D&D Club Hosts Horror-themed Adventures
On Wednesday, Oct. 25, the Dungeons and Dragons Club hosted a Halloween one-shot event. The event was open to all, with no prior tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) experience required. Players of all experience levels chose from characters made in advance or were helped to quickly roll up an original. Several minutes in, newcomers were joking and laughing with club members like old friends; there are few things TTRPG players enjoy more than introducing people to their beloved hobby. Soon, the dice began to roll.
Two games ran simultaneously to accommodate the number of players. The club provided pizza, soda, snacks, and sweets.
Club president Morgan Bizier played Dungeon Master (who comes up with the story and controls any enemies) in one of the games. The players had to search a deadly swamp for a missing child who had been snatched by a hag: a spooky introduction, but an unofficial rule of Dungeons and Dragons is that even the most somber, creepy, or dramatic stories can become slapstick comedy.
“A monk fell out of a beehive,” said Bizier, after the game. “Em’s (Emma Miller) character, Jingle, used magic missiles to make the green hag’s hut fall over while people were still in it; the green hag ended up descending into her own hand-dug tunnels. It was a blast.”
Halfway through the games, everybody took a short rest to vote in the costume contest. Emma Miller won with a handmade recreation of Princess Zelda’s outfit from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Benjamin Marcus led a group of five through a “very difficult, survival-horror” themed session that he said the players would be “lucky to survive.” Player-created characters Otheris, Gum-Gum, Trip, and brothers MUG and GRUG (all caps required) decided to challenge that claim. The adventure began, as all good ones do, with the heroes imprisoned, being transported to an unknown — though certainly nefarious — destination. A plummet off a bridge only worsened the heroes’ situation. They were free, but now under attack by a horde of zombies.
Otheris’ darkly radiant magic scorched an infamous shadow monster out of the game in a single turn. Gum-Gum, a warrior gnome, took a ride in a cage hurled by MUG, smacking a zombie in the kneecaps just before impact. Trip teleported and flew out of danger when she wasn’t scrounging for shiny trinkets. GRUG endured a dozen attacks from a pair of increasingly disgruntled zombies before beating them from undeath back to the real deal. In the end, all the characters survived. GRUG would have described the situation as barely an inconvenience. Well, he might, if he knew what that word meant.
It’s easy to see the appeal of a game that combines cooperative strategy, creative storytelling, and adventuring with friends, but it isn’t always easy to find people to play with. Swing by the Dungeons and Dragons Club on Fridays from noon to 3 p.m. to meet new people and learn about the game. You might even find your own weekly group. Look out for future events for a fun, easy way to try Dungeons and Dragons for yourself.
