{"id":20064,"date":"2018-05-04T10:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T15:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=20064"},"modified":"2018-05-03T19:02:06","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T00:02:06","slug":"erikas-enthusiast-expo-dnd-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/05\/04\/erikas-enthusiast-expo-dnd-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Erika’s Enthusiast Expo: DND Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cDungeons and Dragons\u201d is a game that many have heard of, yet many have not tried out. For the longest time I was one of those people, only listening to some of my friends recap their campaign to me and wondering if I would get the chance to play. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0With a heavy majority of my friends and I being too busy for long outings that DnD would need, the entire idea felt like more of a pipe dream than something in reach.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Thankfully, my friends are much better at planning and time management than I am. Now, within the span of about three months, I\u2019m in two different campaigns that are off on totally different stories. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0To me, this game is an exercise in creativity on all parts. For the Dungeon Master (referred to as a DM for the rest of this), they\u2019re in charge of keeping the story on the path they set along with creating their own enemies and sorting out their stats. Crafting a tale for multiple other people to follow along with is difficult on its own, but to do it verbally and only writing it down when there\u2019s an opportunity? It\u2019s tough, but the effort comes out in the end with a newly created world.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"D&D_Game_1\"\u00a0 \u00a0For the players, it\u2019s up to them to come up with a character and join this universe. It could be a person crafted from all the basics put out by the handbook itself, but that player still has to play them out, give them a name and personalize them to an extent that makes them enjoyable to roleplay as for the experience. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Both of my campaigns are, to say the least, absolutely <\/span>wild.<\/span><\/i> One is held in person and another is held online with a separate group of friends and while we don\u2019t get to play every week, I\u2019m usually still buzzing with thoughts on the session for days afterward. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0For example, the ending of the first chapter in my online campaign involved an enemy based on an old meme: remember Actual Cannibal Shia Lebeouf? If so, that\u2019s what our first boss fight was essentially and it was downright hilarious when the threatening line was just \u2018Shia Surprise.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

\"16560301872_5fda38a577_b\"\u00a0 \u00a0In fact, that battle had my best roll yet: a natural 20 that let me do double damage with my crossbow and I was <\/span>so<\/span><\/i> proud of myself for landing a clean hit on the guy. Past that, the fight went surprisingly well for the first big one that the session encountered.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0For my other session, the squad is currently set up in a moonbase and have become members of an organization that hunts down powerful and ancient artifacts. This campaign is a lot more chaotic than my other one, especially since the other three people are chaotic neutrals while I\u2019m the sole lawful good of the party and the only one not forcing a goblin to eat a pair of jeans.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0In the end, \u201cDungeons and Dragons\u201d is what you make it. There\u2019s a story for everyone to tell and, sometimes, it\u2019s one that can come out when playing with friends through some roleplaying and terrible dice rolls.<\/span><\/p>\n

Erika Brandenburg<\/strong>
\nArts and Entertainment Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cDungeons and Dragons\u201d is a game that many have heard of, yet many have not tried out. For the longest time I was one of those people, only listening to some of my friends recap their campaign to me and wondering if I would get the chance to play. \u00a0 \u00a0With a heavy majority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":20065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2104,2113,3],"tags":[2596,2100,2448,1861,2141,2597],"class_list":["post-20064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-video-games","category-tartan-news","tag-dungeons-and-dragons","tag-erika-brandenburg","tag-erikas-enthusiast-expo","tag-games","tag-online-exclusive","tag-role-playing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-5dC","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/6586475901_f49a2defbf_b.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20068,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20064\/revisions\/20068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}