Dungeons and Dragons is an interactive tabletop game where Dungeon Masters imagine complex fantasy worlds for their party. Party members create characters with different skill sets, personality traits, and backstories. These characters use the rolling of dice to explore terrain, advance in experience and work together to fight off monsters and villains. The storyline can evolve over many sessions, called a campaign, or shorter, considered a one-shot. The school’s D&D club offers multiple student-led campaigns for members to choose from, with a variety of plots and opportunities to make friends.
Dungeon masters take advantage of the creative liberty to create unique conflicts for their party to overcome.
“The general idea is the characters were on a bus and got arrested because they were traveling through this city without a permit… so they get arrested and now they’re in jail and they have to go fight different creatures and go investigate different things, for this government to try to get out of jail,” senior and club president Zoey Walker said.
Junior Dean Shephard has been a member of the club for two years and is currently running his first in-school campaign. He used inspiration from the video game Ultrakill to do so.
“I loosely based it off of something that already has a storyline, but I can tweak it to make it fun for the people in my party,” Shephard said.
Even though individual party sizes tend to stay fairly small, between three to seven people, the club has acted as an enriching social opportunity.
“It’s been nice meeting people I definitely wouldn’t have talked to otherwise… They are some of the sweetest people I’ve ever met,” Walker said.
Sophomore Katherine Guerra has had a similar experience.
“What I really like is the community because it’s almost always growing and so you can meet a lot of new people with different personalities and how they play,” Guerra said.
Guerra joined the club her freshman year without any prior experience with the game, but transitioned into it smoothly with the help of the positive community.
“My parents really wanted me to do a club and I saw some videos about D&D and thought it’d be fun to try out at least once. The person I met in D&D, she really got me to keep doing it because she was nice and welcoming … For me, it wasn’t that hard to get into,” Guerra said.
Club members share an interest in make believe, worldbuilding and fantasy media.
“It’s actually just a love for fantasy and storytelling. I’m really into things like Warhammer” Shephard said.
D&Ds club’s sponsor is George Villanueva and meetings take place on Mondays in room 280. It’s open to new members looking to start a campaign with friends, or to join an existing one through the DM.
“Anyone who likes writing, who likes making characters, who likes fantasy, if you like Lord of the Rings, you will love, probably like, D&D,” Walker said.
