TAVERN…’

It’s the classic opener to a D&D session for a reason. It introduces a brand new world—full of magic and monsters and colorful (read: dangerous) characters—in an otherwise low-stakes environment. Like a new party of adventurers entering a tavern, young D&D players get to gradually test the boundaries of their world. “The players get to act out and experience ‘real’ scenarios as a character, rather than as themselves. It’s almost therapeutic,” says Pingree. As teachers and Dungeon Masters, they are not trying to send students down a specific path when they play, rather, they provide the opportunity and a safe place—a whole new world—for students to explore identities and emotions as a character.

Some would argue that playing D&D can be more than just “almost” therapeutic but actually therapeutic. Dr. Megan Connell is a psychologist who literally wrote the book on the subject, Tabletop Role-Playing Therapy: A Guide for the Clinician Game Master, about how mental health professionals are using table- top role-playing games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons, to help clients learn and practice therapy skills in a fun and safe environment through role-played situations.

Through that experience and exploration, Pingree says he has seen students grow and discover themselves. He’s had dozens of emails from parents who are realizing the positive impact playing D&D is having on their students. Pingree says the gaming club also checks off all the boxes for what an administration wants from a school club: it helps build skills in math, teamwork, language arts, socialization, creativity, and so on. So much so, that year two of the gaming club came with a much more substantial budget. And they had some help from the local gaming community. Endzone Hobby Center donated dice and supplies and offered students who visit their store half-off character miniatures.

When we asked these kids what they liked about D&D, the answers were varied…yet similar. While they all enjoyed playing different aspects of the game—combat, roleplaying, strategizing, setting traps, making friends—almost to a student, the answer to what makes D&D unique was the same: “It can be anything you want it to be. There are no limits, except for your own imagination, and anything is possible in D&D.”

A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS DICTIONARY

Campaign: A series of individual gaming sessions connected by an overarching story or adventure. If a session is a chapter, the campaign is the whole novel.

Critical: The success or failure of a character’s action often comes down to the roll of a 20-sided die (d20). Rolling a 20 is an automatic success or Critical Success. Rolling a one is an automatic failure or “Crit fail.”

Dungeon Master (DM): The person who “runs” the game, helps build the world around the players’ characters, inhabits that world with quests and NPCs and makes determinations on rolls and rules.

Homebrew: An adventure or any feature or mechanic that is not from an o cial sourcebook but created by the DM or a third party.

NPC: A non-player character (as opposed to the characters played by the players), typically controlled by the Dungeon Master

One-Shot: A single, stand-alone gaming session that is typically not part of a broader campaign.

Party: Also called an Adventuring Party, this is the group or band to which the players’ characters (or adventurers) belong.