I'm doing what?!?!?!?

A long time ago, in a city not so far away, there lived a teenager. She was a bit of a geek who liked to go to Science Fiction conventions and she found friends who were geeky like her. She ended up discovering D&D with the help of these friends (Dungeons and Dragons for those who are hopelessly un-geeky) and started playing. She bought her player's guide, Dungeon Master's manual, and monsters manual. She had all sorts of dice. Pretty dice. Weird dice (ever seen a 100 sided die?). Lots and lots of dice. She started even occasionally DMing the games (being Dungeon Master, again for those hopelessly un-geeky people, which is equivalent to GOD in D&D).

Time passed and she had her own kids. She moved away from her D&D friends and stopped playing. She packed up her stuff and tucked in a corner but somehow couldn't bear to actually get rid of it.

Then her kids got older and their friends introduced them to this weird thing called D&D. And they came running to their mother telling her how cool it was and she laughed and pulled out her old stuff and showed it to them. She regaled them with tales of adventures she had been on, campaigns she had run, and characters she had made. She was cool (in a very geeky way).

And then the children started talking about DragonBorn and Shardmind and she looked at them with a puzzled expression on her face. 'What are these things you speak of', she asked. And they pulled out 4th Edition and started asking her questions on how to play these things and she said 'I know nothing of these things'. But her children continued to play and have their friends over to play at her house and she heard the crap that they called DMing and she cringed.

She realized the time had come to teach them how to play properly. With die rolls and saving throws. With a real storyline, not just the DM trying to figure out how gruesomely he can kill off the players.

But mostly, with a DM who understands the true power they wield. To be GOD yes, but mostly to hold the sacred trust that the DM must have with the players. To tell a good storyline, to guide their characters to growth, to make it fun and not just slapstick humor. That is the true purpose of the DM and one which I must undertake again to the best of my meager abilities in order to help train up the next generation in the ways of DMing.