Thanks to my roommate and classmates, I have recently gotten back into the fever, fun and mania that is Dungeons and Dragons. For a game that involves nothing but a set of different sided die, paper, and a pencil, the sky is the limit thanks to your imagination. Plus it can be pretty damn awesome when you and your party slay a creature that can range anywhere from a bear to a house with chicken legs (officially it’s called a Baba Yaga after the Russian mythical creature). So with all that being said, I firmly believe that everyone should at least once in their lives play the game just once, and here’s why.

First and foremost is how random the game can be. It forces you to think on your feet and adapt to a situation because you never know what your other party members are going to do. Case and point, I was playing a campaign with my friends one of whom was a druid gnome that worshiped Shia LeBeouf I kid thee not. Anyway, we had returned to the first town after completing some quest involving us getting rid of a local cult of necromancers or something like that and basically the Dungeon Master decided to shit on us for whatever reason. I mean, we did just kill the group causing this town a lot of grief and suffering in the past, but apparently that wasn’t enough to warrant as much as a thank you from these bastard like NPCs. So what does my gnome compatriot do once we leave the town and make for the next one? He makes a prayer to his god Shia to smite the town and their inhabitants. Well one critical 20 roll later and well let’s just say that town was soon overrun by a swarm of plague riddled rats courtesy of one celebrity god just “doing it”.

My next reason why you should play is just how creative you can be in a situation. For instance, when I was playing my first game ever with this massive group of 20 or so people, I came in right as they were in the middle of this fight with a Baba Yaga. I had a bunch of arrows and a bow and I thought to myself “what good is just a normal arrow going to be against a wooden house”. Instinctively, I grabbed another player’s torch lit one of my arrows on fire and shot it right at that sucker. The thing must have been taking a bath in lighter fluid because that enemy was up in flames the minute my arrow struck it. Of course, there was problem of several of our fellow players being inside the house for whatever reason, but they got out in one piece (more or less).

I guess finally is just the fact that like life being a box of chocolate you never know what you’re going to get as far as loot is concerned. I’ll just use the post-fight with that Baba Yaga as an example this time. Apparently the loot was under a large puddle of chicken poo and the daring bunch of my group myself included decided to jump in and see what we could find. Some found gold, others got nothing but crap, but me I hit the jackpot for a ranger. I managed to pull out a mythic bow with strange runes on it that nobody in the party could decipher. Well it wasn’t long before I got the chance to test out my new bow in combat and let’s just say the results were surprising. The first shot caused an explosion; the next temporarily turned the monster into jelly engulfing anyone close enough, and the final shot which I used in a different encounter opened up a portal to an abyssal plain (not some good stuff). After that last shot I had apparently exhausted myself and someone else decided do just get rid of the bow before we discovered what the fourth and final attack this thing had was. Needless to say I was kind of miffed my bow got thrown away into abyssal plain but also relieved that my antics didn’t get anyone killed or injured.

So there you have it three reasons why you should play D&D once in your life get some buddies buy the books and dice and go have an adventure. It’s a great way to pass a rainy day or a dull evening.