Gallery • 5 Photos

Rucha Kapadia

A closeup of a Dungeons & Dragons setup

I take a deep breath and carefully roll the dice, holding my breath as they clatter on the table. I realize with a sinking feeling that I only have four health left. As I look again I realize that I’ve gotten lucky and rolled a 20, so my enemy is slain with ease, soon after the Dungeon Master ends the tense session on a high note. 

Dungeons and Dragons is an open-ended roleplaying game in which players create a character and roll dice to determine the story that will progress throughout each session. The Dungeons and Dragons club has once again started gaining a lot of attention from many students. Every Wednesday, more than 25 students go to room 219 after school to participate in the club.

The club is sponsored by Mr. Parks, Texas history teacher. This is his first year sponsoring the club and he is quite passionate about it.

“It allows students an opportunity to imagine and explore strange, different worlds and experience what it could be like to be mythological and magical characters,” Mr. Parks said. “You can play any role playing games at home, but this is something much more exciting because you’re not limited to the designers, and you’re only limited by your own imaginations.”

During the club, students separate and go to their respective Dungeon Masters (DMs) who set up and overlook the progress of the game, give new players a helping hand in creating their characters, and create conflicts, climaxes and resolutions for each session.

“Dungeons and Dragons helps me socialize with other kids. It gives me the opportunity to be myself and have fun.” Alexia Koller said (7).

Students who are in the club get to choose from a series of supernatural characters like wizards, monks, paladins, and so on. The students also get to choose attributes like powers, looks, races (in game) and social classes. 

“Dungeons and dragons is really cool, because you can play as your own character and there are no bounds to what you can do.” Charlie McGuff said (7).

“I think if you’re not nerdy about something then you’re lacking something serious in your life. I think everybody should be a nerd about something. I’m a nerd about a lot of things, and kids that are into D&D, call them what you want, but it’s a very fun game and it’s fun to play,” Mr. Parks said “What is a nerd? It’s someone who is very interested in something and I don’t see any problem in using that terminology. I think a lot of D&D players would be proud to call themselves nerds.”