Dungeons and Dragons: Why we play
As an interest-based organisation, Dungeons and Dragons is at the heart of what we do at Bond and Wild. We are inspired by the extraordinary, and consider every opportunity a chance to encourage new interests. We draw on games, storytelling mediums, and group activities to foster meaningful relationships within our communities.
Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game usually played with 2-6 people. One of these players is designated the Dungeon Master (DM) who acts as a referee and narrator. It is their responsibility to guide the other players through the shared fantasy world, provide them with challenges, and adjudicate rules. All the players share in the experience of communal worldbuilding and storytelling.
At its core, D&D is a game built on imagination, collaboration, creative thinking, lateral problem solving, and social interaction. Through D&D we explore worlds both real and imagined and use these learning experiences to grow as individuals, adventuring party members, and as a community. There are many reasons why we play D&D. Some of us join for the immersive worldbuilding, others to fight dragons. Some want to number crunch their way to victory, while others are looking for a new community. Whatever the motivation, we find ourselves gathered at a table, a desk, a computer, with a spark in our hearts and an eagerness for adventure.
For many of us, D&D is more than just a game. It creates a magical, liminal space for its players, where the boundaries between playing and not playing are undefined; D&D exists within any person’s world as much as that person’s world exists within D&D. It is easy to say that six people sitting around a table are playing D&D, but what of the DM who spends hours preparing? What of the players who concoct elaborate plans outside of sessions, reviewing notes and developing their characters' backstory? If they’re not playing, what are they doing instead?
As a Dungeon Master, I spend anywhere between one to ten hours a day thinking about D&D, either incidentally, or actively planning a session. D&D is always with me. As a DM, it is my responsibility to prepare content for the other players, and greater preparation leads to greater enjoyment. Through D&D, both as a player and as a DM, I have made life-long friendships, found an engaging career, and had more fun than I thought was possible!
As D&D players we create our characters from our own values and experiences. They are the things we hide, the things we aspire to be; sometimes all they are is fun. More and more, game after game, as much as we create our characters they in turn re-create us, through our shared experiences in a fantasy land we grow, we learn, and most importantly we adventure. That is why we play.