D&D is a unique experience

For the last several weeks I've been going to regular Dungeons and Dragons sessions at a local café. I must say it has been a blast.

Normally I only have my own mind and imagination for writing stories. I control all the characters, the setting, and the story. When I read or play a game, it is the opposite; no control over anything. The books are obviously set in stone at publishing and video games offer minor choices or a designated branching point but that is largely the illusion of choice. Tabletop gaming has an in-between that I find most appealing. I control one character, the other players control theirs and the Dungeon Master controls everything else.

I don't know what the other players will do or how they will act. It is a surprise to me. Obviously, being a live game, there are no revisions (as far as I know, DMs aren't supposed to allow mulligans). It is just straight-forward communal story building with no looking back. Beyond the unique experience itself (aside from similar tabletop role playing games, of course) the sessions themselves are unique.

After we completed a scenario, our DM told us that he had run this particular one three times so far, including ours, and our solution to it was unique. The task was to find a certain town that was the HQ for mysterious happenings in the area. Our party staked out a known agent of this town and followed a messenger. We might not have succeeded if one of our members didn't happen to be able to fly. A different group, said our DM, had a different solution. They asked a wizard (who our group met as well) to cast a divination spell on a medallion originating at the town (that our group found as well) and worked out its location based on what that spell revealed. A third group just wanted to visit all of the towns in the area and stumbled across the one relevant to this scenario. Not knowing of its significance, they wanted to get in just because the town guards wouldn't let them in.

In our most recent session, we had a thrilling battle in the course of the current story arc. It started because none of us thought to guard a vital asset. I was seriously scared we were going to lose it and then we'd have to deal with the consequences. No "Game Over - try again" screen. We would have to deal with the consequences of our failure. Related to this, my character failed an acrobatics check and took enough falling damage to fall unconscious. I was one failed death save from rolling a new character because I'm not sure the party could afford to cast Raise Dead. Fortunately, one of them saved me before that happened.

Because of that, I could continue developing this character. I've spent the last week thinking about a particular combo I could do that would help the party as a whole while also playing to my character's background. It uses the character's class skill set in a way that I haven't taken advantage of yet. I'm looking forward to the next session.


Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).