Dunkin’ and Dragons: eating donuts, and playing D&D

Session: Dungeons and Dragons

This game began with character selections. Players were given the opportunity to roll for the different traits of their characters. They chose the race, class, and alignment. They then rolled for different abilities levels: strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, etc. I was given one character at random who was a halfling rogue. Her character traits were luck, bravery and stealth. We began the game by setting up the module. It was called Caves of Chaos, and our adventure began as we enter into the small fort run by Lord Bloodthorne. We were a group of adventurers hoping to make money off the riches nearby. When we arrived in the town we went to the pub and did recon on what was happening. We found that the king was trying to set up a military armament in the fort and Lord Bloodthorne told us adventurers that people were stealing his caravans on the way to the fort. He didn’t know who it was, but he sent us out to find them. Lord Molis two sword was missing as well, and was a known ally of Lord Bloodthorne.

celebrating my new character

celebrating my new character

We chose as a group to venture to the site of the last caravan. We found an explosive horse, and turned over caravans. We managed to capture one of the creatures involved in the caravan who happened to be a kobold. We named him Blinky, and made him take us to his leader. We got to the cave of the kobolds and were met by kobolds armed in the king’s weapons. We assumed the kobolds were taking the weapons, but we needed to know why. Eventually we killed, and tricked our way through the cave and got to the leader, whose head we brought to Lord Bloodthorne. Day two We were told that Lord Molis could be found at the cave of the Orcs. Bloodthorne asked us to go find him, and sent us with a priestess who I trusted immediately. We ventured to their cave and brought the priestess with us. She told us that the cave was filled with great elf magic. We walked through the halls using spells to find out where good magic and bad magic was hiding. We came across a dining hall and felt magic from one wall, the priestess told us we had reached the inner sanctum of the cave. We found a meal laid out for the god Azuna. We were encouraged by the priestess to eat it and each of us gained a special power. The priestess became drunk for 12 hours after drinking the wine. We walked onward in the cave and became surrounded by a group of huge, armed, orcs. We chose to put them to sleep and fight those still awake.

Our minis celebrate after an epic battle

Our minis celebrate after an epic battle

Eventually we realized that Lord Molis was actually in charge of the Orcs. We came to the conclusion that he was working with Bloodthorne to fight against the King in an uprising. We chose to kill him and bring his head to Bloodthorne as a token. With the help of our trusty steed: Fred the glowing badger, we were able to overcome. Then we had to fight Lord Bloodthorne to the death, which was swift for him. The Priestess thanked us for our good deeds, and ensured us that we would be paid heftily by her people and the king.

This game was something completely unfamiliar to me, but I absolutely enjoyed it. The complete freedom to create a game and choose your own adventure was something new that my whole group really enjoyed. It was very different from the Eurogames that were all about strategy. This game encouraged role playing for experience point, and creativity to beat an opponent. Overall we only lost a few hit points as a group, and we successfully accomplished what we needed to. It was also different from the war games where strategy and cards determined your moves.

Lord Bloodthorne was not a happy camper

Lord Bloodthorne was not a happy camper

This game gave your ideas a chance to become reality. There were no cards, we just worked together to make up our own solutions and rolled a dice to see if they would work. This game doesn’t have to utilize a board at all, which is very different from a  typical board game for obvious reasons. We set up some pieces on the table to symbolize what was happening, but it wasn’t necessarily required. We also used minis or playing pieces for visuals. The freedom to do what ever we wanted during this game was very cool, and I can see the influences of this idea in future games that have become popular since. Many games now give the player the opportunity to control their players destiny and path. Board games we played in class in the past have had specific paths that could be taken, there were many different options, but never full freedom. I really enjoyed this aspect of the game and hope to be able to play it again. On a scale of 1-5 I think this game was a 5 for fun. It was pretty easy to learn, and the components were minimal. Having a good dungeon master really helped us since he knew all of the rules. We were able to freely collaborate and come up with whatever we wanted to and made the adventure a success.

TD4W