So, it’s Tuesday, the day I’ve designated to talk about TTRPGs. But that name is tough and has a lot of connotations. I’ll use lots of different names, but I will often refer to tabletop gaming using Dungeons and Dragons. I’m sorry, but it is sort of the google or Kleenex of the tabletop world, and it gets a lot more pull than every other competitor and cousin combined.

For those of you who don’t play, that’s fine. Playing Dungeons and Dragons is one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life, hands down. I would put it in my top three favorite things to do in any situation (including eating and… other stuff), and I use it as a medium for tutoring students in writing and my own storytelling show, Life’s a Battle. But I didn’t start until I was an adult — twenty-two and getting out of the Navy, I stumbled into the game at a critical juncture.

One of the true strengths of Dungeons and Dragons, is that it stretches unique creative and emotional muscles, specifically imagination and vulnerability. At their core, tabletops are imagination games with complex rule systems to add obstacles, consequences, and therefore, friction or heat to the stories. You roll dice to decide much of your fate, but humans gravitate towards stories with closure. That’s why most of the famous games that folks now listen to or watch (Dimension 20, Critical Role, Dungeons and Daddies, etc.) end with happy endings laden with catharsis. Which is totally fine by the way, so go give all those shows a rip.

At its core, the game is a story between friends — or at least cohorts — who band together to accomplish some monumental goal. When the game is at its best, players speak in character, trying to roleplay as true to their character’s personality traits and not their own. This is acting and playing and pretending and improvising at such an intimate scale, and a direct analog doesn’t really exist for adults. To say that Dungeons and Dragons is therapeutic would not be an exaggeration. When we practice that vulnerability, the practice of it becomes normalized, and our embarrassment muscles get stronger. We can in turn, be more vulnerable, accessing a deeper self while comforted in the company of peers who, ideally, are willing to meet you at that level.

That’s a quick stint on the vulnerability aspect, but also, there’s magic and swords and goblins and, of course, dragons. One player plays the role of referee/god/world creator/overworked host/every NPC, and they are called the DM. The game doesn’t work well without a decent DM, though it is by and large the hardest role at the table. The DM (or GM in other systems) will do 10-25 times the amount of work other players put in at a typical table. There are many notable exceptions in popular media and on Reddit anecdotally, but Dungeon Masters are typically the folks who care most about the game, so they are willing to run things regardless. The rest of the human cadre plays as the main characters or the Player Characters, customizing their characters down to race (lots of different species in fantasy and sci-fi, y’all), abilities, appearance, background, backstory, magical aptitude, etc.

And of course, sometimes it doesn’t work. But that’s anything in life. The ups outweigh the downs by far. If you haven’t ever tried Dungeons and Dragons or any likewise games, I can’t recommend them more. They helped me pick up the pieces of my life. If you need a place to start, check out Life’s a Battle wherever you get your podcasts to get a taste. I play a space-magic alternative called Starfinder with my wife and brothers, the collective Battle family. The editing is a bit rough and there are only ten episodes (I’m working on relaunching the pod, editing audio is not my thing), but it is a good comedic dip into the world of tabletop roleplaying games. One of my brothers plays a Turtle man called Daddy.

If anyone ever wants to talk about anything RPG, please hit me up. I run a tutoring service with it, I’ve run games professionally and privately, and I just think it is an activity with incredible externalities and storytelling implications. Ramble done. Have an awesome Tuesday night, and I hope to catch you on the flipside. Keep it breezy!