Illustration by Andrea Nebhut

Every Friday night, I run a little game of Dungeons and Dragons. Every week at 6 p.m. seven of my friends meet up with me in one of the various lounges around campus, ready to jump back into an adventure of fantastical proportions.

Since the end of August, I’ve been leading this group through a game module known as “Princes of the Apocalypse,” in which our brave band of heroes must risk life and limb to stop a group of elemental-themed villains from awakening their primordial deities and bringing about the end of the world.

As the one running this game, I am the Dungeon Master, or DM, and it is my job to facilitate a fantasy world, act as all the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) that the players interact with during their journey, and to be a fair arbiter of the rules, ensuring that everybody is on an even playing field and that they all have fun. The other seven people in my campaign are the players. They each control a character, who can fully interact with both the other characters and with the world I have laid out for them.

The cast of player characters in my campaign is an amazing list, which really highlights some of the weird, wonderful and wacky characters D&D inspires its players to create. For example, Delilah (played by sophomore Brooke Bitzan), is a tall human woman who worked as hired muscle for an all-female thieves guild before leaving to go on an adventure. In combat, she uses the runic magic of her giant ancestors to augment her physical capabilities, allowing her to grow in both size and strength to defeat her opponents and help her allies. One of our other characters is Barty (played by first-year Jeremy Blackburn), a fashionably dressed minotaur who strives to do good to make up for when he was mind-controlled by an ancient evil and forced to rampage across the countryside.

Without the TriniD&D club, however, I can say with relative confidence that I wouldn’t be able to play this game with these amazing characters. To me, this is the biggest draw for our club. While the monthly parties and the access to one-shots as described in Logan Crews’ recent article are certainly a fun thing to have access to, my favorite part about D&D is this ability to find a group that I can play with every week, and who I can tell a story together with.

Having nearly 180 people in our chat allows me to find people to play with who, like myself, prefer longer sessions (6-8 hours is pretty normal for us) and a more serious tone (though we certainly do have wacky moments, mostly originating from the love-hate relationship between Barty and the Elven archer Ondulum, played by first-year Curtis). While I can’t speak for everybody in the club, it has given me an amazing outlet during my time here, and I’ve met plenty of my closest friends through club activities. It’s one of the most fun things that I do regularly.