Everyone is arguing. If I had a stopwatch and actively counted the time, 30 minutes of our 3 hours of playtime would be recorded having spent negotiating the elements of a fictional reality.
“How far is that? 150 ft? There is no way that they would be able to see that. Not in this weather.”
“It wouldn’t take that long to go to the next town over. So what if it is in the middle of an arctic environment?”
“I have never heard that you have to be standing still to ritual cast. I’ve done it plenty of times in Adventurer’s League.”
Play for 5 minutes. Stop. Play another 7 minutes. Stop. Play. Stop. Play. Stop. This was much of my last session with one of my Dungeons and Dragons parties.
How can I pay attention and stay engaged with these breaks in games flow? I can’t. So, I spend much of this session surfing the internet and doing anything else but pay attention. Role-playing games require a certain type of mind alteration. It is a hypnotic process, a self-induced vision based on the narrator and fellow players. It is a form of simulation, requiring commitment from everyone at the table.
How can I do that when people are arguing? Choosing to pause the game to handle details that in my eyes are objectively unimportant.
A couple of days later, I told my friend (a fellow player in the same game), that this last session truly highlighted for me much of my distaste for the wider Dungeons and Dragons culture.
“Yeah, but that’s the culture. Those are just things you accept.”
His statement of acceptance enforced my point.
Don’t miss read the title. I still love tabletop roleplaying games. If anything, these types of experiences have truly taught me what I value in them. I just don’t think I want to play much Dungeons and Dragons anymore.
There are a lot of reasons for this. I can’t fathom dissecting every element of Dungeons and Dragons in one blog post. Perhaps, I can make this into some sort of ongoing series…
Danger Wonka 