The inevitable has happened: I’ve joined a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Going on two.
Honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. D&D is a melting pot of storytelling, magic, improv, and pure nerdiness. All already staple ingredients in my life.
Friends of friends (now my friends too? how do we know when the gap is closed?) are really into D&D so I joined a new campaign a couple of months ago. Nearly all of us were newbies and could stumble through together with our patient and practiced Dungeon Master (facilitator of the game).
I’ve never played a game before the requires a set of six dice and printed character sheets and a lot of group discussion on whether to torture, kill, befriend, or release our goblin prisoner. (For my part, I argued for some gentle torture, taking him with us as a captive, and then eventually converting him to a member of our party. Maybe there could be a love story. In the end, we let him go).
My character in this campaign is Reese (last name redacted) a rouge and high elf who is currently employed by an (evil?) law firm as an assassin. She’s accompanied Jenny Sinclair (a mage and lawyer) on this quest. Reese is a little in love with her. Jenny maintains the firm boundary of “colleagues.”
On Saturday night, my second time playing in this campaign with the group, we played for five hours, mainly exploring a goblin and ogre invested cavern and eventually rescuing trapped villagers (who we’d been searching for to learn more about the flying castle than had dropped rocks on their town). As a rouge, I get to go super stealth mode and can see in the dark, and I had a lot of fun navigating the cavern and taking out goblins one by one, unseen, while my companions fought and bested the ogres they’d lured outside of the cave.
It’s kind of a hoot. More so the second time when I’d gotten a feel for more of the rules and gameplay (it’s complicated, I couldn’t explain it if I tried). Also, one of our hosts gifted us all with our own dice sets. Mine are red and blue. Excellent.
My Boston friends and I are going to try out a completely remote game as well. This time a magical pirate romp concocted by Lin. I have to do some brainstorming on my character; we’ll probably start off the story sometime this month.
I can see why D&D has enthralled so many nerds over the decades. I’ll keep you posted on Reese and the castle in the sky.
With Love,
Natalie