an obsessive level of knowledge for is Taylor Swift and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Simpsons, and both of those are based on over 15 years worth of appreciation, not the uncontrollable urge we might describe as 'getting the bug'. But for Dungeons & Dragons, I have truly, inescapably, finally gotten the bug.
It took a while for the venom from this bite to reach my brain. I didn't dislike the game when I first started, but it was unfamiliar territory for me. I mentioned a modest collection of board games above, and every game we play, I am the one who reads out the rules, who sets up the game. If there is call for one person to oversee the game rather than to actively play, that person is me. With 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons, there were too many rules for🐭 a casual, first-time player to ever read with any sense of completeness. All I could do wa🌱s learn the black and white of what my character could do, and could not do, and that left an ocean of grey for me to float in.
My first campaign was tentative. My usual desire to be the Rule Knower, the Game Shaper, the Voice at the Table was hard to push down. I didn't want to be a bad player, causing unnecessary strife for the DM and the rest of the party, but I didn't want to be a passenger just drifting along either. If you're one of those people who, when the rules to a board game are being read out, says 'let's just start, I'm sure we'll pick it up as we go', I don't like you and you're not invited to my game night. You can't read the whole set of rules for D&D, and when you're playing, the whole point is that you're exploring the unknown anyway. Now that the bug's bite is in my system, I'm sure I could go back to wandering this great unknown peacefully, aware of exactly what my role at the table is. But it wasn't until I sat behind the screen that I first felt the bug's sting.
I wrote recently about how DMing gave me an ജentirely new p🌞erspective on the game, but the infection has only taken hold stronger since then. I didn't gain superspeed or the ability to climb walls, now I just find myself obsessed with this game that only a short while ago I found obtrusively complex, deliberately arcane, and shamelessly derivative. Now I see the opportunity in its depth, the richness in its lore, and the originality in its structure. Best of all, I see it as simple. You write a story then act it out. That's all it needs to be.
In my previous article on DMing, I mentioned having written my own one-shot adventure to play. I'm still yet to roll that one out (TheGamer editors are scheduled to be my guinea pigs next week, so stay tuned for up to date D&D reporting I guess), but I have since also written the first two parts of a nine-part campaign that I have planned out and populated with a mix of classic, lesser known, and homebrew characters, as well as having ran another one-shot this time with minimal tweaking, and prepared the next one-shot in that series. There's still the rest of that series to play out on top of my own written ones too, and another entirely different campaign my regular group almost chose this time, so it's not like I am constantly having to write in order to have something to do. It's merely a side effect of the bug bite.
Maybe that's because what I really have the bug for is less Dungeons & Dragons and more for creation. I've always enjoyed making things that would never come to be - as a kid my notebooks were full of sketches and plans for video games, comic books, theme parks, miniature golf courses, board games, cars... anything I wanted to make I could make it back then with a sharpened pencil and a blank piece of paper. Dungeons & Dragons gives me tools to create these things, to build a world and stories and heroes and adventures all of my own making, but defined and confined into something that can be shared with others by rules I once resisted and even resented. I still can't make my own miniature golf course, but maybe that's an idea for my next campaign.