“This is how I do it,” I say.
“I turn around, propping myself up on my elbows and launch forward, burying my knife in Sanbalet’s belly. Never mind that I’m naked.” I’ve rolled extremely well: a nat twenty which means the aim is true, plus damage from a D4.
Our Dungeon Master doesn’t miss a beat: “Sanbalet screams, a high-piercing shriek—”
“—And I twist the blade into his gut all the way to the handle.”
“Sanbalet grunts, the breath of surprise knocked out of him.”
“I rip the knife back towards myself, his blood dripping on the floor.” I drop my voice to a whisper. "I only wanted your power,” then add, “And your collection of erotic fiction.”
“I should have always known it would be you, Father Neil. Who else but you to come for me at the end of all things? You smell like jasmine but I can taste your sweet sting of poison.” Our DM uses his best Sanbalet voice: mellifluous, commanding, fatal— tinged with regret.
Gumnut the Dwarf delivers the final blow; an axe right to the skull. He wipes the blood on his gauntlet with practiced efficiency. Pandora’s hands crackle with wild magic, she suggests we keep the head. The Mage’s eyes glow iridescent, it’s our first boss defeated. Harmony the Rogue wants to loot what we can and begins rummaging through his oiled cloak pulling out an alarming range of daggers, grappling gear, and loose packets of a sweet smelling weed (a memento from the cult he has left which he assures us is totally benign). Kaisa, an Elf Druid and the newest member of our company, is silent, the cowl of her hood pulled high so her face is nearly lost in shadow. She’s impassive, is she judging us? But her familiar, Inej the crow, hops from one foot to the other nervously.
Father Neil Austerity looks at his blood stained hands, and then at the body of Sanbalet. They’d never had a thing, not even a situationship, but the chemistry was undeniable.
And now it was all gone.
For the uninitiated, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a structured yet open-ended tabletop role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and first published in 1974. To start the game, every player determines their ability scores, which include Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. The player then chooses the character's race (species), their occupation (such as cleric, rogue, or bard), their moral and ethical outlook (alignment), and other features such as their backstory which helps contribute to a fleshed out, well-rounded character. The Dungeon Master (DM) is responsible for guiding the players through the campaign, controlling non-player characters (NPCs) and worldbuilding.
The game is played using a combination of dice rolls and the infinite power of shared imagination. Each character, thanks to their species and occupation, is armed with various abilities, skills, and equipment which will be tested or rewarded in combat and side quests. The outcome of suggested actions is determined by rolling various multifaceted dice according to the action (such as the D20, the D6, etc.) which the DM will offset against predetermined rules based on the situation or the NPC the players are faced against.
If it sounds a little like right brain marrying left brain: it is. There is a healthy amount of maths involved (which I am genuinely rubbish at so I usually just stare at my DM with my mouth hanging open until he sorts it out for me) and something akin to formulas. Certain bosses will have a certain amount of hit points (HP) or various tolerances to either magic or ranged attacks which can make them difficult to take down.
Here is a throwaway character as an example of the mechanics:
The human bard, Jaskier (don’t sue me), comes face to face with an Owlbear. The Owlbear has 59 HP. Jaskier, being level 1, has 10 HP. Jaskier has a longsword and the DM asks the player to roll for initiative (to see who strikes first). Jaskier rolls higher meaning he has the first opportunity to hit. He will roll a twenty sided die called a D20 to see whether he actually makes contact with the Owlbear. He rolls 16 which the DM announces is a hit as it is over a certain threshold due to the Owlbear’s natural armour. The player/Jaskier is then asked to roll a six sided die called a D6 to see how much damage he will do. He rolls a 2, not great. This essentially means that although the longsword touches the Owlbear, it will amount to a graze or a light cut.
If Jaskier at Level 1 were able to take down this Owlbear and deliver the killing blow (highly unlikely), the DM would ask him to “set the scene” and Jaskier would have an opportunity to explain in detail how he is victorious. It’s not enough to say the Owlbear died– give the group details! What angle did he pierce the Owlbear’s skin with? What colour was the blood? Was there a signature move he did? Did he bury the Owlbear with respect? These are all important and vital factors of the game too.
It is difficult to translate how much D&D has improved my life both socially and creatively. It started with my sibling, Caitlin, who started playing two years ago with a group of friends in town. As a family we listened to every origin story for their character, commented on each demonic deity they were bound to, grieved for every character death when they were invariably murdered in a parallel dimension before being resurrected six months later as a zombie pirate. We had planned to play as a family; we’re loud and rambunctious and prone to performing together— my father braved the emasculating remarks at his steel mill to do community musical theatre with me as a child— but life got in the way. A divorce, a family home sold, work commitments, people all over the place, and so it fell through.
I had accepted that not playing D&D was my lot. Besides, I had lots of other nerdy pursuits I reasoned; a fervent love of sci-fi and fantasy (I know the entire hymn to Elbereth Gilthoniel in Sindarin which I recited by a river in Queenstown over my newly purchased Evenstar before being caught by tourists and promptly fleeing), various fandom paraphernalia, COMIC CON, etc… But I’d stopped doing theatre when I left school and invented a plethora of clever excuses to do art more ‘seriously.’ It was a long and painful process of distancing myself from my obsessive days of Merlin or Doctor Who or Eragon; I can’t even tell you when I began to lock this all way, perhaps an obsession with the elusive and ever changing concept of ‘coolness’, until I became bereft of the original light inside me. Perhaps it was working in film which took so much away from me, or perhaps it was the people I’d met along the way who knew how to laugh a little too much at these parts of me so that I learned to carefully curate myself as a “cool” fantasy lover (whatever the fuck that meant) and not whatever else was its opposite.
But then I started working at a bookstore.
The customers were intense, earnest, completely candid– there was no socially encouraged apathy to hide behind. In their faces I found my own. In the fantasy aisles I babbled at the speed of light over the magic systems in The Fifth Season, offered my thoughts on the Bene Gesserit with veteran Dune fans, appeared like the Inner Health Plus tablet behind teenagers in the manga section, a copy of Yona of the Dawn in my hand, ready to shove it under their nose, “Have you read this??”
My mask fell away quickly followed by, unsurprisingly, my psych asking to run screeners for inattentive ADHD. I’m now in the process of a formal diagnosis which is extremely liberating since neurodivergency runs heavily in my family and now we’re wondering, how did we ever miss it? (This is rhetorical, women are often diagnosed later in life due to the way we are socialised to internalise our neurotype). During that time I realised how little of myself I had shown, accepted and nurtured. How desperately I was searching for an explanation of how different I felt as a child and as an adult. There was no ‘phase’ to grow out of. If I were to indulge in nerdy things they had to be ‘high brow’; i.e. no junior fiction, no excited talking or monologuing without coming up for air, no cringey laughter where I could be loud, delighted with my whole body, no special interests, no meltdowns. But at the bookstore I could be exactly who I was because all my customer were exactly who they were. Likewise my coworkers were little constellations, shining stars of authenticity and openness which burned fierce and bright. And then they became my friends.
We were onto our third round of cocktails in Parramatta one night when I brought it up. Our friendship was still in its fledgling stage, we were covered in soft down and I felt nervous.
“So, how do we all feel about starting a D&D group?”
Everyone said yes immediately.
“I’m already a DM so I’d love to,” said Luke in his measured, academic way.
“Umm, a hundred percent count me in.” Vanessa was ecstatic, she’d played once before. “I’m thinking mage with a Southern accent.”
“Absolutely,” Josh boomed in agreement (and I wonder why he never pursued a career in theatre). “I was actually going to suggest it myself if you didn’t. I’ve always wanted to play but I’ve never had a group to do it with. Although I’m not sure about classes or races so we’d have to do a few planning sessions.”
“Done,” said Luke, and he offered to begin prepping the very next day.
I began working on my character immediately, my hyper fixation mode switching on like a big red light, kind of like the ones you see in those movies when an engine powers up. Within a few days I had my backstory and it was nothing like I expected my first D&D character to be. He told me in very certain terms who he was, where he’d come from, and looking back it’s unsurprising. I have a degree in International Relations and my areas of interest were Western imperialism, neoliberalism and how the media supported these oppressive systems. D&D allowed me to incorporate my academic history with my love of theatre and magic. From there, Father Neil Austerity was born.
Born in the small working-class town of Neo, Neil was born to a miner-turned property owner, Bill, and his wife, Hilary. Converting with his family to the Church of Novum Somnium at an early age, Bill became the Mayor of Neo with his policies on homelessness and job disparity. Watching his father cut back on welfare in Neo in a bid to encourage people not to rely on the state, Neil was inspired to bring this message to the people of the world: to work hard and reap the profits of Caput's glory. When the town of Neo became suddenly overrun with cottage commission, an incentive of the kingdom due to the lobbyists of the Labour Organisation, Neil and his family were horrified that Hell had come to their small town. These newcomers, from hard times and economic inequality, challenged the village of Neo; they could not generate enough wealth to improve their own lives nor contribute to the Church of Novum Somnium. Seeing his home town overrun, Neil fled to the Church's healing spires and sought refuge in their gilded halls. He became Father Neil and dedicated his life to healing people so they could work harder (at a price). He is firmly a believer in the private glory of Caput and the divine holiness of wealth as a humble emulation of Heaven's bounty. He believes all people should dedicate themselves to the church and grants all people salvation, as long as they can pay for it.
Naturally by the end of the same day I’d written a complete history of my neoliberal church, Novum Somnium (the New Dream) and its worship of Caput (Capital), along with rankings of Saints, Prophets, and “cleansing levels”:
Heralded by Our Lady Margaret and the Prophet Ronald, Novum Somniumism is the religious belief that the state is immoral and a realm of Hell. Caput says that all living creatures should thus purify themselves by producing wealth and that all things belong to the private sphere of God. Since the Church is the closest example of Caput’s love, all glory to the Church is glory to Caput.
There are various levels to the Church of Novum Somnium from 1 through to 300. The higher levels correspond directly to financial capacity as those levels require more expensive material to ensure the soul’s purification. Worshippers can purchase cleansings and soul purifications from Level 100 onwards.
His affiliated organisations were the Mining Federation and the Petroleum League. His enemies? Greenies and tree huggers. I researched everything on the cleric class and dived into the subclass Acolyte, which is ironically meant to be the Shelter of the Faithful. I prepared my basic cantrips and first level spells, everything was ready to go for our first training session and I felt proud. Father Neil Austerity was awful and I loved him.
Our first actual session together, however, was more difficult than I envisaged. I did theatre sports in high school and loved improv, but revisiting it as an adult? Being asked to do the thing I feared most? Was being seen, entirely naked, entirely vulnerable, worth it now I was here? I suddenly had a penchant for pulling all my teeth out. Luke threw the three of us into a tavern in Saltmarsh with a silent character, Gumnut, and tactfully played some ambient sound to cover the stuttering silence. Hands reached for Doritos and Tim Tams, voices died as we sipped our gins and beers. I was studying the dirt under my fingernail which naturally occupied the whole of my attention. I couldn’t possibly divert it now.
“Gumnut grunts then heads to the bar. When he returns, he’s holding a flagon of mead and four tankards. He sets them down in front of each of you,” Luke suggests. “You can tell by the pleading look in his eye, slightly feverish now, that he wants you all to talk.”
Josh clears his throat and says in his Californian best, “I love this— uh— tavern. Pretty taverny as taverns go— man.” He has to add ‘man’ at the end of every sentence to keep his accent straying from definitely-not-Californian territory. We look at Vanessa, desperately hoping she’ll add something, but she isn’t here– she’s busy winning a drinking contest with pirates at the bar.
Gumnut’s eye is now twitching so there’s nothing else for it. I have to do what I do best. I smile beatifically, paternally, spreading my hands in supplication the way I’ve seen televangelists do. “How do we all feel about going to heaven?”
And then we burst out laughing until our sides split.
I’ve watched this same process in my dear friend, Samantha. I’ve been hounding her for ages to join our campaign and she finally agreed and it was like watching a flower bloom. Her first session, budding and quiet, the undergrowth of a new shoot, is a radical difference to the way she plays now which is playful, open, her joy like pollination, waiting to touch others with the spring of creativity. It’s been healing watching this process of unfurling in another person, how the simple act of play is enough to radically transform someone.
And perhaps that is the very point. A fellow librarian, a DM of over twenty years, explained that Dungeons and Dragons hits everything that a library should foster and provide: literacy skills, numeracy skills, problem solving, creativity, an inclusive social outlet and, I would argue, the most important: a sense of play.
The concept of Play, as explored in my favourite podcast ‘Weird Studies’, is fundamental to the human condition. Roger Caillois says it’s ‘an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money,’ yet is so entrenched in the psyche and spirit of life on earth that it is a shared experience amongst both humans and animals. ‘Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing,’ says Johan Huizinga. Evolution would suggest it is innate as breathing. But what of Play and how it can radically shape us? C. Thi Nguyen1 goes even further stating,
Games let us flirt with such seductive agencies in a protected context. Here is the hope: if you spend a lot of time engaged in aesthetic striving play, you will have plenty of practice losing yourself in, and then drawing back from, the pleasures of value clarity. You will be used to wearing your submersion a little lightly. Then when life hands you far more pressing agential modes, and value clarities with more seriousness and force behind them - when you face the calls of the crisp and clear value systems inherent in money, grades, Twitter likes, and research impact factors - you will have developed the right habits of lightness and control with your agency.
Agency and choice is absolutely something I struggle with due to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), my particular obsession being moral scrupulosity. All of my choices are triple checked and then doubted. My agency is something to fear, what if I make the wrong choice? What if I am a bad person for making X or Y decision? Things go regularly wrong in a D&D campaign and I am not struck down by some puritanical god, even if I said the wrong thing or rolled poorly. It doesn’t mean I am worthless or bad, it just happened, it just is— it’s just play. And in that delightfully safe space of play I am able to play out (pardon the pun) various endings without moral judgment upon my soul.
Play is something that has been beaten out of us, stripped and thrust musty into a cupboard. Play is relegated to the child sphere, the childish sphere. But what I and many other folks (across all neurotypes) value is not child-ish. It is child-like: a sense of wonder, magic, and openness. It is daring to expose oneself without fear of looking “lame” or “stupid.” It is fearlessness, it is boldness. It is revolutionary in that we pull our sense of play out of the cupboard, dust it off, and reclaim it, delight in it.
This sense of delight was something that made Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves so special when I watched it with my family on Easter Sunday. It didn’t take itself seriously, and how could it? The film managed to perfectly balance a strong emotional core, so real that you felt it pulse with that wondrous sense of fun. And why can’t we revel in fun? I, for one, am sick of the grittiness that plagues our fantasy (and I say that as a typical fan of military and war fantasies). Where is the whimsy? The silly? I’m fucking silly, let me be fucking silly. The stakes don’t need to be so high because they are high enough already: unmasked joy, cracked open hearts, a vulnerable belief in magic- they’re the highest stakes of all. And it’s something we never see celebrated.
Holga was the best example of all this– a barbarian, a friend, a caring parental figure for Kira. She was also allowed to embody a wide spectrum of personalities, feelings and emotions, rather than being relegated to the 2D girlboss sphere. There was no “this is how you fight like a girl” moment with a signature smirk before doing some piss-poor punch (because the actress they’ve hired to be strong certainly can’t look like they are). And neither was she hyper-aggressive or played for laughs. Holga was Holga. She transcended gender binaries and norms (Huzzah!) and I wish that I could have seen her character on screen when I was younger. I need it to be known in front of the jury that the end (I’m trying to keep this spoiler free) made me CRY. I was a weeping, stupid mess. Holga’s vulnerability was her authenticity. And it was magical to see.
There are writers out there who indulge in this style of magic and fun and whimsy whilst still retaining robust mature themes like skeins of darkness– Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant is one such example and I would even add in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, both of which I love fervently. Both are concerned with adventure and laughing in the face of danger (the sparrow flies south for winter anyone?), and while Pratchett deals in ethical and moral concerns, Landy gives us some real dark shit, only to make us laugh while weeping. In D&D I can go from hysterically laughing in one moment (there was a particular dungeon scene that required us to play Careless Whisper) to genuine fear the next at the prospect of our characters dying. This same Careless Whisper scene saw our entire company unconscious and Father Neil desperately trying to resurrect everybody using spells or cantrips or even Channel Divinity: Preserve Life, before trying to drag them out of harm’s way. I can’t even stress how anxiety-inducing that particular session was. We had invested so much in our characters, much the same way we invest in books and movies, surely we couldn’t falter now?
Father Neil dismisses his three Novum Somnium acolytes, Fri’Marquette, Strüktürel-Rephørms, and Sir Culation and they melt away like wraiths, all clutching the holy book in their hands and cardboard cutouts of Father Neil’s face. The cutout is a rather generous likeness of him he will admit (they fixed his bald patch which was a nice touch). He is a cat with nine lives, with plans as complex as an aqueduct system. If any of these adventures fail and a cut of the treasure isn’t possible, his newest escapade will do nicely. He returns to the company who have gathered away from the main street.
“Er, do we have a plan?” Kaisa asks over her shoulder as she sharpens a blade on a whetstone. Inej nibbles affectionately at the piercings on her pointed ears.
“Nope!– man,” Harmony replies who is rifling through his endless pockets again. As a rogue he normally has a decidedly sneaky look plastered on his face and under his hood his eyes light up with the seed of a particularly sneaky idea. “Well–” he begins.
“Of course we do,” Father Neil says brusquely, cutting him off. This was no time for sneaking, time was running dangerously short. “We haul Ned up before the council, get him to testify against Gellan Primewater, appeal to the Loyalists and mention the loot– Bam! Gellan’s sent to gaol. I offer myself as Councillor in his place, then we send a force down to the docks to wait in secret, we flash that lamp we found to dupe the slaving ship– Bam! We take down the slave trade, confiscate the contraband — sell it on the black market and I’ll take a larger cut since this is my idea (for Caput’s glory of course) — and then you help me start my cult of personality.”
He’s met with blank stares and decides not to mention that the plans to raise him to godhood have already begun.
“Well?” Neil demands. “Let’s get Ned!”
They traipse back to the Wicker Goat, boots heavy but Ned isn’t there. They exchange dark looks. They know what’s happened before the innkeeper says anything, they’ve been triple crossed before, but it doesn’t lessen the blow when he pulls them aside.
“Listen,” he says gruffly, an oiled rag between his calloused hands. “I don’t mean to be trouble, and I’m not insinuating anything but your friend, the one with hair like straw– Ned I think it was– well he left this morning in the wee hours of dawn. Didn’t say where he’d be going and told me he wouldn’t be needing his room anymore, that you’d cover the fare.”
Pandora swears sharply. The innkeeper looks alarmed. “Excuse me miss but all I’m saying is that the room will be paid in full by your kind selves, yes?”
Three gold coins clunk heavily onto the wooden bar. “For the room,” Father Neil says curtly. “And your soul.”
The company clusters outside the tavern, heavy bolts of rain hit their cloaks. It’s pathetic fallacy and all rather dramatic. Someone tries to speak, to rouse the group, offer an idea, but they fall silent. What’s to be done? Kaisa pulls a letter out of her cloak, one that the innkeeper had pressed into her hands as they left. It was a note from Ned in an untidy scrawl: Gone to visit me mam. Inej languidly pecks it with her beak.
“So our sole witness is gone,” says Harmony slowly.
“And the bastard knows that we know about Primewater’s slave trade,” adds Pandora.
“And this would make it – what – a quadruple cross?” says Kaisa.
Father Neil raises his hands as though he is about to perform a healing spell. He is smiling.
“What are you so happy about?” Kaisa snaps. Her patience with the cleric is as thin as his hair which she regularly points out. It hurts his feelings.
“Ned’s spoken about his mum before, right?” The company nods. “And that night we killed Sanbalet, when we got stuck into the contraband spirits, he let slip what city she lived in.”
“Angleburg!” Harmony thunders triumphantly.
“And he loves his mummy,” says Father Neil. “It would be a shame if she– oh how do I put this– came to harm.”
Everyone stares at him. “What?” He shrugs. “Oh I’m not going to do anything terrible,” he snaps waspishly. Where was their metal, their bite? Wasn’t danger part of the adventure? “It’ll be just a bit of light holding her hostage to draw the weasel out of his hole.” A flash of movement catches his eye– he can see a sliver of the town square where a sobbing woman is taking a leaflet from Fri’Marquette who pats her shoulder paternally. She kisses the likeness of Father Neil and beckons over others. His mouth curves into a smile.
“I am a priest after all.”
Fin
Behind the scenes
Probably going to marry Michelle Rodriguez tbh (HUBBA HUBBA)
This was an extremely hard essay to write. The level of vulnerability this took, particularly writing the fantasy scenes, had me wanting to tear my hair out. There was none of my usual dark-body-horror-macabre-metaphor-shit going on. And I think because that kind of writing isn’t actually reflective of me, at least not entirely. I actually mostly write fantasy, but I am terrified that it won’t be as gripping or interesting, which is ironic given the entire point of this essay. This shit is hard! Don’t look at me!
I am a firm believer in rolling my dice in a little cute dice tray – every time I roll in a tupperware container or on the table I roll >5 and it is absolutely tragic.
Fri’Marquette speaks with a French accent (it’s canon). Likewise Strüktürel-Rephørms is either from Germany or a Norse country, we’re not quite sure yet because every time Luke does the accent he’s from somewhere different, and Sir Culation is a 13th century English knight. I’d take a bullet for them, they are angels.
I am finally vindicated that Chris Pine is the best Chris. I’ve been saying it for years and have been met with sneers and even the occasional rotten tomato or cabbage but look who’s laughing now.
There has only been one recorded instance of Father Neil doing something not selfish and sacrificing himself for the company. I shall say no more about it because he is embarrassed and doesn’t want anyone to think that he cares.
Games: Agency As Art by C. Thi Nguyen
I’m also obsessed with DND so happy my friend got me into it. Glad you’re enjoying yourself :)