Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game developed by Gary Gygax and David Arneson in 1974. The original concept of the game was to take the idea of wargames and personalize them to a group of heroes on an adventure. The main core of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D for short) is storytelling, as the leader of the game known as the Dungeon Master leads the players through a series of adventures, battles and puzzles. Many of you might be familiar with D&D because of Stranger Things.
I began playing D&D in my freshman year of college when I discovered podcasts, such as Critical Role and The Adventure Zone. From a young age, I have had a fascination with the fantasy genre for its rich storytelling interwoven with the strange and wonderful elements of monstrous beasts, worlds full of magic and of course the heroes, often from ordinary circumstances, who defeated the evils of the world. I partially blame my dad, who forced me and my siblings to watch Lord of the Rings every time it was on T.V.
After establishing myself as a D&D, I began to fantasize about writing my own adventure one day. As a Creative Writing major, I love weaving words into a tale and the collaborative nature of D&D was the perfect platform for practice. This semester, I was determined to actually plant myself in the Dungeon Master’s chair. I studied the methods of different Dungeon Masters (or DMs for short) that I admired, including Matthew Mercer, Griffin McElroy and Brennan Lee Mulligan. After setting up a premise for the world that would take place, I had to find players.
I put my feelers out into the world, finding friends who I knew played and would be interested in a game. After finding a group of four players (a perfectly average number), I created the first session: the introductory adventure for the players. To put it shortly, it involved a bunch of tree spirits and a giant clock in the center of town. At the end of the game, my players complimented the storytelling and were excited for next week.
Even in the 21st century, however, there are many proverbial “dragons” to slay. One of the unique challenges of D&D is asserting yourself as a DM as a woman. While D&D is a game meant for inclusion and is, for the most part, welcoming, there are still a lot of gatekeepers who think that the presence of women, members of the LGBTQ+ community and people of color are “ruining the game for everyone.” However, with the production of shows like The Broadswords, an actual play podcast with an all-female cast and Rivals of Waterdeep, a live stream with an all-black cast, D&D players in the minority are now seeing more faces like them and feeling like they could play too!
If I ever have the money and time, I would love to run my own podcast/stream in the future. I want to place myself into the history of D&D using my voice, the voice of a queer/Jewish woman. If this game has taught me anything in the past year and a half, it is that anybody with a passion and a love of the game has the potential to put their mark on history, just like an ordinary woman who becomes a hero.
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