Let's Talk DND

 Let's Talk DND

DND or Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game which mostly takes place in a fantasy world with spellcasters and a range of imaginative foes to battle. 

When playing DND, there will normally be a group of friends (in my case, there are 7 of us) who each create their own character to play as. One of these people will be known as either the GM (game master) or DM (Dungeon Master), and they oversee making the story run effectively, write the story, plan out each encounter and help to lead the players towards the ultimate goal of the campaign.

Now, what do I mean by ultimate goal? Each game or campaign, as I’ll refer to it, has a goal that needs to be completed for the game to be over. For example, for the last campaign that I took part in, our goal was to find and defeat a dragon. This quest was given to us by an NPC at the beginning of the campaign, and we spent time navigating different obstacles to get there.

DND is a fun game where you must use problem-solving skills to get over different obstacles before the final one arises. And as much as it can be light-hearted and entertaining, it can also be difficult. You can spend hours on one task only to find out that it was not important to you, so you have basically wasted 4 hours on a single object that is just not useful at all. 

Yes, you did read that correctly. I did say 4 HOURS. DND is not a quick game; in fact, my last campaign took just over two years to complete fully. With each session lasting from 7 pm to 11:30 pm, that’s almost 5 hours of solid game play. It is a commitment. You must be willing to give up an evening of your week to do it. And in my opinion, it is a hundred per cent worth it. 

I started DND when I was in my second year of university. I had just transferred into the Uni and had no friend group at all. Through just sitting next to two amazing girls in one of my classes, I made friends with them and was then invited to join their DND group. To say I was scared was an understatement. This group of people had been friends for over a year at this point, and I was the new girl who had no idea who they were and, more importantly, had no idea what DND was. But they could not have been more welcoming.

They took me into their group immediately and were so patient as I struggled to understand the game mechanics. Truthfully, I’m still not quite there, but I learn more every time we sit down at the table. I very quickly went from the new girl with no friends to part of a group, having made friends who I know will be there for the rest of my life. 

I also fell in love with the game. Being able to fully detach from the real world for a few hours and through myself headfirst into this fantasy is the best feeling. My first character was a rogue called Datari, and I adored her. I made her be everything that I wished I was. She was confident and athletic; she spoke her mind and walked around, throwing daggers at bad guys. What is not to love?

The escapism of the game is one of the best things about it, and I know that if I am ever having a really bad week, I just need to wait for DND. Then I can forget my worries and just take the time to distract myself for a while, be someone else for a change.

DND was originally huge in the 80s before video games had taken over. It dipped slightly as time progressed, having taken up negative stereotypes. People who played DND were seen as weird, nerdy people who had no lives outside of the game. These stereotypes are reductive and slightly offensive to those of us who play the game, as they give us a bad reputation when all we really are, are people who enjoy getting together and playing a game that we love. 

Luckily, there has been a slight resurgence of the game in the last ten years or so due to a couple of online platforms making it entertaining to watch. I am, of course, referring to Critical Role and Dimension 20 here.  Critical Role took the world by storm when they started posting two to three-hour-long videos of their campaign sessions, with Matt Mercer at the helm, the campaigns were the perfect combination of funny and, at times gut wrenching. When watching these episodes, you feel like you are watching a fully formed TV show instead of actually watching 8 people sitting around a table acting as characters. The way they are set out makes you forget that they are not really these characters, and you truly fall in love with each of them. 

Dimension 20 is the first online DND group that I ever started watching. Specifically, I started with A Crown of Candy, a Game of Thrones-esque setting based in a world where every living thing is made from some kind of food. The DM of this campaign is Brennan Lee Mulligan, a marvel to the entertainment world. He sits and writes all of his campaigns from scratch and throws all of himself into them, not once making them boring to the viewers. The players, nicknamed the Intrepid Heroes, are a group of comedians who also throw themselves into their settings and characters, making you feel every emotion that they do, making you laugh with them and more importantly, cry with them. I am still not over Lapin and Jet’s death in ACOC. Damn you, Brennan, I cried for a while from those. You can tell when watching the episodes that everyone truly enjoys being there and that they are best friends. 

It was only when I started these online shows that I fell in love with the game, not just the social aspect of playing it. I learnt so much from them, and I hope to continue to learn more about the game as I continue to watch. 

Ultimately, DND is a game that requires a lot of focus, a lot of knowledge, and it can take ages to learn. But at the end of the day, it is worth it to get to spend time with your best friends. To be able to forget the world and to be someone else for a change is inspiring. I can only hope that people continue to play the game, and all the platforms which give it a good name can continue to make content which inspires people to give it a go themselves.