One of my favorite parts of D&D, and of gaming in general, is teaching my friends. Saturday night, Erik and I got to help Zack workshop his first D&D adventure as a Dungeon Master. I had been trying to get him to run a game for over a year, but he’s been a little gun shy—dice shy?—mostly from his worry of not being familiar enough with the rules alongside the normal stresses of running a game.

So Erik, Zack, and I grabbed some bourbon, called a couple of ride shares, and met up at Zack’s apartment to play through his first adventure with Level 3 characters and pizza. The primary motivation was to give Zack pointers (and validation that he was in fact doing just fine), but Erik nevertheless took the opportunity to create a very colorful half-orc “wizard” (barbarian) who cast sleep by grappling and choking out a goblin and cast knock by smashing a door open without checking first whether it was locked. I had a much more modest half-elf rogue with a backstory that informed my roleplaying but did not otherwise become material at any point.

Of course Zack did great, with a couple of asides to clarify rules and a couple of suggestions apiece from Erik and myself to help run things smoothly. He had a unique setting, some fun characters, and combat went smoothly enough, though he’s still working, as perhaps we all are, to figure out how to balance encounters. He was also gracious enough to put out snacks for us. What a DM!

And of course too we finished the entire bottle of Woodford Reserve. And of course maybe I didn’t go home until at least a couple hours into the AM. And of course it’s possible that I may have taken a couple of extra short rests the next day. It was worth it.