By Charlie Craft

You hear heavy footsteps coming up the stairs outside. “Bang! Bang! Bang!” goes the knock on the door. Beyond, you can make out the faint rattle of polyhedral dice and the shuffling of character sheets on notebooks. The door swings open with a creak. The dungeon master has arrived.

If, after that description, you were thoroughly confused and thought that it was the beginning of some 50 Shades of Grey-esque, psychosexual short story, then you’ve probably never played Dungeons and Dragons. I played for the first time this summer and learned about life, love, war, jealousy, betrayal and the difference between a d20 and a d8. I learned that Dungeons and Dragons is the best game ever invented and that we should all be playing it at all times.

Dungeons and Dragons (otherwise known as D&D) is a fantasy-themed tabletop role-playing game that relies heavily on the creativity of the players and the Dungeon Master (or DM for short). The DM is the architect of the world that the players traverse using characters with specific skills and attributes. D&D is a lot like role-playing video games such as Skyrim and World of Warcraft except that the DM makes everything up and the players move their character by saying out loud what action the character is taking. For example: The DM describes someone knocking at the door, then the players have to decide whether they want to answer the door, or try to hide, or take off all their clothes, smear jam on their genitals and run around screaming “Ears are not what they seem!” This is the key to D&D: the players can try to do anything they can imagine. This is why, since its invention in 1974, D&D has been a pillar in the temple of Nerdom and has inspired generations of nerds and creative people.

When I learned that my friend Sammers was into D&D and could DM, we immediately decided to put together a session. Because people had busy schedules and we had no friends cool enough to stay inside for 6 hours to play D&D, it ended up just being my 15-year-old brother Frank and I as the players. A brief word on Frank before I go any further: He’s an odd child, big for his age and with blond hair that goes down to his shoulder blades. If I were kidding myself, I would describe him as conniving, but because I’m being honest, he’s a full-blown sociopath. Throughout the game he was trying to peak at the DM notebook (which ruins the surprise), cheat any way he could and he backstabbed me the first chance he got, even though in D&D it’s generally assumed all the players are working as a team.

I was really surprised how much effort and detail went into D&D. The character sheets show you what sick weapons, armor and spells you have. No exaggeration, it took us three hours to fill it out, with many a die roll to determine our skills and a scouring of one of the highly detailed books filled with spells and items to add to our inventories. I created a gnome sorcerer named Ridley Crooklebrook and Frank created a half-orc barbarian.

After creating our characters, we began. The first night we were attacked by hyenas because we were sleeping outside and neither of us stayed up to watch. The next day, we encountered goblins called Kobolds that we fought in the road and a sexy water nymph who healed us. On and on we went, encountering other characters, arguing about whether or not a merchant was to be trusted and earning stacks on stacks of gold coins. After 3 solid hours of gameplay, we came to a stopping point to reconvene another day.

It was exhilarating, while the sun was shining and I could hear the sound of laughter from a park, I was inside, pretending to do stuff. It reminded me of when I was just a burgeoning nerd in primary school, hanging out in the library during recess looking at books about King Arthur and Greek gods. Now thanks to D&D I am the badass fighting the monsters.