2007 - Our Humble Horde Beginnings

It all started when The Plague hit! Oh, no, not that plague, THE Plague, a guild in the immensely popular World of Warcraft game. Chris and Doug were invited to join this upstart guild where they spent far too much time in-game. Eventually Chris rose up through the ranks of guild management and became The Plague’s guild leader and grew The Plague into a full-fledged successful raiding guild.

Like any group of internet strangers does, The Plague had its ups and downs of guild drama, eventually leading to Chris and Doug leaving and creating their own guild, Necrotic, where they would be able to help ensure everyone had a safe place and a caring community to play with. In short time, Necrotic also became a highly successful guild.

2010 - Time to Play Some Dungeons & Dragons

When the World of Warcraft hype started to slow, Doug decided to start an on-line Dungeons & Dragons campaign using D & D Next, the beta version of D & D 5e, to help playtest it. Once Doug’s level 1 starter campaign “The Village Idiots” completed, Chris picked up the torch and began his year-long campaign “The Evening Star” which grew characters from level 1 through level 4.

During this time, Doug registered the DragonsTearTavern.com website to provide support for his and Chris’ campaigns, with lore, forums and a FAQ to help their players. The on-line technologies to play D & D were limited in 2010, and OpenRPG and PCGen were their tools of choice. Many of DTT’s members were introduced to Dungeons & Dragons for the first time during this span.

2011 - Dragon’s Tear Tavern Becomes A Community

With a growing WoW and Dungeons & Dragons community, Doug and Chris were invested in playing these collaborative games together with their friends. But, that’s when the hammer dropped… Diablo III was released and half of the Necrotic guild left to go play, and were never heard from again. Doug and Chris now had a problem to solve, how do they prevent that disruption from happening every time a new popular game releases?

Thinking abstractly, the solution was to create a gaming community, instead of being game focused. A place for anyone to come and chat about their favorite games, but then have the ability to deep dive into a game that they want to play with their friends, no matter what it is. The new and quickly growing community played many different MMOs (Firefall, Mechwarrior Online, Planetside), action RPGs (Big Eyes Small Mouth, World of Darkness), and other PC games (League of Legends, Path of Exile) to name just a few. Finally, everyone had a place to call home that other like-minded people were looking for.

2012 - Developing The Website and Games

To support this growing multi-game community, Doug and Chris re-designed the DragonsTearTavern.com web site to gamify membership. This included customizable profiles, badges for playing / winning / losing games (with badge leaderboards of course), expanded forums, social media feeds, calendar of events, and links to gaming comics and news sites. This site would become the foundation of representing DTT and its members.

During this ambitious time, Chris and Doug also dabbled in creating their own board and card games. Chris dusted off an idea for a card game he had started developing many years back. They iterated on it several times, and even loaded the cards into Vassal (a virtual card game platform) and had begun alpha testing. While life got in the way of the focus needed to develop and test games, it’s a project that could be resurrected sometime in the future!

2012 - SoCal Smackdown

Wow (not WOW), were Doug and Chris busy this year! Not only did they grow their gaming community, work on developing a couple of games, but also got addicted to Monsterpocalypse, a Kaiju miniatures game. After dropping a not insignificant amount of dollars on monsters and supporting armies, they played in several tournaments both in-person and on-line. They loved this game so much, they even ran their own tournament with prize support, at SoCal Smackdown, a local gaming convention! Prizes included homemade MonPoc themed candles and several custom made buildings and monsters that Doug crafted. A lot of organization, blood, sweat, and tears went into hosting that tournament, but it was a huge success with many happy winners. Getting a sweet taste of running events at a convention, Chris and Doug are looking forward to meeting our members live in Las Vegas in 2024 and are even fantasizing about a DTT-con some day.

2013 - Tuesday Night Terror!!!

Did I mention their love for this game yet? As a result of their live tournament the MonPoc community was so excited to keep the momentum going, that Chris suggested taking the tournaments on-line. Over the next three years, DTT ran four Monsterpocalypse tournaments called “Tuesday Night Terror!!!” because the bracket players gathered to play on that night. Each tournament, run through the Vassal board game platform, had roughly 16 players that left crushed cities in their wake until there was only one Kaiju remaining!

2014 - DTT Develops a Mobile App

Once again Chris and Doug found themselves presented with an opportunity. When playing Monsterpocalypse, the community had to refer to printed out spreadsheets to calculate the chances of a monster or units attack success prior to the attack. Doug and Chris engaged a developer friend to help them convert those spreadsheets into a mobile app that made calculations extremely easy. While they were developing this feature, they quickly realized a convention gamer might also want some additional features like a dice rolling app, a 4-player score tracker, a quick way to get DTT’s curated gaming news, and a view into who was on the DTT Discord chat server at the time, all without needing an internet connection because everyone knows how well those work in a convention setting! With over 500 downloads on this gamer specific app, DTT Mobile is a proud tool in the toolbox.

2018 - Board Game Nights

In 2015, Chris and Doug were invited to an in-person board game night at a local comic book shop. With Chris’ game-addictive personality, he quickly became the central focus of the weekly event and grew into the de facto leader of game night. After several years, the number of players outgrew the venue and they decided to move to a pizza place in Fullerton, California and re-brand the Game Night under the Dragon’s Tear Tavern banner. DTT continued to run bi-monthly and eventually monthly in-person game nights until Covid struck down all social activity.

Once the United States Covid restrictions were lifted, and people were allowed to gather again, Chris and Doug quickly restarted this amazing event. The DTT Board Game Night now boasts a typical participation of 30 - 40 attendees per event.

2020 - Virtual Board Game Nights

Immediately after the Covid lockdown, Doug and Chris both knew what had to be done… keep up the spirit of the DTT Game Nights, but virtually since they could no longer meet in person. And heck, why not also run them every week?!? From this, the Saturday night Virtual Game Nights were born and continue to this day, even after they restarted the in-person Game Nights again.

To support this effort, they grew the DTT team to now include Game Ambassadors who are in charge of coordinating and hosting Tabletop Simulator games. Virtual Game Nights typically has 3-4 full tables each playing all the games we love.

2021 - DTT Begins Streaming

After a decade of growth, turmoil, and regrowth, it was time to get back to their roots and play some Dungeons & Dragons again. But Doug and Chris couldn’t just leave it at that, they wanted to go big! So now DTT streams every game. This resulted in three long running campaigns: Descent into Avernus, Voyage of the Tarnished Jewel, and Pool of Radiance.

Playlists can be found on DTT’s YourTube channel. Come join us on the adventure!

2024 - Getting the Members Together in Vegas

With large groups becoming more acceptable and conventions once again becoming a reality, Chris and Doug decided to get the community together to finally meet our friends face to face, play some amazing games together, make some memories, and just have some fun after this crazy Covid mess we all made it through. DTT will be teaching and playing games at the open tables segment of the Dice House West game convention in Las Vegas between March 7th through March 10th. Join us for our biggest Dragon’s Tear Tavern community gathering ever!

What does our future hold beyond that? YOU can help us shape that! Join Us at the Table.