My DnD history

Its very slow at work today, so here we go again.

My Dungeons & Dragons history, as a player and DM

I started playing several years ago, at some point in high school, though I don't remember how old I was. A former friend of mine convinced me to join the game he was playing in (3rd edition) so he could spend more time with me. I started playing a Gnome, and her class was Psionicist, which was a huge mistake. I picked it because he was playing one and I know nothing at all about DnD. After one session I realized I needed to change classes, and *poof* she was a cleric. I honestly have no idea how we resolved that in-game. Anyway, that game died after a while, and the DM (his mother, who also became a friend of mine) started up a new campaign. I made a new character, another female Gnome cleric of Ehlonna, hoping to improve on playing clerics. I was already addicted to playing Gnomes, so there really was no other option there ^^; That game lasted quite a while, and was very fun. And even when that game died, we started a new one, and I played a female Gnome bard, discovering how much I love that class too. Throughout all the campaigns and one-shot sessions we played, I also played a sorceress, a rogue, and a human fighter who specialized in archery.

But anyway, I left that gaming group for the most part once I left town for college. For a while, when I would come home, I would join a session or two, but that's died out for personal reasons. I stopped gaming altogether for a couple of years, because there was no desirable game to join in my college town. I was invited to join a 1st edition game, but I really didn't want to because I loved 3rd so much, and I kinda just forgot about it. Then, eventually, I got the idea of starting my own campaign and teaching my friends to play. I taught my girlfriend and two of our friends first, starting off with a very small group. Because it was small, I made an NPC who functioned/functions as a PC (she's another Gnome cleric of Ehlonna, le gasp). However, I had the brilliant idea of inviting more and more people, even though I wasn't very good at first. The group got to be almost 10 people, and it was way too much. At that point, my girlfriend and I were co-DMing, but I was still really frustrated. Soon after the group got that big, people started dropping out anyway, and soon it was back to just me, my girlfriend, and one other friend of ours. At that point the game went on a hiatus, because even though there were just three of us, we could never get ourselves in one place at one time to play. I needed to do research and learn more anyway, so retrospectively, that worked out okay.

That started another period of not really gaming, and both my girlfriend and I started to go through withdrawal. Then a friend of her's at work invited us to a campaign her husband was running. It was 3.5 edition, so I had to get over my refusal to upgrade, but we joined. I played another Gnome bard. Initially I had issue with the setting because it was a blend of modern/fantasy, with magic coming back to the world, and technology/magic is a very firm divide in my head. But in the end I did have a lot of fun, and we made good friends of the DM and my girlfriend's friend from work. As for my campaign, it was still kinda on hiatus, but I was doing work for it when the mood struck me.

After the campaign we had been playing in ended, our DM started up another, and we joined that one too. It was really awesome to play in a campaign with them from the start, as we had joined the previous one after it had been going for a while. For this game, I chose to play a Gnome barbarian, and came up with this idea of playing through the core classes. I was afraid that if I kept playing the same race and the same class I would end up playing the exact same character over and over. Besides, I thought it would be fun to branch out and see what the other classes had to offer. So I started my plan to play like that, with Barbarian first, and skipping over Bard and Cleric (and possibly Fighter) since I've played them already. Anyway, we're still playing that game, and its been very interesting. I've discovered through playing my Barbarian, no matter how much I love her, I'm not really a melee-class kinda person. Also, after this campaign had started, I ran my campaign a couple of times. For the last 2 sessions our DM from the other campaign joined the game, coming up with a character I really enjoy and can't wait to see interact on certain levels with the PC's. My girlfriend and I have also started a mini-campaign that goes along with the original one, where only she and I play, and I'm playing another Gnome bard in that. Sadly, though, my game has been put on hiatus again because of college, but once I graduate in May I'll be able to work on it again and make it even better. Hopefully all who were playing before will still want to play then.

Plans for teh future: Once the current campaign is over, our usual DM's wife is going to run a game. I had initially planned to play a Forest Gnome Druid, but now I think I'll just play a regular Gnome (but still a Druid since that's next on the list). I've also come up with a plot recently for my own campaign, so its not just a string of random encounters. I have a lot of work to do for it, but once I graduate I plan on getting right to it, and making my campaign a regular occurrence (and hopefully one of awesomeness).