By Miles Johnson
There comes a time in most children’s lives when they stop playing pretend with others. We begin to relate to friends and family as who we actually are. Those characters that we spoke through die away.
As we grow older, we find different releases for our senses of make believe. Some turn their imaginations inward and write works of fiction or make art. Video games allow us to become someone else for a few hours. Even board games give us a different world to inhabit. Life is the same game every time, but each play lets you live as someone new.
Despite the variety of outlets, none of them offer the social, open-ended feeling that playing pretend did. I think improv acting and card games like Murder come pretty close, but
for me, nothing comes closer than Dungeons and Dragons.
Before playing D&D, I had no idea how it worked. I had an image in my head of 1980s college students rolling dice at a table, and constantly referring to scribbled on sheets of paper. Dungeons Dragons is nothing like that. We play on the floor.
Allow me a brief explanation of how D&D works. Basically, it is like a do-it-yourself role playing game . It’s the job of the Dungeon Master (or DM, a role filled by me) to create the entire world that the characters occupy. Each week I decide where my players are going, who they’ll talk to, what things look like, what monsters they’ll fight, etc. Nothing, though, is set in stone.
The choices that characters make affect the outcome of different events. Players have free will but not free reign. They must rely on skill checks for most of their actions. What this means is that if someone wants to steal something, they have to roll a 20-sided die to see if they’re successful. Rolling a 15 or higher will nab them some gold, but anything lower would get them caught red-handed. This is where the structure of the game asserts itself.
Visually, Dungeons and Dragons is a pseudo-board game. For the board, I place a large piece of Plexiglas over a grid sheet. For much of the session we may ignore the board.
However, if the characters are in a situation where the dimensions of the space are important, like in battle, I will draw the room in dry erase marker.
Each character is represented by a figurine. These can be anything really. I don’t have many official ones, so I use a skull ring, some Corona bottle caps and lighters for enemies. Anything that fits inside one square of the grid is acceptable.
Battles are the most straightforward part of the game. Each character has moves and hit points. I tend to ignore experience points, and just level players up at the beginning of each weekly session. When a character gains a level they get stronger and learn more deadly moves. Like in a typical video game RPG, this gives players a sense of momentum and accomplishment.
I hope I haven’t given you the impression that D&D is dry. On the contrary, the creative freedom allowed by the Dungeon Master and the players creates endless opportunities for ridiculousness. For my current campaign I have my players competing against a pop group called the Gemstones on missions of diplomacy. One of our characters is named Lady Stemnitza Thunderclap. Another one, Hercule, seduced a member of the Gemstones, only to trap her in a Murphy bed and rob her. To keep the players engaged and to let them do some world building, I periodically ask them to describe how they killed something or what they are wearing to the festival. Although the event was formal, one player insisted that his character showed up naked.
I can honestly say that Dungeons and Dragons is the highlight of my week. The energy generated by six people all creating something together is incredible. When I was a player in my friend’s campaign I couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next and how I would play a part in it. Now that I’m a DM, I’m excited to see how my players find solutions to problems and how I’ll respond to their decisions. As much as I plan out the sessions, they are always unpredictable in the best sense.
While playing Dungeons and Dragons does demand a few hours of your week (or more if you’re the DM), the trade-off is worth it. Remember how much time each day you spent living in a fantasy world while growing up? Indulging in three hours of make believe on a Sunday afternoon seems like a fair trade off. So don’t worry that playing D&D is nerdy, because it’s your chance to revive that sense of silly adventure you may have lost while you were busy growing up.
