There are some distinct advantages to coming back to Dungeons and Dragons as an adult. For one, the refreshments are better. Not that I have anything against Nacho Cheese Doritos and Mountain Dew.

Another thing is that if you’ve hung around the game as long as I have — I got my first set of rules back in 1977 or ’78 — you’ve found that the rules have come nearly full circle after the disastrous detour into World of Warcraft territory that was the game’s 4th edition.

The beauty of that is I can dust off a lot of my old materials and with some quick updating get a game up and running again.

But I guess the biggest kick of all, is being able to recapture what were really good times, rediscovering the power of imagination, and sharing that with friends all over again.

I’m old enough now to have passed the game along to my kids, and talking with my son about the adventures he is designing and hearing him recount the misadventures of his friends’ characters is pretty damn cool too.

The writer Ta-Nehisi Coates is another longtime player of the game. He says it as well as anyone: