THERE BE DRAGONS

The role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons” has been around since the year 1974, yet last Saturday was the first time I ever played it. Some friends from church and I got together after about 2 months of planning.  Going in, I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into.  I would be playing a game set in a fantasy world in which you would have to make choices and use your imagination. On the surface level, one might think it’s a pretty simple game. But once you play it, you start to realize the layers of content this game has to offer.  There were 5 of us playing. I was a Tiefling Paladin, and my friends were a gnome bard, human rogue, and a reptilian humanoid. (The fifth person was the DM.) Having thought that the game would only last about an hour, I was very surprised when I realized that that assumption was very, very wrong. We played for a total of four and a half hours and only completed part 1 of the campaign.  What I did love though was that the combat heavily relied on your imagination. It’s one thing to play “Skyrim” and see the fantasy combat, but it’s a whole different beast when you have to describe what the combat looked like. I thought I got pretty creative with my character’s war hammer. Another bonus is that the narrative relies purely on your choices.  I like seeing in games on how my decisions have consequences. For example, in the game I lead a solo ambush on a cave full of goblins. I nearly died. This then caused everyone else to get to the cave and aid me in battle.  In the end, I had a blast and would highly recommend this stellar RPG to anybody.