Dungeons and Dragons: it’s been around since 1974, and has spread its influence all over the world. It is not, however, only played by those who refer to the ’70s as “back in my day.”
Tabletop Gaming Club, more commonly known as D&D Club by its attendees, is a creative outlet for students to get away from everyday life and experience a world of benevolent wizards, evil overlords, and damsels in distress. Tyler Merrell, as one of the club’s two advisers, believes the game is a form of escapism for most students.
“The idea is that it’s kind of like a video game, and that when you play D&D, you can take on a new character, be whatever you want to be. You could be yourself, or you could be something totally different,” Merrell said. “You get to get out of the school world and be someone else. It’s about escaping the day to day boredom and realities.”
Every Monday, from 3 p.m. to about 5:15 p.m., both the Puyallup High School auditorium and Michael Spears’ classroom are turned into a battlefield against otherworldly enemies.
“An evil demon has taken over the world and blown everything up because the characters 100 years ago accidentally unleashed him on the world,” Merrell said. “Then, they all died, and they got awakened 100 years later, after he’s taken over the world, and they’re trying to set things right again, kind of like Samurai Jack. They’re trying to fix the world that they’ve accidentally messed up.”
Senior Soren Bartlett, a participator in this campaign, is equally enthusiastic about its plot.
“Long story short, we’re all dead, then we come back, and we are now out for vengeance against Orcus, to go kill him. As we’re doing this, we are finding out that Orcas has taken over the entire world, except for Baldur’s Gate, one of the biggest cities within the within the world,” Bartlett said.
Senior Bryce Holman is a student Dungeon Master who also enjoys the creative aspect of the campaigns.
“Usually, the Dungeon Master will create a campaign or use a pre-existing one from the books they can buy. They go through and they describe to the characters and the players that this is where they are, this is what has happened, and this is the type of place that you will be in,” Holman said.
As a Dungeon Master himself, Holman’s favorite campaign featured a Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired storyline.
“The cool thing about it is, even if you have the basic plot line, you don’t know how your players are gonna react. They ended up drugging Captain Jack Sparrow, I was not seeing that outcome,” Holman said. “They now pilot the Black Pearl themselves.”
Holman’s favorite character he ever played went by the name of Rex, and the Narnia-like campaign was run by Merrell himself.
“It consisted of an entire place called 10 towns being overrun by an internal winter, kind of like Narnia. Our goal was to stop the frost maiden. My character, Rex, managed to, single handedly, beat the frost maiden into submission. I banished the goddess to the astral realm, where she is now forever trapped, and then the ice castle collapsed on me,” Holman said.
The benefits of games like D&D are endless, from exercising creativity in characters and campaigns to building lasting relationships.
“The whole point of this game is talking with a bunch of other people. It’s the most social game, besides maybe sports,” Merrel said. “Besides building social skills, which in itself opens so many doors, I would say that you can even put it on a resume. I put it on my resume to get this job. It sets you apart and builds a camaraderie.”
The job of organizing and overseeing these heroic voyages falls to the advisors.
“I like to do things on the fly. If you ask Mr. Spear, who’s our other adviser, he likes to plan a lot more and have things ready to go, he’s good about that kind of stuff,” Merrell said. “I tend to just kind of not have a plan to go into it.”
When one of his students inquired about ways to get more involved in the school, Merrell recommended Dungeons and Dragons, as he always does.
“They were in my class two years ago, and they asked me about any clubs they could go to. They’ve come every week for the last three years, and they’re one of the club advisors now, and it’s really cool to see how they’ve matured and [how] it’s made them so much more outgoing,” Merrell said.
