Dungeons & Dragons Club Starts its First Quests this November

Hello there, brave, young traveler! Would you like to go on the adventure of your dreams? Slay dragons, save villages, and become heroes? Then you should check out the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons Club at ELHS.

“It’s kind of like a board game, but it has everything you would expect from a major role-playing video game,” sophomore and frequent D&D player Josh Cooper said. Several mechanics in video games take inspiration from D&D, from player classes to attack rules. But D&D isn’t just math and rules; there’s also a heavy amount of role playing and creativity that can push players out of their comfort zone.

Starting this month, the club will take place in the library Tuesdays from 2:10 p.m. to 3:30 PM, and welcomes anyone interested in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). D&D is a table-top roleplaying game where players create characters and stories using rolls of dice and basic math to make their scenarios seem realistic.

“It’s always a weird thing to do, but when you’re playing D&D, you want to be that character, and you’re supposed to act as that character,” advisor of the D&D Club and occasional player Aaron Maddux said.

Maddux enjoys watching the club members react to their random rolls through their character’s role.

“You don’t really get that many chances in your day-to-day life to ‘play pretend,’” returning leader of the D&D Club, Dungeon Master, and junior Bo Davidson said. Back in 2020 when Davidson joined the D&D Club, they played a premade storyline, also called a campaign, where a team was tasked with killing a vampire who was terrorizing a local town. However, as tasks can change from the original campaign, the team managed to convince the vampire to stop hurting the townspeople and taught it how to survive like normal humans.

“They were sent to kill the vampire, but instead they befriended it and taught it how to be better, and I had never seen that before,” Mr. Maddux said, recalling the event.

D&D campaigns rarely stick to the script that they start with, through combined efforts and characters diverse skills, the game allows a lot of room for player’s choice. In the future, D&D’s cooperative aspects can help in some unexpected yet beneficial ways.

“I’ve seen people add playing D&D to their resume as ‘collaborating in group efforts,’” Mr. Maddux said. If you need any more reason to check out the club consider the help it could bring you in the future. But for now, go forth on your new journey, daring adventurer.