The atmosphere in the commons on Fridays after school radiates positive energy as the Dungeons and Dragons club roleplay their characters and interact with each other.
“We tend to be outcasts and like people who don’t necessarily fit in with other people,” sponsor Chris Roberts said. “I decided that not everyone in school is going to participate, so why not make a club in which people who don’t typically interact with school programs can feel involved in another way.”
D&D club is more than just playing the game.
“It’s a good time to hang out and socialize with people you may not know that well and you get to bond over shared interests and it’s just a lot of fun in general,” sophomore Jasper Pappan said.
As sophomore Sydney Vaughn described it, each person creates their own characters and they go through campaigns – storylines.
“Your character can use spells, fight, level up to get more powerful and get more health and stuff like that,” she said.
The character you create is entirely your own. You get to choose everything about it.
“They can evolve along the way, so you can start with one class and then just completely change how your character is played,” junior Scarlet Pryde said.
During the campaigns, the members role play as the characters they created.
“Your character is your own personal character so you get to choose how they act, how they talk, how they walk, what their relationship is with the other people in the campaign,” Vaughn said. “Some people in our party don’t go as deep but we all do put on a character, especially when we talk to each other.”
Each session has a dungeon master, or DM, who leads the group through the game.
“I would be kind of like the AI that drives it, so I don’t get to really interact with the world like they do,” freshman Chase Robinson said. “I don’t get to make choices exactly, but I just determine the outcome of their choices and what happens because of them.”
Although you can make your own adventure entirely, the current sessions are using premade books to help guide them through the campaigns.
“The campaign books sort of gives you tips (on) each NPC’s personalities. So I get tips on how this person would act or sort of their mannerisms,” Robinson said. “I just interpret that and when my characters interact with them I sort of roleplay the other person.”
The group meets on Fridays after school until 5 p.m. Although it may seem like a short amount of time, the entire campaign can go on for months.
“Last year our campaigns started the first storyline of the series at the beginning of the year and ended it at the end of the year. We started the new second part earlier this year and we are still continuing it,” Vaughn said.
Ending the campaign is different for each DM and session.
“Some DMs do it to where you kill monsters or complete challenges and you get experience points and when you reach a certain amount of experience points you level up,” Robinson said. “The way I’m doing it for this campaign is like, there’s milestones along the path. So for each heist, that’s a milestone and at each milestone they gain a new level so that way the next time they can do harder things.”
If you’ve even slightly been interested in D&D, then going to one of their relaxed and welcoming meets may be an idea for you.
“I don’t exactly have a firm structure of the group,” Roberts said. “We also typically have some kids who sit down here and play Magic the Gathering, which I’m fine with. We don’t really have a magic club and it’s Wizards Of the Coasts anyways which makes D&D, so why not?”