I’ll be honest, the first time I was asked to play Dungeons and Dragons some time around 2010 I cringed at the thought of it. Sure, I liked board games, played video games and never really shied away from admitting I was a major nerd. But, at the time playing anything like Dungeons and Dragons caused me anxiety and honestly really didn’t interest me.
I was sure the game was going too be way to confusing and the idea of continuous role playing or RP (improv) kinda scared me. I was in drama back in high school and musical theater, but I never claimed to be a good actor and I hated improv. I agreed to go along with it because it was important to my boyfriend (now husband). It never did get off the ground. In-fact, I don’t even recall making it past the character building. I was going to be a dwarf, but that’s about all I can remember.
Fast forward a few years, I now have another group of friends including my husband wanting to play D&D, but they also want to live stream it as a podcast. Excuse me what… okay, okay I’ll do it.
This time, we got a lot further. We never actually did launch it as a pod cast. But, I did complete a character… Tabatha “Tabs” Garnet! She was supposed to be a Tabaxi, Barbarian. Until I found out Tabaxi’s didn’t have stat blocks in 3rd edition D&D. So instead she became a hobby cat (home-brew race for 3rd Edition), Barbarian.
We only really played a few test runs, all of which were combat and consisted of me yelling absurd/ obnoxious phrase before bashing the enemy over the head or kicking it in the butt. All things considered though, I did have fun.
Fast forward to roughly 2 years ago, around Spring 2018. My husband decides he is going to run a game as DM, using 5th edition D&D. I agree to play… reluctantly of course, as I was still kind of on the fence. That being said I dived into character building, wrote almost 20 pages of character backstory and this was before we even played the first game. I know what you might be thinking, “that’s crazy! considering you were unsure if you wanted to play to begin with” and you would be right. But, I really fell in love with D&D 5E and I have been playing this character for 2 years now. The 20 pages of backstory were really just the beginning of my love for D&D, and my character Everly has practically become a part of me.
Playing D&D and Everly, has had a huge impact on my life for the last two years. I never expected the mute Aasimar, Moon Druid to have such a huge impact on my life, but she has.
Playing a mute character made RP not as scary, and I quickly enjoyed building the character. It helped that the other players at the table became just as invested in their characters as well.
I got excited about playing D&D most weekends, I started telling stories about the game to the kids at work, leaving out any questionable details of course. By the time summer came I really realized the effect playing had on my life, and how it was quickly snowballing. I was drawing more! Sure, they were D&D characters, but realistically I should be saying drawing again… not drawing more. I rarely drew anymore, until D&D made me want to. I had over a dozen characters I had built for fun that I wanted to draw, not to mention D&D moments I wanted to put on paper visually. I enjoyed crocheting dice bags for each character and curating dice sets for each.
During the summer of 2018, I kept thinking about how much the kids at work enjoyed hearing the stories and how much they wanted to play. I spent the summer thinking about how I could bring the same D&D experience I was having to them. Fall 2018 I launched D&D at my place of work. As an adult you kinda take for granted the skills associated with playing the game. Watching the kids play was amazing, and I watched them grow by playing this game. But, I’ll talk about that more another time. DMing for the kids made me feel I could DM, something that honesty scared me more then playing ever did.
The long short of it… I have made friends playing D&D, learnt more about myself (and others), grew some confidence in improv even though I know I am not that good and inspired myself to draw again. Dungeons and Dragons might not be a fine art, but it is art! It inspires art not just in myself but others, and in so many formats, drawing, writing and more. So, you can almost guarantee that this probably won’t be the last Dungeons and Dragons inspired blog, and if I haven’t sold you on the D&D being an art form, that’s okay, we still have time!
With Love Always,
Melissa
Thanks Everly For inspiring me to draw again! 