Monday, January 9, 2023 The D&D Report

I’ve now been initiated into the world of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Our newest daughter-in-law (DIL) crafted a short introductory game for my husband and I to play while they were here for Christmas. She was the Dungeon Master (DM), and there were four of us playing the game, so five total.

First impressions: confusing but intriguing. Our DIL patiently helped us work on filling out the character sheets ahead of time. This involved picking a race (I chose to be a dwarf) and class (Hexblade warlock for me) and then throwing many dice to determine numbers for strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. While she was helping Kris, I doodled an illustration of my character, Herda, in which she looks vaguely like she might have a beard, but I want to state for the record that she does not.

I wrote down what I was supposed to on my character sheet involving weapons and ammunition, attack ranges, my character’s dark vision range, walking speed, languages spoken (common, dwarfish, elvish) and the equipment I’d be bringing along.

As DM, our DIL did a great job of creating a short quest for our merry little band to accomplish: we were to try and find a red gem that had been stolen from a halfling who worked for the wizard to whom the gem belonged. Each of the players could contribute suggestions for action depending on the scene set for us by the DM. I was feeling very unsure of myself and didn’t contribute much as Herda, but enjoyed seeing how things played out as we went along. I took some notes and decided to tell Herda’s story in fiction form on this blog, so keep an eye out for that.

Would I play it again? Maybe. It’s more complicated than I thought it would be and if you really want to delve into it, there’s a lot of studying to do to get up to speed. One of our sons has about 6-7 fairly large books of reference materials for D&D. In other words, you can’t just show up for a game without any preparation. The role of DM is especially intriguing because the DM has to be prepared for all sorts of scenarios and outcomes depending on the suggestions of the players and the roll of the dice.

When we successfully completed our quest, I was a bit relieved to be done – it felt a little stressful for me trying to keep up with what was going on. Poor little Herda.

I Am Herda Part 1
I Am Herda Part 2

I’ll probably use Herda’s hex-blade to destroy this in the morning.