DnD @ UA UAHS has its own Dungeons and Dragons club.

BY RYAN CHO ’25

As dice hit the table, cries of either joy or disappointment are heard from the Dungeons and Dragons club. Meeting every Wednesday at the south commons during the school year, the Dungeons and Dragons club, or DnD club, is a place where DnD players can meet together to participate in campaigns.

“Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game where you take on the persona of a character of your creation,” club member Dei Martin-Miller said. “It uses stat charts and dice rolls to decide how well your character does things, which keeps the game balanced as well as give your characters abilities.”

There are many ways to create new characters, with players being able to choose the character’s class, race, abilities, familiars and other main factors that could be used to build their characters in the future. This provides variety in each character, allowing players to try out different ways to play.

However, characters are not immortal, as one unlucky encounter can kill a player’s character. “If a person’s character dies, in our campaign, our [dungeon master] might decide to use their powers to alter it so that the character does not die by taking mercy on them,” Martin-Miller said. “I’ve been forced to change my character this campaign. It’s not too difficult, especially if it’s early on.”

As characters can only do actions by rolling a dice, there are many different ways that a certain character can either fail or succeed in a task.

“If you are in combat and roll a 20, it is really good, and you get to do a miraculous feat of damage, and the opponent is down, hopefully,” Jax Seibert, another member of the DnD club, said. “If you get a 1, that is very bad, because you could end up hurting your teammates or yourself, or end up breaking something important.”

Despite the reliance on luck, there are many different factors that can help increase a character’s chances of success. One of the main ways that players can be more successful in encounters is how they made their characters, with the main factor being their class.

“Generally there are different classes, like wizard, fighter, barbarian, et cetera, that determine their specialization,” said DnD player Isaac Fosler-Lus- sier, a junior. “For example, fighters use weapons, druids use nature magic, wizards use arcane magic, et cetera. It’s kind of like different characters provide different assets for the party.”

These classes are the specialization point for each character. In general, fighting classes are more adept at fighting and strength, stealth classes are better at hiding and sneaking around, while intelligence classes can perform many feats of magic. This makes players think about how to go about different situations in a manner that suits the character’s abilities.

Once character creation is complete, players can get involved in a campaign led by a Dungeon Master, or DM.

“DMs are the storytellers of the game, narrating what’s happening, responding to the players actions, and basically controlling any non-player characters, making sure everything runs,” Fosler-Lussier said. “Without the players, the DM might as well write a book or something, but the players provide sort of the variability and a lot of the chaos in the sessions.”

The campaigns that DMs run can last for different amounts of time, ranging from one session up to multiple years. “The last campaign lasted the entire year, I don’t know how long this year will go,” Martin-Miller said. “But, there is always a chance of a TPK, which stands for total party kill, where everyone dies, and that’s the end.”

Although DnD club is not open for new people currently, once the current campaign ends, anyone will be welcome to join.