My Experience with Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons is something I only got into after I started college. While my old high school friends are now interested in it, back in high school none of us really knew much about it. What really got me into D&D was a podcast called The Adventure Zone, I think a friend recommended it to me, which is a podcast about D&D. My first session was with a large group, for D&D at least, where groups are generally 4–6, while my first group had 8 people total. That adventure was story-based, and we went through a few different adventures before the semester got too busy and it just kind of dropped off. The next couple groups I was in were one-shot adventures, so games that had no connecting story, that way people who missed one session could rejoin later without having missed important story. Hack and Slash Adventurers club style campaigns, where each session is not connected, are the easiest when there are times where only one person will miss a session. I have mostly played in sessions, but there are a couple of times where I have been the Game, or Dungeon, Master. The DM is the person in charge of the game, and directs the players as well as controlling any non-player characters. The first game I directed I used a pre-written adventure. The next two sessions I did were with a story I had written myself based on supplements from a community site. That campaign is story-based, but still relatively short, with only half of it fully written out. My goal is to finish writing it after the semester ends and do the campaign with both my high school friends and friends from Juniata. The whole thing is planned but the final encounter is not fully fleshed out and still needs a final map design and some detailing on the final boss. Most of the campaigns I have done haven’t had maps or anything, it has just been talking and the occasional drawing on a whiteboard, but as I am not confident in my improv skills I feel that having maps will help cover areas I am not as strong in. D&D has been one of the things I’ve still managed to do during the quarantine, as there are lots of ways to play it online. It’s a game that I love, and every time you play you never fully know what will happen.