In 2010, I retired from running weekly face-to-face tabletop roleplaying games. I'd burnt out completely and wasn't interested in running a weekly game anymore, but I did want to keep in touch with my friends.

I proposed we migrate to DDO on the Thelanis server instead of playing face-to-face. A “paradigm shift” in how we played D&D together turned out to be great fun. We were able to maintain weekly three-to-four-hour sessions in DDO voice chat without me having to spend hours each week preparing to run a game.

Discovering I could recreate my beloved cat Ginger Meggs in-game as a Tressym companion, a winged cat, was the best part. He would have loved having wings and chasing birds on their turf. Pooka, my second cat, and Taza, my childhood Labrador Retriever, are also represented in game as companions. Pooka is a black panther and Taza is a wolf cub.