Kimberly Broderson

The popular game Dungeons and Dragons use dice of different shapes to move the game forward.

Members of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Club battle goblins and owl-bears in fantasy lands filled with danger and adventure every Friday after school in room D26 .

Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game in which a band of travelers goes on quests and adventures. The game was created in 1974, and over 20 million players have played the game.

D&D is easy to join because a new player only needs a character sheet and a set of dice. Playing D&D is a form of group story-telling.

Patricia Braunstein, who hosts the D&D Club in her classroom, said, “The nature of D&D is like a verbally based fantasy game.”

Dungeon masters are at the center of every D&D game. First and foremost, they create the world, providing the framework and general story of the game.

Dungeon Master Ethan Tobias said, “My job is just to describe the world and the players and keep the game going. I basically control the game.”

Dungeon masters refer to many handbooks to help establish and guide the world and use notebooks to keep a record of what players do and say.

Tobias said, “There’s a lot of resources that I use to just kind of keep the story going in the game like books and stuff. I also write down a lot of things and try to keep track of what the players are doing all the time. I have to improvise a lot too.”

Players design their characters on character sheets and then interact and travel through the world simply by stating their actions. For example, a player might say, “I start howling in the village square.”

Dungeon masters control secondary characters, such as surprised villagers, outraged merchants, or angry monsters.

The limits of what players can do depend entirely on the dungeon master. A confident dungeon master can accommodate the players’ imaginations.

Tobias said, “There are definitely a lot of restrictions. But at the same time,you can kind of do whatever you want as long as the dungeon master [says], ‘Okay, that can fit in my world, I am okay with that.’ And the players agree, so it doesn’t have very many limitations.”

Club members are deeply immersed in the fantasy world of D&D, according to Braunstein.

“You’re in a classroom, and they’re talking about the ogre [that] just appeared in the hallway,” Braunstein said. “They’re just really happy to be playing.”

This is, in fact, the lure of D&D: The ability to leave the mundane world and be a character with fantastic abilities and have exhilarating adventures with friends.

Tobias said, “You can do whatever you like as long as the DM is okay with it.”