I’m sure some of you have heard about the game Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a table top roleplaying game, which revolves around high fantasy themes. And requires a surprising amount of math. You create your character and then take them on an adventure through magical and mystical lands. It’s a lot of fun, and I’ve managed to find myself in the position of being in three different campaigns. One homebrew which I run, another homebrew that my friend runs, and Curse of Strahd which is a pre-made campaign. They are all very different in many different ways. I get to experience being a Dungeon Master (DM) who creates their own world, playing in a homebrew world, and playing in a pre-made one.
I’m afraid I’m a 90’s kid, so I don’t know much about the devil worship craze that happened in the 80’s based around D&D. But to sum it up, may Christian parents were concerned that D&D promoted, devil worship, witchcraft, and sorcery to children. And therefore, wanted it gone. Thankfully now days, people are able to see it as it is, a game. While I’m sure there are still some conservative Christian parents out there who don’t want people to play, it seems that Dungeons and Dragons is more popular that ever, with an estimated 13 million players worldwide.
Now I can only speak from personal experience, but playing D&D has helped my friends and I out in ways neither of us expected. We generally have at least one session a week, normally a Friday. And the effect of having something to look forward to every week, and catching up with your friends, really does wonders for your mental health. You find yourself lying in bed thinking about how fun that session was, and whats going to happen next week. You want to talk to your friends about character ideas, and where the DM might be taking the story line.
It’s like having a creative fun therapy session, where you and your friends come together, and pretend to be hero’s slaying monsters across the land. And through those characters, you can also explore your own struggles, and through the power of friendship (and maybe a little magic), you can over come them. I know Dungeons and Dragon’s means a lot to my friends and I. Hell, one of them recently got a twenty sided dice tattooed on his collarbone. (For those unfamiliar, this is a vital tool when it comes to D&D.) And if we didn’t have our games on Friday’s, I don’t doubt that we wouldn’t meet up as often. And we wouldn’t have that fun exciting thing to look forwards to, at the end of the dreary bleak work week. And we would be fairly more depressed than we already are. Who cares if Dungeons and Dragons is devil worship? It keeps the monsters in our heads at bay, and if we can’t do it by ourselves, our friends will be there with their swords and spells to help fight them off.