How Dungeons and Dragons Helped Me Get My 'Spark' Back
Dungeon Master (DM): It is a swampy summer’s night; the hearty sound of laughter and the sloshing of drinks follow you as you step out into a dimly lamplit street. You are accompanied by an elf, a usually stern character, the drink has loosened their usual tight frown and lightened their step. Tonight, you are celebrating a job well done, but you are tired now, and you turn towards the line of carriages.
DM: The elf grabs you by the shoulder. ‘The night is yet young and so are we! How’s about another round?’
Do you go with the elf, or go home?
Peasant Scum: ‘I seem to have misplaced my coin at the bottom of the last pint. Better to call it quits whilst I’m ahead.’
DM: The elf flicks their hand dismissively and skips away into the smokey alleyway leading to the Gambling Quarter.
You start towards the carriage. You think of the warm hearth waiting for you at home and raise your arm to hail the coachman. But before you can reach it, a shadowy arm rises from beneath the floor and grabs your ankle, pulling you down.
DM: Roll for dexterity.
Peasant Scum: [Rolls 1]
DM: Critical fail.
…………………
Ok, so maybe a shadow monster didn’t grab my ankle. I am not sure what happened exactly, but all I know is that in August 2023, after a night out with some friends, just outside of the tube station, minutes away from safe passage home, I hit my head.
What followed was months of what felt like a semi-permanent, nasty hangover. I was left with some nerve damage, memory loss, and speech difficulties and due to the ye-olde NHS crisis, I wasn’t due to see anyone for another 11 months, July 2024.
After the fall, I stubbornly tried to go back to work. I insisted I was well enough to go to birthdays, Friday night drinks, and dinners after work. I didn’t want to miss any of it. I like making my friends laugh. I like feeling useful. I’m ambitious, and sometimes I’m even witty. But with the loss of mobility and difficulties with speech, I didn’t feel like I could access ‘the real life’ again. Not one as noisy and fast-paced as living in London. Whilst I tried to fight it at first, the fatigue became too much, and I soon resigned myself to hibernation. Those first few months were the hardest, and I felt like a shell of my former self.
Thankfully, in November 2023, my dear friends came to me with a proposal. They had recently finished a campaign of a game called ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ (DnD), and knowing I had a penchant for all things fantastical, invited me and my partner to the next campaign.
In the words of the official site, DnD Beyond, DnD is the world’s most popular tabletop roleplaying game. At its very core, it’s a game about storytelling. At its simplest, the tools you use to move through the world are some dice and your imagination. Your character will move through the world your Dungeon Master has created and the game progresses based on your decisions.
For the uninitiated, the Dungeon Master is the player in charge of setting the scene in which you play and the consequences of your actions when you roll the dice. Aside from scene setting, the Dungeon Master will also play supporting characters key to orientating you along the story such as a difficult guardsmen or chaotic wizard.
While the official DnD game is based on, well, dungeons and dragons, your game doesn’t have to be. You can apply the same basic principles of game play to any made-up universe, whether that’s surviving a zombie outbreak in your local shopping centre or solving a murder set in a space station; the options are literally unlimited. You also don’t have to speak in any silly voices if you don’t want to but admittedly who wouldn’t love to hear what a camp demon or chain smoking cherub sounds like?
In the end, playing DnD proved to be probably the single most important activity for my recovery.
The game slowly defrosted my hibernation and resuscitated my ‘spark’. It provided me a safe space to practise my speech, to train my ability to concentrate, remember details, and untangle the messy earphone cables of thought that made up my mind; to not think about what I couldn’t do but to test the limits of my imagination, which, as it turns out, now feels pretty limitless.
As I went back to work in the early months of the year, I started looking forward to my biweekly DnD and takeaway night. After months of self-isolation, harking back to the dark days of lockdown, DnD became a regular point of contact with my friends and a guaranteed night of nonstop giggles, 'oohs', ‘oh nos!’ and ‘aahs’. Decisions and consequences. It was a low-stakes environment brought together with a promise of a high-stakes adventure bound to keep us on our toes.
Game nights were also easily a sober activity, accompanied by homemade bakes and cosy tavern music. Though we also always had the option to spice things up with 'slosh’ (essentially, Pimms) and a bardcore rendition of Shakira’s ‘hips don’t lie’ to ease us into the evening.
For me, it became an introvert’s cheat code to extroversion. My character was doing everything I couldn’t at the time. She was taking risks, blowing shit up, and stealing gold. Granted, I had never and am likely never going to do most of those things, but the point was the escapism brought humour back to my life. It brought joy and reminded me that there’s still a part of me that isn’t defined by my body's—or maybe even my mind’s—perceived limitations. Eventually, seeing I could speak coherently again or that I was managing the commute from work back to my friends house a little better every time was a sign I was ready to re-enter the real world again.
In short, I think DnD saved my life, and whilst I personally started seeing the game as a form of therapy, the reasons I came to love the game are easily universal and why I’d recommend DnD to anyone.
The game has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it’s not hard to see why.
First of all, it’s a space for meaningful connection with friends (phones ) where the outside world doesn’t intervene for hours at a time. The only thing that matters is, ‘How are we going to beat the bad guy today?’.
Whether it’s the pandemic, working from home, the housing crisis, or wanting to switch off the incessant noisiness of the internet, there is such value to being able to take up physical spaces together, easily and for free, for extended periods of time. The game is a great way to unplug from everything, be present, and even build community.
Unlike many indoor hobbies that can be quite solitary, DnD is a dynamic indoor activity that brings many around the table. If you don’t already play with a group, there’s been a steady rise in gaming and tabletop cafes that offer the possibility of trying it for the first time, play a ‘one shot’ (a one-off adventure that can be completed in a couple of hours), or find new campaign buddies all together. These spaces offer a great alternative to the traditional routes to friendship and community that we would usually expect from places like school, the workplace, or sports clubs. This could be especially useful if you’re moving to a new city and don’t know anyone, or even if you’d just prefer to swap out your usual league of netball for something more comfortable during the colder months.
I like to think that the days of demonising DnD players are behind us and that a bunch of sporty men won’t show up at my door with barbed baseball bats for enjoying a little roll of the 20 side dice (RIP Eddie Munson). What started out as a game has become so much more than that. It’s helped me reconnect with myself, spend more time in good company, and has enabled a steadily growing dice collection!
If there are any readers out there who are the least bit curious, have a go with some of the ways in that I’ve mentioned above and see what the game can become for you.
Written by Clara Martinelli
Hi, I’m Clara. I’m an International Relations and Politics graduate currently doing volunteer work in London and looking to make my corner of the world a better place one step at a time. When I’m taking a break from being existential you can find me on the sofa watching police dramas and eating stupid amounts of pasta.
