I’ve been interested in Dungeons & Dragons for a while and was wondering how I could start. Mummy found out about a course by Jake from Humanatees and so signed me up. There were two sessions per week – one explaining how the game worked and another one where a big group of us played a campaign.
I was excited for the first week because I had no idea how to play. Jake explained what D&D was and how the game could be played in a lot of different settings, such as: a magical school, a forest or a desert. The second course, where we actually played a proper game, was great because I could learn how to play the game through the eyes of a player.
In the second week we learned a lot about the different types of characters that you can create, such as: humans, dwarves, elves, dragon-born and gnomes. We also learned about the different specialties that each character can have; they can be a cleric, or a mage, or a warrior. You can build your character’s profile and invent their backstory. We learned that it was important for your character to have flaws so they aren’t overpowered. If you’re really good at fighting, you might not be very charismatic, or you might be unlucky.
Jake then told us about playing the part of the Dungeon Master, and creating the story that the players will follow. It was a bit like writing a book, so you have to: choose which world it’s in, not try to have too many ideas and to not be fixed on a particular storyline in case the players decide to do something unexpected.
The last part was about how to be a good Dungeon Master. You have to be careful to think about bosses that are just hard enough for your party to deal with, but not really easy to defeat. You have to try to give your party a way to escape or to avoid combat if they want to. He told us that not everything was about fighting; sometimes characters can fall in love and even get married. He also said that non-player characters (NPCs) are a good way for the Dungeon Master to get involved in the game.
In the adventure that Jake had written, we had four characters: Gwyn (an elf), Merida (a dwarf), Charles (a human barbarian) and Tomas (a halfling bard). A wizard had asked us to go into a dungeon to find Dr D’Eath and to get his evil skull staff. It was great to put all of the things we’d been learning about into practice and to see how our decisions changed the story.
The course has made me want to play Dungeons & Dragons for real. I’m really looking forward to creating worlds and being a Dungeon Master. If I had to pick a character to play the game, I would like to be an elf druid. Druids can shape shift, and I would like to be able to morph into different woodland creatures, all with different skills.
There are two well-known websites where you can find out more about the Dungeons & Dragons world – D&D Beyond, and Roll20, so I will be looking at these a lot more and trying to come up with stories and characters to use in my own campaigns.
Dragon pic by Faith Lehman on Unsplash. Dice pic by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash.
