Through our Make Friends or Die series, we’re exploring a new community each week to better understand why they matter, how they’re built, and how meaningful connections form beyond transactions.
If you can, it's always better to meet in person, whether at a friend's house or a local gathering spot like a game shop. Playing face-to-face allows you to share snacks, use a physical board with dice, and enjoy a truly immersive bonding experience. However, Discord is a great place to host the game if you can't meet in person. There are several sites where the DM can make interactive maps, stream their screens, and play the game from the comfort of your home. This leaves room for technical difficulties and is trickier to hold people's attention, but it's still a great option.
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a tabletop role-playing game in which the Dungeon Master (DM) crafts a world and storyline, and players create characters to embark on a collaborative, imaginative adventure. Games often span multiple sessions, and while there are basic rules that most games follow, creativity takes center stage. While gameplay is mostly imagined, it’s usually enhanced with physical props like maps and miniatures.
Since its debut in the 1970s, D&D has captivated players worldwide and remains a beloved pastime, standing the test of time and continuing to attract new players today.
Q: How did you first come across the D&D community, and why is it significant to you?
I first played D&D with some friends in college, and I instantly fell in love. It was so fun to sit around a table every week with my friends and immerse myself in a fantasy world for a few hours. Building a character with a rich personality and backstory was so fun! I then bought some player handbooks to learn more about the rules and some of the lore that most games follow. Nerdy, but I read those books from start to finish like a novel, and I learned so much.
Since then, I’ve played several games with different groups of people, and it’s always been such a great time and a fun bonding experience with friends. It’s really worked my imagination muscle and inspired me to be more creative.
Q: What unites the community? What does the community stand for or against?
From my experience, the D&D community is very inclusive and open to all. We all come together over our shared love of creativity and fantasy role playing.
Q: What is a standout statistic or fact that captures the essence of this community?
In an interview with BBC News in 2021, player Nathan Walters said, “It’s not a game. It’s a social experience. There is no winning or losing. It’s like you’re sitting down with a few people, and you’re collectively writing a novel, all at once in real-time.”
This sentiment highlights what makes D&D unique because it’s not about winning; it’s about spending time with friends and expressing your creativity in a structured way.
Q: What experience best embodies the spirit of the D&D community?
There are two feelings every D&D player will experience sooner or later: rolling a “nat 20” or a “nat 1.” In D&D, players decide what they want their characters to do and then roll a 20-sided die to determine success. The DM sets the difficulty, and the result of your roll decides whether you succeed or fail.
Rolling a nat 20 is the ultimate victory—it means you achieve it with flying colors. This feels so good when talking your way out of a sticky situation or executing an epic stunt to defeat the bad guy.
However, rolling a nat 1 means you miserably fail, usually in tragic or hilariously unexpected ways. Maybe you're trying to flirt with someone and offend them beyond repair, or in the worst case, lead to your character's untimely demise.
