A Love Letter to Dungeons and Dragons

I am a Halfling and my friends are a Half-Elf, Genasi, Half-Orc and a Tiefling. Well, at least for 6-7 hours every other week.

Every couple of weeks my friends and I gather around a table and pretend to be creatures in a fantasy world. Sometimes, we go on fights against an epic evil monster with battles that rage on for hours. Sometimes, we mess around in tavern in-game and mess around with random characters. The true versatility of what you can do is why we return after every session.

Dungeons and Dragons is a game that I got into in August 2018. My friends from work invited me to play with them and from that point, a bond was created. We quickly fell into this world of wonder that our friend Tim had created for us.

For those who do not know, Dungeons and Dragons (also known as D&D) is a game where players roleplay as heroes in a fantasy world, but there’s a twist. There is no script and the players have an infinite amount of things they can do in their world.

For example, in our campaign (essentially the term for the world of your group) I play as a Halfling Druid. My character, Rasmus, has a pet squirrel that he uses to scout ahead and also just talk to sometimes. Sounds crazy I know, but believe me, it is the most fun activity I’ve found myself to be a part of.

The campaign is run by someone called the Dungeon Master (DM) who handles everything from the overarching story of the world to the types of plants the characters see when they are walking along a path in a forest. It’s an extremely important job and my group’s DM is amazing and allows us to essentially do whatever our heart’s desire (within reason).

One time, I told our DM that I wanted my character to have a dramatic backstory and he wrote it up for me and told me all the characters in the world that I knew. He told me the little things like where my character was from to the dramatic twist in my story. My backstory made me so involved in my character and I invested a part of myself into Rasmus.

As the players move throughout the campaign, they encounter harder and harder enemies that they must defeat. Again, there is a twist. You can’t just say: “I stab the monster in the brain and kill it immediately.” You have to roll to hit the creature and roll to do damage.

“Rolling” is the term for rolling a die that determines what happens. For example, if you want to look to see if there are any windows like my character did, you would have to roll a perception check. In this situation, I rolled a natural one which is the worst roll one can get. Our DM told me that since my character is from the forest, I wouldn’t know what a window is.

This one failed check became a long-lasting joke in our group. After the session was over, we laughed about it and I thought that would be it. Instead, my group took that joke home with them and teased me about it. Whenever I messaged our group chat and said I was missing my keys or something like that, they would bring up the fact that I don’t know what a window is. It’s one of the jokes that make playing worth it.

In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, you get to escape the day-to-day problems that you face in the real world. You become your character for a couple hours every week or so and mess around with your friends. In Dungeons and Dragons, you are together laughing at dumb jokes and defeating evil monsters with your favorite friends.

If you are looking to get into Dungeons and Dragons, it is very simple. If you want to play with friends, Polygon released a very comprehensive starter guide here.

Even if you don’t have friends who are up to playing Dungeons and Dragons there are plenty of ways to join a group in Milwaukee. Board Game Barrister in Bayshore throws on events every Tuesday for new players. They also have their own guide to get started in Dungeons and Dragons that I found helpful.

So pull up a chair, become a character that embodies everything you are and play them proudly, and I promise that you will fall in love with the game just like I have.