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I’d never played D&D before — some friends helped me fix that
With ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ hitting theaters, it was time to hit the game room at Tavern of Tales
Anything can be a weapon if you roll high enough. Always check for traps, especially near a castle. If you see a skeleton somewhere on the map, it will likely become animated at some point. “No Dungeon Master puts a skeleton there for nothing,” as a colleague told me.
If this gamers’ jargon is lost on you, you’re probably like me — a Dungeons & Dragons noob. Maybe it crossed your radar during season one of “Stranger Things,” when the four main characters use the game’s monsters to explain the forces plaguing their town. Or maybe not.
But chances are good you’ll be hearing a lot more about the game when “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” opens March 31. Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez star as a bard and a barbarian in a movie the Globe’s film critic says “is nowhere near as bad as it sounds.”
Dungeons & Dragons, better known as D&D, is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game where the objective is to complete adventures and goals determined by a Dungeon Master, or DM. A lot happens around these tables. Characters are developed, stories told, worlds built.
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I’d never played the game before, but I recently rectified that at Tavern of Tales, a board-game bar that’s just a short walk from Roxbury Crossing. That earlier advice — about weapons, traps, and skeletons — was all I had going into my first game on a recent weekday. That, and the question: “Have you created your character yet?”
No, I hadn’t.
(Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)
(Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)
“It kind of has this position in nerd culture — like, if you’re a nerd, how nerdy can you get?,” said Jake Schaub, general manager of Tavern of Tales, which first opened in 2020, two months before the pandemic hit. (The tavern managed to stay afloat during the spring shutdown by running online games. Around 40 people played every night.)
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I met up with a few colleagues to play after work, and Schaub helped blur the lines between the noobs and the nerds around a table in one of the tavern’s six game rooms. After ordering food and drinks at the bar, we filed into a room with a semicircle table and comfortable swivel chairs. Built-in cup holders and felted dice-rolling patches reminded me it was custom-built exactly for what we were doing.
As DM, Schaub was the game organizer; he had created a module outlining the details and challenges of the adventure, or “campaign.” Each participant plays a character; in this case, our DM created ours. Small plastic figurines, or “miniatures,” stood upright on their affiliated character sheets, and Schaub told us we could choose one.
Each sheet notes a character’s skills, strengths, and actions with a ranking. I chose Doc Hawthorne, a wizard sage who scores high in intelligence and investigation with an ability to cast spells. To my right was Thernum Broodfist, a fighter mountain dwarf skilled in athleticism and perception.
“You’re in charge of what’s in front of you,” Schaub said. “As Dungeon Master, I’m in charge of everything else.”
Cast of characters
Dungeon Master
Played by: Jake Schaub
Game organizer and participant in charge of creating the details and challenges.
Doc Hawthorne
Played by: Brittany Bowker
Human wizard
A wizard uses arcane magic, and is considered less effective in melee combat.
Isamia Porridgepot
Played by: Ally Rzesa
Halfling Cleric
Clerics are powerful healers due to the large number of healing magic available.
Dazana Liadon
Played by: Julian Sorapuru
Wood Elf Rogue
Rogues focus on stealth and deception capable of sneaky combat and nimble tricks.
Thernum Broodfist
Played by: Leah Becerra
Moutain Dwarf, Fighter
Fighters train in combat styles can swing an axe, fence with a rapier, wield or a greatsword.
Archibald Brownlee
Played by: David Cawthon
Tiefling Sorcerer
Tieflings can make for powerful sorcerers, drawing strength from their infernal heritage to wield dark powers as their own.
A 20-sided die, or a D20, also helps determine what players can and can’t do. DMs will tell players to “roll checks” with the die when the players propose an action. For example, you might “roll a perception check,” or “roll an athletics check.”
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“If it meets or exceeds the number I have in my head for how difficult that task was, you succeed,” Schaub said. If it doesn’t, “I describe what happens next.”
Schaub pressed play on the room’s surround-sound system as he set the scene. Thunder crashed. The campaign had begun.
“The last few days you have been traveling around in the wilderness after purchasing a treasure map from an adventurer at a tavern,” said Schaub. He drew a large rectangle on the table with a marker, representing the tavern. “He had sold you this treasure map, and you followed its cryptic clues just to discover it was all a setup. The treasure map was fraudulent, designed to lead you astray.”
Our group was tasked with confronting the fraudulent treasure map seller and getting our money back. Each of us placed our miniatures on the table, and for the next hour and a half, we took turns moving through the campaign, adding to the story using the luck of the roll and our imaginations.
We encountered scammers, a wealthy couple, and a gruff bartender. At one point, one of our more experienced players created a diversion by reciting poetry on why tieflings are misunderstood. (A tiefling is a fictional humanoid race from the game.) Schaub changed his voice as he shifted characters, and some of the players introduced impromptu medieval accents, swapping out words like “beer” for “ale,” and slamming their fists on the table.
As the battle music crescendoed, our band of adventurers started closing in on the enemies, eventually finishing them off with a short sword and a series of violent dismemberments.
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“This is my outlet,” said a colleague with particularly inventive kill techniques.
Anything goes in D&D. You just have to roll high enough. The advice I was given at the start of the game was making a lot more sense.
The game ends when the DM says so, or when a goal is accomplished. If your character dies, you can just create a new one — no wonder these games take so long!
Anything can be a weapon if you roll high enough. Always check for traps, especially near a castle. If you see a skeleton somewhere on the map, it will likely become animated at some point. “No Dungeon Master puts a skeleton there for nothing,” as a colleague told me.
(Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)
(Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)
Many players create characters who live on and develop for years throughout different campaigns.
“There’s a lot of freedom to try out new ideas,” Schaub said. “One of the things that attracted me to it was the ability to express myself as a Dungeon Master — building a world, writing characters, and sharing it with other people.”
Yeah, I’d enter the dungeon again.
Brittany Bowker can be reached at brittany.bowker@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @brittbowker and on Instagram @brittbowker.
Brittany Bowker can be reached at brittany.bowker@globe.com. Follow her @brittbowker and also on Instagram @brittbowker.