“Do you want to be a snail?” I ask my friend incrediblely. “How will that help us succeed?” We are creating Dungeon & Dragons characters. Slowly moving mollusks do not appear to be the best choice for our mission.
“Well, in fact,” the dungeon master said, “If she decides to play as a Druruid who can transform into a snail, it can be quite handy. I decided to take his words. After all, no matter how far away I move, it’s his job to take the ideas we dream of and incorporate them seamlessly into an epic fantasy adventure. It was decided: my friend becomes a snail.
As a gamer and fantasy fan, I am well aware of the huge impact of D&D in the tabletop and video games world, and the popularity revival of the past decade, but I have never actually played it. The doorstop rulebook was way too intimidating. Every week, it’s our responsibility to find a group of friends who promise to challenge us in our busy lives.
Such barriers really prompted the creation of an evening venue: RPG Taverns is the new London venue for tabletop role-playing. While a nearby pub clutches a pint with office workers, me and my fellow beginner band descend into the pub’s basement to drink meads, duruids, wizards, and – in my case, singing turtles with a crime past.
1983 “Dungeon & Dragons” Manual © Alamy Stock Photo
Green stuff in the game like us might need a brief introduction. D&D is a tabletop role-playing game in which players create characters and go on fictional adventures led by dungeon masters (DMs). Part board games, some improvisational theatre. Players collaborate rather than compete, and the game progresses through conversation and die rolls. When you try to pass through the guard or throw a fireball with a goblin, you will roll the famous 20-sided die to see if the action will succeed.
But RPG Taverns is not just a place to play D&D away from home, but also a new take on games dedicated to the poor urbanites of time. While traditional games involve a group of friends who gather each week telling long-term adventures that can last for years, RPG Taverns is always available to stop by ongoing stories. The idea is to provide fun, creativity and social joys of fantasy role-playing without commitment.
In a room decorated with colorful flowers and giant toads, DM guides us through the creation of characters, telling us that our avatars are “an extension of our own.” Naturally, my doctor friend chooses to become a clergyman with a healing spell. Another decides to become an ancient wizard, and speaks gameically in a nasty voice for the rest of the night. I choose to be a bard who can inspire the song, inspire the group, and talk about the trouble with a silver tongue.
It quickly becomes clear that DM work is not an easy job. We guide us through the complexity of the rules of the game and encourage improvisation on every turn. He combines narrators, world builders and judges to utter every character he encounters along the way. His storytelling style is delighted with words like “Velum”, “Vitoperative”, and “Bonhomie”. It’s also helpful to have a comedian’s “yes” approach. When one friend (who has not followed the rules perfectly) decides to pretend to be orange, the DM asks the bystanders to roll her death to see if they’ll be taken to her trickery. She rolls five that no one has convinced. However, L was impressed by the ability of DM to subtly apply gaming systems to inventions that are confusing.
“Dungeons & Dragons” was featured heavily in the TV series “Stranger Things” © Alamy
I was surprised how many of my friends other than Gummer wanted to join in the evening. Hobbies such as D&D abandoned social stigma in an era when comic book-based films and Game of Thrones defined mainstream culture. Over the course of 50 years, D&D has grown from the entertainment enjoyed by nerdy male students and brave middle-aged men on pencils and paper to a global phenomenon with a diverse player base using digital tools such as virtual table shops and dedicated apps. Meanwhile, the rules of the game are undergoing a series of transformations and simplifications. Currently in the fifth edition.
This Renaissance is due to the success of monsters in the Netflix series Stranger Things, and it shows off the game in large numbers. Films such as box office revenue in 2023 are honors of Dungeons & Dragons: Thieves. Video games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 that use D&D rulesets for gameplay. Its popularity also skyrocketed during the pandemic. It turned into a virtual campaign as a ritual that provides creative efforts and reasons for meeting regularly for those craving social interaction and escape. In 2020, D&D Publisher Wizards of the Coast reported the game’s most lucrative year (more recently, parent company Hasbro has struggled).
Live streaming technology is creating new ways to enjoy D&D in the “real play” genre, with groups like Critical Roles and Dimension 20 coming together to broadcast D&D campaigns. Some of these attract millions of viewers who have found watching people role-playing is just as convincing as TV dramas. One such series, Dungeons and Drag Queens, featured the star of Rupaul’s Drag Race, and was a great introduction to my own personalities to the game. There was the best outfit.
Numbers for “Dungeon & Dragons” in 1985 © Alamy Stock Photo
Back at RPG Taverns, we decided to lead us with a rather simple campaign as we are beginners. Our adventurers are tasked with finding particularly spectacular sandwiches (“chutney lashings”) that scholars will be used to fascinate the legendary beasts they want to study for the next best judge. Here’s the catch: The sandwich was stolen. This is a manga story, but you can also use D&D to tell serious stories of political plots or focus on strategic combat. It can also expand thematically beyond fantasy, expanding into horror, sci-fi, or realistic settings. This flexibility is key to success in the game as fans and players create whole new games built on their own spells, stories, and even D&D foundations. (There was tension between these homemade inventions and the corporate interests of the coastal wizard.)
After visiting the inventor’s guild and the farmer’s guild, our party eventually finds a sandwich thief sitting on a tree. I cast a charm spell to seduce her, but then a big Griffin gets ready to descend from the sky and attack. My bard is useful, but my teammates throw fireballs and seduce Griffin with their magic roots. Unfortunately, my Druid friends don’t get the chance to transform into a snail, as they have heard from another fellow member that they actually completed their mission to allow scholars to observe Griffin in the middle of Monbat and didn’t have to defeat monsters or thieves.
And we’ll leave them to their unknown fate, and perhaps let other players pick up the story. In the end I realized that it was never really about winning or losing. It was about the stories we shared along the way, laughter and epic sandwiches.
