Most people’s formative memories of gaming at a table, I’d hazard a guess, involve playing with their family. In all likelihood, competing against them: racing to the end of a track, or scrabbling to make the most money, or trying to defeat their opposing force. But the childhood tabletop-gaming experience that lodges most firmly in my head involves friends, rather than family. And we weren’t competing with each other in some abstracted conflict. We were working together, pooling our imaginations to create a shared narrative.

It all started in 1984. On one level of reality, I was 10-year-old Daniel: a pudgy, nerdy, arty kid, arriving at Bexleyheath Library at 5.30pm on a Friday evening, clutching pencils, dice, a few stat-filled sheets of paper and some rule books, there to check out a new Dungeons & Dragons (or D&D) club. On another level, I was Dar Strongrip (I said I was arty, not good at names), a human fighter, joining a small band of adventurers to explore the cursed and haunted Castle Amber, in search of a hidden portal to another world. We never found this interdimensional escape exit (things went south when our Dungeon Master, a tall, freckled teenager named Andy, upgraded a goblin enemy to a demon), but, thanks to this utterly immersive ‘role-playing’ game, I’d found my own portal to another world.

For a while we played in a local church, but then the Satanic Panic happened

Week after week, I returned, sometimes as Dar, sometimes as another fantasy hero suffering Andy or another Dungeon Master’s trials and challenges. But as Daniel, the appeal was exquisite. This wasn’t like the board games I’d grown up with. I was shoulder to shoulder with the other players (apart from the Dungeon Master, who provided the setting, monsters and non-player characters), just like the gangs of heroes in my favourite movies (like Star Wars or Conan the Barbarian) or books (hello, The Lord of the Rings). In this game, there wasn’t even a board. Sometimes Andy would lay out a gridded map, on which we’d place little lead-miniature figures (which my Mum warned me not to put in my mouth, or I’d get brain damage) to better visualise battles. Most of the time, we’d just play in the theatre of the mind, our weapon swings and heroic efforts determined by the roll of 20-sided dice.

Eventually, we got kicked out of Bexleyheath Library. We were too noisy, apparently. For a while we played in a local church. But then the Satanic Panic happened, with concerned parents both sides of the Atlantic trying to ban this apparently infernal, mind-warping activity, and now we were too evil, too. After that, my parents’ dining room hosted our adventures which, as we got older and the adventures grew more epic, extended further and further into the evenings — much to their annoyance, no doubt. But at least this strange hobby was keeping me off the streets. Until, in my late teens, I naturally switched from imaginary adventures to gigs, nightclubs and boozy suburban rampages, while video games became a more convenient, if less imagination-flexing, way to explore fantasy worlds. 

But D&D was in my DNA now. Culturally speaking, it gave me an outsider mindset (only weirdos and nerds played it, I was told). This, I’d argue, sharpened my critical appraisal of the mainstream — with an admitted tendency towards cynicism that’s gradually mellowed with age. Not to mention the pleasing observation that, as shown The Lord of the Rings movies, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the geeks have inherited the Earth. 

More specifically, D&D’s requirement to role-play made me more comfortable as a performer, pushing me towards school plays, debate teams and even, for a short time, the lead vocalist spot in a punk-rap band (don’t ask). Its encouragement to create back stories and record the events of each game (which linked together to form a campaign, like a TV season) exercised my writing skills, which would eventually replace drawing as my preferred form of expression. I also believe D&D’s mechanism of experience points and levelling up gave me an appreciation for character development that in turn fuelled my closer examination of more traditional narrative forms, particularly movies, which very likely nudged me along the path to becoming a film journalist and critic. The game’s emphasis on collaboration, meanwhile, with success best guaranteed by diversely skilled characters, at least subconsciously made me appreciate the kind of open-minded teamwork required for any shared creative endeavour — such as making a magazine.

It also, of course, opened my mind to a world of analogue gaming that stretches leagues beyond the likes of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuits and Scrabble. Something that stood me in good stead for launching my own independent board-gaming mag, Senet, which has been published now for five years. Plus, for what it’s worth, D&D also made me better at mental arithmetic, though purely by accident.

Most importantly, though, it gave me friends for life. Andy was the best man at my wedding. I was the best man at his. And only last weekend we played D&D together, as we have regularly for over 10 years now, in my own dining room, with the same group of friends we played with as kids. All older, greyer, and still just as happy to be spending a few hours together, shoulder-to-shoulder, on the other side of that magic portal.