Exploring Creativity Through Dungeons & Dragons

As a musician, actor, dancer and filmmaker, a lot of things were hosed up by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Musicians couldn’t perform for groups of music lovers.
Actors couldn’t gather an audience to perform in front of.
Dancers couldn’t exhibit their work in an auditorium.
Filmmakers couldn’t safely work on productions when we didn’t understand how the disease spread.

I found myself looking for creative outlets, a chance to perform for some small group.

The Search For A Performance Venue

When there are creative constraints holding you back, one has to get …. creative! I tried lots of ways to perform over Zoom. I did a Zoom bassoon performance, I read screenplays with a group of actors, I wrote my own screenplays for a serial called DS Birch Carlson (more on that in another post), I went to my first Zoom play and watched recordings of theater productions filmed in the before-times.

All of these things were great, but I missed performing theater most (and not just doing script readings). In March of 2020, I was several weeks into rehearsal for the musical adaptation of the classic documentary Grey Gardens. I was lucky enough to earn the lead role – where the same actor plays a young Big Edie in act one and Little Edie (at the time of the documentary) in act two. I was so excited to have a nuanced role that was humorous and tragic at the same time. And then the production shut down.

Losing that opportunity hit me hard, and I found myself searching for something as exciting.

I got some encouragement to try DND from my friend Page, who had been playing the past few years with a group of locals. Her husband was planning to DM (dungeon master) for a new game that he was going to host online, and she thought it might be fun if I joined. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the vocabulary of Dungeons & Dragons, the dungeon master is the person in charge of planning out the plot of a campaign, or a specific storyline of one game. There is a lot of work that goes into this, and it is all based on the characters people choose to build based on the campaign.

Building My First Character

Lothar

Paladin oath breaker, ex-military, drunkard, janitor.

Building a character in DND is perfect for an actor – it is essentially thinking through a backstory that would make sense for the situation of the campaign and the type of character. Dungeons & Dragons has books and books about possible character types, their abilities and the spells they can cast. I started by choosing a paladin, which is essentially a knight. But I wanted him to be broken.

That was the beginning of Lothar. He’s an ex-military veteran who lost his best friend in battle. He’s a big guy, a hobgoblin humanoid-gremlin person. He packs a big punch in a bar fight, and he’s in a lot of those. Ever since he was crushed by his friend’s death, he self soothes with the bottle. He is currently working as a janitor at a university, scrubbing toilets and mopping floors to earn enough money for his next bottle. He speaks in a slurred cockney accent, and grumbles and growls a lot. He’s a loner and was surprised to be invited on a mission to the Mournland, where university students are headed to study ruins and collect artifacts.

He’s armed with a sword and scythe, and also has a mop handy for the occasional cleanup. He was touched when another character gifted him a dustbuster later in the game.

Not all of these things were pre-determined before the game started. The vague concept I had was that he lost his friend, that he basically has no will to live and that he is a rough and tumble guy who previously had an airtight moral code. A lot of things started coming out as I played.

Part of my first character sheet.

Playing the Game

Our group of six players played on the app Roll20, which is built to host online games of DND. It lets the DM build out maps of the places you’ll explore, you can add a video chat and audio to communicate with the team, you can store your character sheet for reference, and secretly chat people if you need to. Also (big benefit for a noob), rolling the dice is pretty straightforward – dice rolls can vary depending on your ability, whether you have advantage, etc. And that magical computer sort of calculates everything for you.

Overall, as a noob I was really bad at first – there are a lot of rules that most of the other players had already known for years. Some skills that grew over time were how to react when I was attacked during a fight, how to save spells for when you really needed them (you only have so many spells you can cast at a time) and how to have fun with what I was doing. I still have a lot to learn, but am enjoying the ride.

What Surprised Me

First of all, I was impressed by the work everyone put into their character. Everyone had a cool accent – one Middle Eastern, one surfer dude, one Icelandic, one cockney, one Aussie, one Irish, one Jamaican (the DM did multiple characters in case you are counting). And they were legit good at them! They had all done dialect training by watching YouTube videos and it showed. They were great actors and I have already warned them that if we ever get back to live theater, I’m making them audition.

I was surprised by how hilarious it is to play the game. Most of my knowledge of DND was from watching Stranger Things, and it looked like those kids took things pretty seriously. I was thinking we would take ourselves really seriously and never laugh at the fact that we were almost all murdered by giant rat people, which are, like the easiest foes to overcome. Playing Dungeons & Dragons is like being a part of an awesome improv troupe. No one says anything is a stupid idea, we all work together and have a great time saying “Yes … and …”

So before you write me off as a total nerd, give it a try. Or at least listen to a podcast about it and marvel at how talented the players are.