Dungeons & Dragons has been on my mind a lot over the last several months. One of my friends offered to start up a group a while back, and I expressed interest. I started reading up a bit on the game, and especially on the potential races and classes I might choose.

I liked the idea of an Aarakocra Monk, but I didn’t even know which edition of the rules this friend of mine had. Still, I started thinking up back stories and trying to understand how some of the rules worked.

That DnD group didn’t go anywhere, but… you know when you see, read, or hear something for the first time, and suddenly you see references to it all the time? That’s what DnD has become for me.

I started seeing tons of DnD themed memes.

A friend of mine started playing with some people he knows in L.A. He even drew the character art for their group.

I found an online DnD-type role-playing community called Role Gate. I haven’t actually signed up or played any games. I’ve caught snippets of some public games, but they’re sort of hard to follow unless you start from the beginning.

And I just finished a short story on Wattpad that was inspired by a board game called Talisman, which was created in part by Games Workshop, the same people who created the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 universes.

The point is, my encounters with DnD and role-playing-type things has seemingly increased exponentially ever since that one friend first suggested we play over a year ago.

I think it’s lingered in my mind all this time because I’m interested in the storytelling aspect of it. That same friend even suggested I DM for our nonexistent group, because I’d probably be good at it. I love the idea of building a story like that with my friends, taking characters through quests and adventures.

But I feel like I’m having a hard enough time balancing my own storytelling efforts right now. Trying to plan even a monthly DnD night with friends, learning the rules, designing campaigns, and building characters just sounds… stressful.

This is totally not where I intended this post to go, but here we are. I’m in a funk, probably since last month, but I covered it up by writing a decent bit in WoEL. This month has been way worse, even though I managed to write the last few nights.

The frustrating part is that I want to write. I just don’t have the energy to do so all the time. I have an idea for what I think could be an amazing trilogy of short stories, but I can’t fathom starting a new writing project right now.

I’m hoping to get some real writing done this weekend — like, 2,000 words real. I don’t think our week-long beach vacation in September can come soon enough.

In the meantime, I’ll keep thinking about DnD as a passing fancy, trying to write, and hoping to eventually find time to tell all of my stories, in whatever medium.

Steve D