Five More Dollars
The quest before the adventures
Five more dollars.
That’s all I needed.
Just five more dollars.
I picked up the last birthday card.
“Happy Birthday, Greg!” was written on the envelope.
I took a breath and tore it open.
It was a cheap card printed on thin cardboard.
There was some kind of picture on the front.
A clown, maybe. Or a cowboy.
I don’t know. It didn’t matter.
What mattered was what was hopefully inside.
I pulled out the card, turned it on its side, and shook.
Hard.
A five-dollar bill plunked onto the table.
I grabbed it and put it next to the other five-dollar bill I’d gotten from my Uncle Billy.
Ten dollars.
I had ten dollars.
I had enough to buy Dungeons & Dragons.
I knew what a roleplaying game was.
My older brother played In the Labyrinth.
I‘d heard him talk about the adventures he played with his friends.
Fighting monsters.
Exploring dungeons.
Casting spells.
I understood the concept.
But this was Dungeons & Dragons.
“The” Dungeons & Dragons.
I’d heard older kids talking about it.
They kept saying how hard it was to understand.
How there were all these books and charts and numbers you had to figure out before you could even play.
You think that stopped me?
Not even close.
Sure I was nervous.
But come on — I turned 12 today.
I was going into 7th grade.
But still — a nagging voice in my head tried to convince me otherwise.
“It’s too hard to figure out.”
“You’re too young.”
“No older kids are going to explain it to you.”
And that was the scary part.
I didn’t have a Dungeon Master.
I didn’t even have players yet.
I would have to open the box and figure everything out for myself.
Every time I went to the mall, it smelled like popcorn, pretzels, and whatever perfume was being sprayed at the department store entrance.
I walked past the crowds and headed straight for the toy store.
Once inside, I found my way to the game section.
I liked looking at all the boxes lined up on the shelves.
Board games.
War games.
Games that looked way more serious than the ones stacked in my family closet at home.
But I was looking for one game.
One game only.
The Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set.
I walked up to the section of shelves holding that red box.
I had stared at it before.
Picked it up.
Turned it over.
Looked at the pictures.
Then put it back because I didn’t have enough money.
But now I did.
I had ten dollars folded in my pocket.
My birthday treasure.
I lifted the box from the shelf like it was something precious.
The front showed a warrior facing a red dragon.
A magic user stood nearby, hand raised, ready to unleash some spell that looked deadly.
A fighter.
A wizard.
A dragon.
Heck yeah!
This was exciting.
This was dangerous.
But it was also intimidating.
Because those adventures didn’t happen by themselves.
Someone had to know the rules.
Someone had to tell the story and decide what happens.
I looked at the back of the box which showed what was inside.
Multiple books.
Maps.
And strange dice with more sides than dice were supposed to have.
It didn’t look like a game you could learn in five minutes.
It looked like work.
It looked like something meant for older kids.
For a moment, all those warnings came back.…but I wasn’t putting it back.
No way.
I carried the red box to the counter and handed over my ten dollars.
Then I carried it home.
I don’t remember tearing off plastic wrap or lifting the lid for the first time.
I wish I did.
I wish I remembered every detail.
But I do remember what it felt like.
The books.
The maps.
The dice.
The black and white art.
A whole world packed inside a cardboard box.
And no one standing there to tell me what to do next.
Just me.
Twelve years old.
Trying to understand armor class.
Trying to understand hit points.
Trying to understand saving throws.
Reading pages again when they didn’t make sense the first time.
Rolling the strange dice just to see how they worked.
I didn’t understand everything.
Probably not even close.
But I kept reading.
Because I didn’t need to understand all of it.
Not yet.
I only needed to understand enough to begin.
At the time, I thought the quest was getting the last five dollars.
It wasn’t.
The real quest started when I opened the box.
Could I learn the rules?
Could I run an adventure?
Could I convince anyone else to play?
I didn’t know if I could do it.
But I knew one thing.
I was going to try.
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