Dungeons and Dragons- My First Experiences and Obsession

    Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is often seen as the silly game the kids in "Stranger Things" played before having to deal with supernatural beings. Other stereotypes around the game usually include jokes about social misfits, the dungeon master wearing a cape, and the weirdos hiding in someone's basement to play the game for six hours or more. The only part of the stereotype that's accurate is playing in someone's basement for hours while consuming excessive amounts of pizza. (Just kidding, my group's dungeon master DID wear a cape.) Getting into the game during the 2020 lockdown was a lifesaver for my mental health, and creative spirit. Having a regular group to meet with weekly and socialize with was fun! (Usually, we held activities online- though we did have a few safe in-person sessions!) And most importantly D&D kept my creativity alive by allowing me to write meaningful characters and even draw everyone's characters in scenarios that happened during the campaign. Needless to say, D&D has become a huge passion of mine and it's not going anywhere.

    I always had a tiny bit of knowledge of D&D, my father had actually played the game himself back in 1980 for a session or two. It didn't strike his fancy and he stuck to one-shot style tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) instead. However, his stories of playing TTRPGs with friends always was something that seemed like so much fun, and I envied people that had that kind of friend group. Until my older sister, Tina introduced me to her group.

    In that group, Tina had been playing a paladin named Jareth (yes, named after the Labyrinth character.) I was also introduced to Ben, who was at the time playing a wizard named Orvan; Thomas, he was the dungeon master at the time; Jill, she played a druid named Sin; and Moe, he played a barbarian named Aukan. I was just there to watch a session to see if I wanted to try D&D with my theatre group back at my high school. But what really happened was I got thrown into the group's shenanigans. Moe had to step away from the game that evening to take a phone call, which seemed to take FOREVER. Everyone was getting antsy and the night was getting later and later. We had run out of ice breakers and nobody wanted to start something new to kill time due to the uncertainty of when Moe would return. Finally, Tina threw me a set of dice and said "Here Raquel, you're now Aukan." And we were immediately thrown into combat. Thomas talked me through what I could do as a barbarian and explained how I would roll the dice and what modifiers to add after rolling. When my turn came up I decided to swing my ax at a spider. I rolled the D20 (a twenty-sided die) and was extremely nervous about my possible result. It was a natural 20! The group had to stop and give high fives for the BEST first roll possible. Throughout the rest of the session, I kept rolling critical hits and it was unanimously agreed upon that I must be part of the group.

    We spent hours that night workshopping the perfect character for me and shopping for pretty dice online. (Please don't ask about my dice collection- I have a bit of an obsession with the pretty math rocks.) Ben told me about bards and how they're so much fun to play. With his advice in mind, I came up with the perfect character and drew pretty designs for her. I spent hours workshopping designs and coming up with a design I felt represented this bard, Elise, perfectly. I worked extensively with Thomas to create a character that would fit into the story of the campaign and creating a logical story to fit her. Being creative and writing a character of my own was exciting! I felt like my creativity was being used in a very practical manner, which seemed like a first for me.

     In my first session playing Elise, it was treated in a celebratory manner. Nobody knew anything about my character aside from Thomas and Tina. (They were heavily involved in the building process.) Introducing my character as a side character in a performance and then animating her through role-play was such a fun experience! I felt like I was in a theatre production again! The session was structured out as a tavern game-styled session to allow for some low-stakes play in my first full session. Overall it was a big success and we all had won the mini-game!

    After many successful sessions, Thomas decided he needed a rest from being the DM and passed the torch to Ben. Ben decided we must write new characters for a new story. This became the exciting part of my hyper-focus in D&D, writing lots of characters. For that campaign, I wrote a ranger named Axilya. I did not stop writing characters though. I have created about 6 characters since and have let friends create their own stories with those characters. However, I have my favorites set aside for future adventures. 

    Now that I have thoroughly explained I'm the biggest nerd ever; currently, I do not have a D&D campaign running. Honestly, it's not the best feeling after having two really good campaigns with my past group. I love them all dearly, it's just been decided to not play together for a while after some internal conflicts. I still come up with concepts "just in case" because the game is still a big passion of mine and I am not letting it go easily.