A Love Letter To ‘Dungeons & Dragons’

The legendary role-playing game is more than rolling multi-sided dice — it’s a way to stay connected with people you care about

Dear Wizards Of The Coast,

It is I, neutral evil Dwarf cleric Dvalin Bloodbeard, Savior of the Forgotten Realms, writing to thank you on behalf of my band of brothers for years of fun and adventure.

I know you are a subsidiary of Hasbro, with a corporate office based in Renton, Washington, and a portfolio of intellectual property that includes Magic: The Gathering and the Pokemon game, but to me, you will always, always be the kind, benign benefactors behind a surprisingly sweet and long-lasting foundation of my emotional life, as the owners and license-holders of the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeons & Dragons has been around since 1974, and it’s been yours since you bought out the original publisher of the game, TSR, in 1997. But I didn’t enter into your magical realm, as it were, until May of 2015 when my friend Tanner decided he wanted his bachelor party to feature a game of D&D. Tanner is, in the common parlance, a nerd of the highest order. I believe he would take that as the compliment it’s meant to be — after all, he has spent a good deal of money, time and effort over the last few years buying collectible Jar Jar Binks toys from eBay to decorate his office at work, mainly, I think, as a joke. I think? He also has a Game of Thrones tattoo on one arm.

What Tanner (current character: Tew Tattersails, lawful evil High Elf/werewolf Warlock) wanted for his bachelor party was light years away from the stereotypical bro-fest, something closer to a Rennaisance Fair than The Hangover, with knights and wizards instead of coke and strippers. His friend and best man Jim (current character: Dip Drizzle, chaotic good Seafolk barbarian) gathered four other friends and summoned a Dungeon Master, aka DM, to run the show, and we brought over plastic swords and shields and drank beer and ate pizza in Jim’s living room in the faraway kingdom of Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, as we rolled brightly colored dice to create our first characters. The soundtrack from Skyrim: Elder Scrolls played on Spotify in the background. It could have been an opening scene for Stranger Things 12, following the crew as they enter their mid-thirties and start settling down.

That first game is a bit of a blur. I went straight to Jim’s house from the airport, having just flown back from Berlin, and then slammed a Smirnoff Ice because I’m not totally immune to all aspects of toxic masculinity. But I was immediately struck by the simplicity of the appeal.

The rules were tough to follow, but our bearded, creative and superhumanly patient Dungeon Master Dan was there to explain them. And the characters were largely pre-built, so there wasn’t too much to figure out that first time around.

The outline of the game gave us a clear space to just mess around. There was just play — in the old-fashioned, child-like sense of the word — and that’s a rare thing. It was just a bunch of dudes responding to scenarios with the most fun ideas they could come up with, and occasionally rolling dice. Nice. Simple.

Is there a more sublime feeling in the entire world than rolling a critical 20 just when you need it to smite a hobgoblin with your war hammer?

Oh, the dice! Is there a more sublime feeling in the entire world than rolling a critical 20 just when you need it to smite a hobgoblin with your war hammer? Or one more crushing than rolling a critical miss when trying to persuade a local nobleman that he should support your group’s plan to overthrow a nearby warlord? No, my friends at WOTC, there is not.

And so what I thought would be a fun, kitschy one-off night became four years of regular sessions with good friends. We get together once a month or so, and we roll dice and tell a story and in-between we catch up on what’s going on in our lives.

During that time, three of us have had children, two have gotten married, one’s engaged. (Before I forget, I need to say that my wife would like to thank you as well — nothing brings her greater joy than making fun of me playing Dungeons & Dragons.) We’ve moved houses and sometimes cities, and changed jobs. Some of us (well, me) have lost their hair. We’ve probably all put on weight. But much to all of our surprise our regular D&D quests have become the bedrock of a fellowship that has lasted years — as we’ve moved through the different seasons of our lives, it’s been the bond holding our friendships together. In a world where so many of our relationships are mediated through screens and servers, it feels especially meaningful to spend this time together in person.

So imagine the scene: It’s a Saturday morning, and we gather at Jim’s house in Bay Ridge (yes, he found a new place). Dungeon Master Dan lugs his gear in — a few dozen miniatures, a bunch of extra dice, mechanical pencils (you never have enough pencils at D&D sessions, it seems). Josh (current character: Gallass Aiur, aka Wild Wings, a true neutral Ranger) brings a six-pack of IPA and a half-dozen bags of sweet, savory and salty snacks from Trader Joe’s, including our group’s favorite, the Churro Bites. Isaac (current character: Fell Bjarke, a teenage human lawful good Fighter) shows up a little late, having ridden his BMX over from Park Slope. Dan catches us up on where we left off last time, and we pick up the thread of the game, setting off for a new cavern to explore or town to make our own.

Where we’d otherwise have sports as an excuse to get together without spouses or kids, we’ve been able to create something else: An on-going, collaboratively told story about a rag-tag group of adventurers named the Cold Ones (who are slowly but surely liberating the Northlands). We drink beer and smoke weed, but instead of then turning our gaze to rival sports teams, we pick up where our adventure last left off, and brew up some trouble, get in some fights, and save some Northlanders.

And it’s all thanks to you, Wizards of the Coast. Thank you for creating a weird space full of orcs, arcane rules, and dice.

With fondest greetings,

Scott