David Mason

Oct 8, 2023 | nytimes.com | Keri Blakinger |Jack D’Isidoro |Aaron Esposito |John Woo |Corey Schreppel |David Mason

The first time Tony Ford played Dungeons & Dragons, he was a wiry Black kid who had never seen the inside of a prison. His mother, a police officer in Detroit, had quit the force and moved the family to West Texas. To Ford, it seemed like a different world. Strangers talked funny, and El Paso was half desert. But he could skateboard in all that open space, and he eventually befriended a nerdy white kid with a passion for Dungeons & Dragons.