I have spent my entire life hearing about the game Dungeons and Dragons. Since I was a literal child, my dad was trying to get me in a room with my friends and a many-sided die to play a fantasy game that he always described as ‘the real-life hobbit’. So in college, 12 years later, I officially played my first mini-campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, bringing my childhood friends into it and everything. I think my favorite part was creating a character. That was really fun. I didn’t GM the game, so the stress of that was taken away, but being able to create my own full character that interacted with the other players in the game was an exciting part of the process I really thought was original and fun. The game, on the other hand, left something to be desired for me. I know how famous and well-loved this game is, so I won’t try to say it’s a bad game or anything, but I think it just overall left me wanting more. Having to do all the work to get the character just to have a lackluster campaign after everyone was sort of tired from the game was, well, disappointing. I overheard someone in our last class say ‘The worst thing is to be the only one in the group to be into a campaign’ and they were absolutely one million percent right. Since I had organized the whole thing, both my friend and I who had offered to be the GM were into the game for a while, but eventually, everyone else in the campaign was sort of over it, and the whole thing just puttered out. It was, like I said above, disappointing. I know the point is comradery and commitment, and perhaps we read the extensive rules wrong (which defeats my point but could be true, I guess), but there wasn’t really a good enough game mechanic that ‘forced’ players to stay into the game, and I think ‘finishing the campaign’ seemed to not be enough to keep people invested in the game. I know this is counterproductive, but some sort of winning might be necessary for that. Trust me, I know the game is supposed to be about the story, but in this modern world with all this stimulation, it was just hard to convince people of that. I liked the originality of everything, I really did. Having to use your creative skills is something that I really liked about the whole format of TTRPG games as a whole, but I guess I just sort of overhyped the whole thing in my mind. I guess the benefit of traditional board games is that it’s probably short, and someone eventually wins. It gives the game what might just be some much-needed structure. I really do understand that this is a famous, well-loved, historically and cinematically famous game that people really do get into and live, so I trust that I just played it under the wrong setting. Maybe the wrong people or the wrong campaign, but this has not resulted in full disillusionment with the game as a whole. Separately from the campaign that I set up, my roomate plays an online game every Saturday so I want to hop in on one of those sometime as those seem like some really devoted players, and It might be interesting even just to spectate and see how it goes. Overall, I can see the obvious potential and draw of this renowned TTRPG, but I think the setting and the people influence how the play goes far more than the stereotypical board game, with set turns and win conditions, does.
-Spencer O’Brien
