Cybersecurity Marketers Bring Dungeons & Dragons Speed Campaign to RSAC 2026

The Cybersecurity Marketing Society pulled off something you don't see at most infosec conferences: a live, shortform Dungeons & Dragons session on the floor of one of the world's largest cybersecurity gatherings. RSAC 2026 ran March 23 through 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, drawing cybersecurity, government, and business leaders from across the globe in its 35th year. Right in the middle of that, on March 25, the Cybersecurity Marketing Society carved out space in Moscone South for a D&D Speed Campaign, with Joshua Mason behind the DM screen.

The format was exactly what it sounds like: a compressed, quick-play session designed to get total newcomers rolling dice and making decisions without the usual multi-hour barrier to entry. Speed campaigns strip the session down to its core, running players through a tight adventure arc with pre-generated characters and a DM who keeps the pacing aggressive. For a conference crowd that might never have touched a d20, it's a genuinely smart entry point.

Joshua Mason is an Air Force pilot turned cybersecurity leader with extensive experience in both military and civilian sectors, having spent years training personnel and leading cybersecurity initiatives. He is the co-author of the eJPTv2 certification and currently serves as Director of Cyber Training at Arbitr Security Services. Running a tabletop session for security professionals is, for Mason, a natural extension of what he already does: taking complex, high-stakes scenarios and making them legible to people under pressure.

The Cybersecurity Marketing Society lined up energizing meetups and activities aimed at helping attendees connect and recharge in the midst of the conference week. The D&D Speed Campaign sat within that broader side programming, positioned not as a gimmick but as a legitimate community activation. That's a meaningful distinction. Plenty of conferences bolt on a trivia night or a cornhole tournament; actually running a tabletop RPG session requires a competent DM, structured scenario prep, and participants willing to play a character in front of their professional peers. That's a higher bar.

RSAC 2026 featured more than 700 speakers, 570-plus sessions, and 600-plus exhibitors, which means the Speed Campaign was competing with an overwhelming amount of programming for attendee attention. The fact that it landed at all suggests the Cybersecurity Marketing Society understood something real about its membership: these are people who already think in systems, threats, and decision trees. D&D is a natural fit.

For the D&D community, the more interesting angle is the venue. Conventions like Gen Con and PAX have long hosted tabletop gaming for tens of thousands of players, but seeing a Speed Campaign embedded in a major professional conference as side programming marks a different kind of reach. If security marketers are booking DMs for RSAC, the table is getting bigger in more ways than one.