D & D ... Born too late

I missed the whole D&D thing by a just a few years.  I remember hearing my brother talk about playing it a few times.  But by the time I was interested in gaming, we had Atari and then Nintendo and electronic systems that took all the "leg work" out of gaming.  I didn't know much about it.  I knew it was interactive like a board game.  I knew Christians were afraid of it, and even before I knew what it was I knew that this fear was unfounded.  But I never thought about it for years.

Then one day my husband came home from work with an old instruction book that he'd found in the trash.  Lol.. He worked as a trash man and used to dumpster dive a little.  The book wasn't in anything nasty it was just thrown out with other books and magazines.  He'd brought me sci-fi novels and magazines before too. He thought it would interest me since I like sci-fi/fantasy.  As I was flipping through the pages I realized that D&D was just a video game played manually and I was tickled.

You have to keep track of your own body health, armor, and magical abilities all while playing on graph paper.  I remember the maps in simple games like Final Fantasy II looking like a grid.  I just thought it was so neat.  And I had mixed feelings.  On one hand I was glad I missed it... having to keep track of everything seems hard... math in my gaming?  No thanks, I'll pass.  On the other hand, I read that the Dungeon Master got to write the stories, create the maps, and roll for all the antagonists, shop vendors, and random information characters and I was instantly intrigued!  I think that's something I could be really good at and for that I'm a little sorry I missed it all.  It's the fandom that got a way.  Lol.