This is something that's been a long time coming. I've been aware of D&D since I was a kid. I've played Dungeon (the board game) and countless video games on various systems, such as attempting to work my way through the full "Gold Box: Forgotten Realms" collection. I've been interested in playing D&D since I was in high school but never had a group to play with.

At one point I just sort of gave up looking, especially after marriage, jobs, etc. I kept telling myself that I'll have a group when the kids are older and we have a lot of free time on our hands.

Welp. The kids are older and we've had a lot of free time on our hands.

I started with pre-made characters and the basic rules from WotC. Our first run was a very simple adventure I sort of made up as we went along. I kept to a very watered down version of the rules, with some homebrew and a bit of older editions thrown in (I didn't realize you don't have to spend a turn preparing a spell). It was glorious. Our High Elf wizard fired Magic Missile at everything that moved, and several things that didn't. Our cleric found that she could try charisma on any intelligent life and that usually works better than hitting it.

The highlight was probably towards the end when the group cornered the corrupt mayor of the small town and tried to get him to confess. He bolted and two players ran to tackle him. One rolled a nat 1 so of course he tripped, and tripped the other too. The fighter then had a good dex roll and was able to catch up with him. "I swing my battle axe to chop him in half" . Rolls 18. Good times.

We moved on from there and I started some Adventurers League stuff, mostly because there are a few free official adventures available. I ran "Harried in Hillsfar", a starter adventure in "Rage of Demons", and only had to completely deviate from the script for one session (they wanted to go into town, despite not being human and Hillsfar hating non-humans, the whole thing practically wrote itself).

Right now the kids are devouring all the rule books they could find and arguing various match-ups, usually involving a Tarrasque or fifty.