Lawrence D&D

Once a counter-culture hobby, the role-playing game of Dungeons & Dragons goes mainstream

Story by Amber Fraley | Illustrations by Torren Thoma

Toward the end of an enjoyable night out at a local brewery, we learned some shocking news: the reason that the local animals and wildlife were behaving so aggressively was because a curse had been unleashed by a group of goblins who had taken over a circle of magical stones not too far from the edge of the city. Of course, this caused me, my husband and our friend Sarah Tolbert to set off in hopes of freeing the animals from this cruelty. We found the magical stones with little difficulty, got in a bit of a scrap with a goblin patrol but came out on the better end of it, and then descended into a cave that the bad guys (anyone who does this to animals were bad guys in our book) had been guarding. Inside the cave, a menacing statue loomed over us. We were pretty sure this was the manifestation of the goblin curse. It held a bowl of bright flames that seemed to emanate pulses of pure evil. And, of course, it was guarded by giant spiders.

After fighting off the spiders, we positioned ourselves close enough to see Ghukliak-language script carved into the statue’s base. Fortunately, Sarah read Ghukliak (goblin language) and translated for us: “A Goblin steals only with his right hand, and pays tribute with his left.”

You would think this might be the easy part, but we were stumped. We tried various things, some simple and some elaborate. For some reason, I thought the script meant we had to cut off the left hand of a goblin and throw it into the statue’s flame. I’m given the side-eye when I suggest this. We move on to other ideas, and eventually my husband stumbles on the solution by using his right hand to remove the statue’s right eye—a large ruby—and the source of the statue’s power. The curse immediately wanes, and we become heroes for saving the animals (sorry, spiders, but you bit us)—not bad for some middle-aged friends out on their first Dungeons & Dragons adventure.

D&D 5e settles into Lawrence; first stop Free State Beer, apparently. Illustration by Torren Thomas.

D&D Basics

Dungeons & Dragons, the massively popular 1970s and 1980s role-playing game for basement-dwelling teenage boys, is enjoying a revival across all categories of age, demographics and gender. If you are not familiar with D&D, the game falls under the category of “cooperative role-playing game,” meaning a game in which players pretend to be characters, and their interaction, rather than the progress on a board or the playing of cards, determines an open-ended development of events. Generally, a group of three to six players participate in a campaign (or quest or adventure) that’s overseen by a Dungeon Master (DM), the name for someone who has either dreamed up a scenario or is using a pre-made set of instructions. Each player interacts through their character and keeps track of their character’s vital information (traditionally their skills, powers, weapons and armor, but it can also include their pets, childhood stories, fondness for desserts or anything else that enables them to better bring their character into the story). Campaigns may be battle-oriented, puzzle-oriented, or a mixture. Each player’s character has a particular “class,” such as barbarian, fighter, monk, rogue, sorcerer, wizard or some other type of specialty. Characters may be of any gender. There’s also a variety of races in D&D, including dwarf, elf, human, gnome or halfling, though that’s not an exhaustive list. It’s generally a good idea to have a variety of fighters, magicmakers and healers in your group, since D&D is a collaborative game and a range of strengths and skills makes a group stronger.

Most consequences to any battle or action in the game are determined through the roll of dice, but a good DM will also follow the lead of the players, giving them pivotal moments where their fate depends on crucial throws of dice if that is what they want, or allowing situations to evolve through interactive role-playing if the group prefers. A good DM will set the stage for adventure, but also accommodate the twists and turns the players add to the game, since the DM never knows exactly how the characters will behave during gameplay.

Since its debut in 1974, the rules of D&D have gone through several variations. D&D enthusiasts can tell you which editions they’ve played over the years and which is their favorite. Everyone I spoke to for this article overwhelmingly agreed: The latest edition, Fifth Edition, is a clear favorite, because its rules and setup allow it to be the most diverse, the most inclusive, the most imagination-driven, and therefore, the most fun.

I would say that Fifth Edition D&D gatherings in Lawrence are approaching the equivalent of social bridge games in the 1960s or poker parties of the 1970s. There are Gen X-ers skyping into their weekly meetups, Millennials gathering at restaurants and Zoomers congregating around library tables to play the game, or some variation of it. And, Boomers, if you’re looking to play, chances are there is a grandkid willing to teach you.

The Insiders

Jeremiah Tolbert—the DM of the game described above— is a D&D veteran, having played the game since he was six years old in 1983. He recalls that 1980s D&D was a fringe game that often elicited suspicion. “It got really entangled in the Satanic Panic stuff,” he says. Tolbert encountered this reaction during a family trip to visit his aunt and uncle. “They were very religious. They found out I had D&D books, and they wouldn’t let me in the house,” he recalls. “I had to leave the books on the front porch because they were ‘possessed by the devil,’” an idea Tolbert dismisses as ridiculous. “There’s nothing remotely risky or dangerous about it,” he says. “It’s playing pretend with rules. It’s something every child inherently knows how to do.”

Now, Tolbert is an experienced DM who’s involved in three online D&D games, and one in person, which he hosts for kids, including his son. “For me, it was probably a boy-dominated game until high school. It wasn’t until I was in college that I met a lot of women who were into role-playing games. By that point, it was fifty-fifty,” Tolbert says.

“Starting with Fifth Edition, they made a big push toward inclusion in the published materials, of the art and pronoun usage, and that helped a lot. But there was just this perfect storm of influences that opened the hobby up from being this very nerdy, niche thing, to practically being mainstream.” Tolbert cites the YouTube show Critical Role and television show Stranger Things with pushing D&D into mainstream culture. Suddenly, his friends began asking him to teach their kids how to play. The release of Fifth Edition D&D in 2014 dovetailed with D&D’s higher profile in popular culture. “The artwork started to include people of color,” Tolbert says. “You started seeing illustrations, for instance, of a fighter with a darker skin tone. You’d see Asians. Whereas the fantasy genre has been mired—and D&D is an aspect of the fantasy genre—in a white, Euro-centric view for a long time.”

Tolbert’s take on Fifth Edition is shared by Gareth-Michael Skarka, a Gen-X Lawrence resident who creates game scenarios for impressive franchises such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who and Dungeons & Dragons.

Skarka says a lot of the positive streamlining and cultural inclusivity in Fifth Edition comes from fellow Gen-X kids who grew up as D&D fans and are now industry insiders. “Nerds are now calling the shots,” Skarka explains.

Illustration by Torren Thomas

Skyler Rehm

For Skyler Rehm, a strong part of the appeal of Fifth Edition D&D is the LGBTQ+ inclusion. Rehm notes that the game’s main rule book “very specifically spells out that A) You don’t have to play whatever gender you identify as, you can play literally whoever you want, and B) You don’t have to be male or female. It’s by far the most diverse. Not just for LGBT, but in all aspects.”

Nationally, there has been a lot of discussion about the extent to which changes in Fifth Edition dynamics attracted the LGBTQ+ community, or whether the LGBTQ+ community was itself more responsible for the shift by creating fan communities and playing groups that expanded the game’s base and shaped the game’s rule books, artwork and online presence. Regardless of the source of the change, the new version sits well with Rehm, who began playing the game in high school with a previous rule book system he describes as “still fun, but very much math-based.” The Fifth Edition, he says, is “so much more streamlined, with a lot less rule-reading and a lot more role playing, which is what I like about it. It’s very easy to get into.”

In all, Rehm has been playing the Fifth Edition for about four years, and he always has at least one campaign going with friends, and sometimes several per week. Though his generation might be digital natives, he plays all of his games in person.

Mattie Bell

Mattie Bell learned to play D&D in 2014 with her friends Ethan Graham, Helen Gent, Ian Gent and Stephanie Ziegler, a one-time event that grew into regular sessions and a podcast, Stoat Party.

Their D&D game takes place in the fictional city of Aerial, where the group serves as the Civilian Defense Squad. The squad members, all elves, help local citizens in need and keep an eye out for a shadowy figure committing murders around the city. “I specifically didn’t want them to be police officers, but they do play a role in society with issues that can’t be solved interpersonally,” Bell explains. Whereas traditional D&D games embrace a lot fighting, Bell strives to create a game where players use their wits to battle evil. “In my campaigns it’s more about ‘Can you talk your way out of this?’” Though the game started in person, now that some of the group of twenty-somethings has moved away from Lawrence, the friends play via Discord, a video and text platform specifically for online gaming.

Theater of the Mind with T.J. Olson

Dungeon Master T.J. Olson has been playing the same D&D campaign with the same seven friends for almost two years now. They try to get together weekly, around a table in Olson’s garage. Next to this table is a large whiteboard, where players record data about their campaign. With a mix of text and sketches, anyone can see how much money the group has, how many animals and wagons they’ve acquired, and even a sketch of an airship they travel in.

For tonight’s game, Olson has set the scene for a heist the group must pull off on a fancy gambling ship. She plays saloon music, complete with the clink of coins, in the background to set the mood. As Olson describes the scene, Jesse Ochs (whose D&D character goes by the name of Badger) sketches out a diagram of the ship on the whiteboard, so everyone can see its layout. Around the table sits Jacoby Zielinski (Berek), Scott Olcott (Theren), Michael Childers (Kerzel), Mathew Robb (Lorelei), and Tyler Kothurtz (Timothy). In this group of late twenty-somethings, three people opt to play a character that doesn’t correspond to their personal gender. Role-playing is very much part of this group’s focus. As the night moves on, the players are each in situations that show off aspects of their backstory. Somehow, the group never gets around to carrying off the heist. Instead, they keep their characters inside the ship, having a great time gambling, interacting with one another, and riffing off scenes that Olson imagines for them.

Everyone has their character sheet in front of them. The table is littered with candy and drinks, D&D books and notebooks, but the real action is intangible. There are no physical props for game-play because this group engages in total theater of the mind—and that, precisely, is one of the biggest appeals of Fifth Edition D&D according to its dungeon masters, players and new parties such as ours—the heroes to small animals and liberators of the great goblin curse.

Illustration by Torren Thomas

Where/How to Play D&D in Lawrence

CIRCLE OF SALT is a northeast Kansas gaming organization that organizes events at various locations, including in Lawrence, several times each month. Beginners and veteran players are welcome. For more information and a schedule of game sessions, go to their website, circleofsalt.org.

DM FOR HIRE has become a real profession in the past years. Nationally, dungeon masters can be hired out for several hundred dollars per hour, but in Lawrence highly experienced dungeon masters usually charge more competitive rates. Jeremiah Tolbert, mentioned in this article, accepts bookings via jeremiah@ jeremiahtolbert.com and currently charges $200 for a 3-hour session with 5 players.

DRAGON’S HOARD is a board game store in East Lawrence that hosts regular Dungeons & Dragons games. For more information, call (785) 766-9608 or go online at dragonshoardllc.com.

GAME NUT is one of the city’s most established game stores and sells Dungeons & Dragons books and miniature game figures in their upstairs showroom. For more information, call (785) 856-1540 or go online at imagamenut.com.

LAWRENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY frequently hosts sessions and learning seminars for students grades 6–12. The library also has the Fifth Edition manuals available for loan. For information on the next youth sessions, call the library at (785) 843-3833 and ask to speak to the Teen Zone or librarian Centi Clogston.

RPG LAWRENCE is a tabletop game–themed downtown Lawrence restaurant that hosts regular Dungeons & Dragons game nights. For more information, call (785) 330-5079 or go online at rpglawrence.com.