Why Dungeons and Dragons?

 

Why is Dungeons and Dragons my pass time of choice? Well, it’s a long story….

 

It was 2014 and I was in my first year of high school sitting with a group of friends during lunch break when I overhear one of my friends talking to an acquaintance about a new game he had found. Hearing the mention of what I had assumed to be a videogame I eagerly joined in only to have my mind blown over the following 10 minutes as they explained this board game where you could adventure a fantasy world that allowed you to do anything you wanted. That while not entirely accurate to D&D as a game in of itself was enough to have my 12-year-old self sold on the idea, which led to the creation of the D&D group and campaign that I proceeded to spend the following 5 years with. Over that time D&D allowed me to make many long-term friends but also to my surprise helped with a problem I had always struggled with.

 

For pretty much as long as I can remember I’ve been the sort of person who overthinks absolutely everything which often led to my imagination running rampant. This proved to be both a good and bad thing as I’m sure anyone prone to overthinking would agree as while I was never bored with my own thoughts those same thoughts often become intrusive which would result in me stressing about anything and everything (If you'd like to learn a little more about overthinking Kristen Corley wrote an interesting piece describing what it's like). Dungeons and Dragons with its inherent encouragement of creativity served as an outlet for my imagination which helped distract me from my usual overthinking of every little interaction or event. Instead of stressing for hours about tiny things like making eye contact with somebody for too long in class I could instead retreat into my world of fantasy and create another character that I inevitably would never use. Over those 5 years of high school whatever the problem family or school I could retreat to a comforting place where I could just goof around with some friends by exploring rolling hills, killing goblins, or even just sitting around a campfire with some marshmallows.

 

So, in short Dungeons and Dragons for me serves as a platform to explore my imagination in a less intrusive way to my usual overthinking and has over the last 7 years allowed me to both make many friends and explore how I see myself through the characters and worlds I have made along the way.