Welcome To The Dungeon
The addition of a little-known board game turns a music festival into a nostalgia trip, back to one of our writers’ formative years.
22nd August 2021. In a moment which looked like a scene from Midsommar (2019), I stood surrounded by friends and strangers alike, completely mesmerised as we watched a wooden effigy of the Green Man go up in flames.
This, however, was not a cult gathering, but the final day of the renowned Green Man Festival in the idyllic Brecon Beacons of Wales. I cannot put into words how magical it was, all I can say that it is without a doubt the best time I’d had in the past couple of years
However, on the day I headed to the festival, I found myself pacing around my room, weighing up whether to go or not. I tend to get quite nervous about big occasions and with the virus still rearing its ugly head the feeling was only intensified.
I managed to pull myself together enough to head down to Sheffield Coach Station where I waited for the gruelling four-and-a-half-hour coach journey to begin. Luckily, I was not alone for such an endeavour and was joined by my friend Tom.
Half an hour into our wait, disaster stuck; we received news that the coach was going to be delayed by two hours. I was already a bit touch and go to start with but after hearing this my nerves went through the roof; the waiting is always the worst part. In a desperate attempt to distract myself from the situation at hand, I pulled a small board game out of my bag. Tom’s eyes immediately lit up and for the next two hours we sat playing a silly little game called Welcome to the Dungeon on the station floor.
I had first stumbled upon the game in 2015 at a weeklong Quaker summer school in York. As was tradition at the summer school, you had to commit to an activity group that you would attend for the full week. It was always a crucial and cut-throat decision; there were limited spaces in each group and if you didn’t act fast you could end up spending your week doing ballroom dancing. That year I made the controversial decision to sign up to the games group, shunning my historic kinship with the film group.
In the group none of us had heard of Welcome To The Dungeon before and I have absolutely no recollection of why we ended up playing it. Was it due to lack of choice? Random chance? Or maybe there was something about that cartoon dungeon door on the front of the box which called to us? Nevertheless, Welcome To The Dungeon game ended up on our table. I won’t attempt to bore you with the rules but it’s a really simple, quick game based on a mix of bluffing and pushing your luck; imagine a magical monster murdering version of poker. I know. It sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?
Me and my friends quickly became fixated on it, shouting over each in other in phrases entirely incoherent to those listening in. We even stole it away to our dorm in the evenings so we could keep playing it after we were sent to bed, though it wasn’t long before the staff intervened and told us to be quiet. The pure joy I felt playing the game over that week was unmatched. When I got home from the summer school, I immediately had to buy it, I really thought that it was the best game ever but unfortunately…
“some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for [two and a half thousand] six years, [the ring] Welcome to the Dungeon passed out of all knowledge.”
Ultimately the game isn’t this ground-breaking spectacle I’m making it out to be. If I’m going to be honest, I don’t really like the artwork, the mechanics of the game are incredibly simple — on paper it has very little replayability and its only bringing in a measly rating of 6.6 on BoardGameGeek. However, when I was playing it none of those factors mattered. What made me fall in love with this game, and board games as a whole, is that it created a space where the world around sinks away and all that matters is a set of made up (and sometimes frankly ridiculous) rules. It is by entering that space with my friends that I was allowed to feel that secretive childish excitement at the Quaker holiday school as well as the space of real comfort at the coach station.
Last month I went to a board game meet up with my housemate Joey in an attempt to boost my currently stagnant social life. We didn’t know anyone else there, and as expected I was absolutely bricking it. After some awkward social interactions at the start of the evening we sat down at a table with four people we’d just met, and I was delegated to pick a game, and there it was again… Welcome to the Dungeon.
I taught the game to everyone, and as I watched them all slowly get their heads round the rules, I felt that affinity to all the great times I had playing the game before. We all ended up getting on really well and I am sure that would have been in the case if I chose any other game to start with. However, it just felt like there was something about the game and the moments it created for me, I knew it couldn’t let me down. I guess I just find it quite profound how this small game has managed to define some truly fond memories in my life and has enabled me to keep my nerves at bay during the times I’ve needed to most.
When I was packing for the festival, I found the game at the back of one my cupboards hidden away amongst an unnecessarily large selection of camping torches. I didn’t have any real intention of actually playing it during the weekend, I think I just ended up packing it along with a selection of other random objects as a way of expelling some anxiety about the trip ahead. And yet, the second I started opening the box on the floor of Sheffield Coach station all the joy that the game had provided to me came rushing back. I was quickly taken up by the excitement and nostalgia. I can’t imagine what the onlookers thought of us, but for those two hours we were in our own world. All my nerves completely disappeared, and before I knew it the coach was pulling up.
By Aled Vernon-Rees
