All’s right with the world—because of D&D and Kult?

There was a strange moment in the breathless early hours of the morning (which is when strange thoughts are born, isn’t it?) when I stopped and realised, I was smiling because I was reliving some of the absolute nonsense which had transpired in the D&D game I’d played earlier that afternoon (or should I say, the previous afternoon?) And suddenly it was as though I was an onlooker, standing in a corner of the room, looking at this group of total strangers, who were laughing and building off one another’s madness, saying ever more outrageous things, and this ghost-onlooker-me thought, what is it connects us?

The game, of course. We’re there for the game. But what a tenuous, serendipitous, lucky sequence of events led to us, all six of us, being there together in that space, at that time. From what I gather, we all found our way to the table in different ways. Me, because I answered a random advertisement on the SG RPG Discord server. Others, because they know the Game Master. The rest—I don’t even know! I shall ask.

What else connects us? Commitment and desire and investment, perhaps. Every week I’m struck anew by the idea that it’s a minor miracle we all managed to be there, life and commitments being what they are. I’m learning a whole new level of respect for both amateur and professional Game Masters: I thought teachers picked up event planner-level skills, but Game Masters manage to wrangle two to six adults—all with differing jobs, commitment levels, experience, game objectives and preferences, even emotional baggage—and get these people together at a more or less fixed time every week. And then make these people play together for three to five hours, to tell a story cooperatively. Now those are some serious planning, logistical, and people skills, backed by sheer will.

Of course, it helps that the players want to be there. And it’s not entirely the Game Master’s job to make the players want to be there either. If it’s something I’ve learned, it’s that the more you invest in a thing, the more you learn to like it. The Game Master has to provide the hook, and maintain the players’ level of interest, but it’s also up to the players to really show up and be present at the game. (Seriously, I could write a whole post on how the roles at the D&D table correspond so neatly to the roles in a classroom—Game Master is the teacher, players are the students, etc.)

Which—and I’m so mortified that I’m absolutely gushing, but this is how I feel—is another way I’ve lucked out. So far—and I’m not just talking about the Saturday game—I truly have not sat down at a table with a monster player. I’ve heard about them: the creep who uses the fantasy of D&D to indulge sick fantasies, the diva player who wants to shine at everyone else’s expense, the jerk who just wants to fight—not just with imaginary monsters, but the Game Master and other players—and of course, the “-ist” person (racist, sexist, etc.) I now understand how vastly different each individual’s playstyle can be—and still we show up, and cooperate with one another (when we finally figure out what the other person was trying to do), and laugh at one another’s jokes and awful, awful puns.

So perhaps it’s this, more than anything, which connects us: the will to be there, to be together, to enjoy a game of make believe together. And because there’s this will, other things start building: good humour, the willingness to tahan one another’s occasional oddness or incomprehensibility, a generosity of spirit which makes those few hours on a Saturday evening or afternoon time well spent.

There are so many roll-on effects from this positivity too. Other things start connecting us. Because we’ve all invested our time and energy and creativity, startlingly vivid moments start happening in the story. Some of these moments are gems of hilarity straight out of Monty Python: when our rogue, who’s gone invisible and snuck into a dungeon to investigate, speaks telepathically to our fighter who’s also entered the dungeon by sheer chance; she’s speaking telepathically because the fighter is being escorted by a guard patrolling that dungeon, and we cannot afford to be caught, but the fighter, because she’s never spoken to him telepathically before, and this is who he is, starts asking loudly, “Do you hear that? Who’s speaking to me?”—upon which the rogue goes into an orgy of telepathically shushing him and scolding him, only for him to double down on the misunderstanding and escalate the situation.

Other moments are less funny, but still breathtaking. Our party has been trying to find two little girls who’ve gone missing. We finally find them—their mutilated heads, that is. What a moment that was, when it sunk in what the Game Master was describing. The table went silent.

Isn’t it odd? These are totally, 100% moments of make believe. We are not dwarves and changelings and elves. There isn’t a dungeon. No one died. I know that. And yet sometimes, these moments feel absolutely real, and 100% compelling. Sometimes after a game, I think about it and marvel at how in the moment I am during those sessions. Ok, not all the time, the sessions run long, and my attention span is not great. But a lot of the time, I’m there. I’m fully present. If that’s not achieving a flow state I don’t know what is. I certainly feel more alive and in the moment during these sessions than, say, I ever felt in most meetings at work.

This is one of the things I enjoy most about the games I’ve played so far (D&D and Kult): the immediacy and reality of the make believe we create. There is no time to get too lost in the mazes in my head, no time for anxiety, none of that restless, cold detachment which comes with boredom and the feeling that I’m wasting my time. Which is ironic, of course. I suspect many pragmatic folks would say I am wasting my time. A grown adult giving hours to making up errant nonsense with others? What an unproductive use of time. Well… may such pragmatic folks never cross my path to rain on my parade.

And then, oddly enough, I also enjoy the regularity of these sessions. It’s nice to have fixed points in the week to look forward to. So many of life’s routines have to do with work, or the sheer mundane business of adulting. No wonder the word “routine” so often has that stale smell about it, when really, it can and should feel solid, and stable, and comforting. In fact, if we consider the way the word “routine” is used in the sporting context—the Olympic skater’s routine—then “routine” should have connotations of time mindfully and skilfully and deliberately spent. I.e. a routine is not a set of actions you mindlessly go through, like instructions for a machine. A routine is a set of actions you have purposefully, lovingly chosen and put together because they make your life a work of art, a testament to skill and vision and purpose.

So it’s great, that now I’ve fixed points which are fun. Which make my heart soar and my imagination leap. Every game never goes quite how I imagined—and yet I’ve enjoyed them all the same. Or rather, it’s like I get to enjoy each game thrice: by imagining it as it might be, and then experiencing it as it is, and finally reliving it as a comforting memory. And it’s not just the games—I find I also look forward (most weeks) to the walk from the MRT station to the game venue, and then the walk back. These walks are calming. They give me time to sort out my thoughts (and emotions, because I’m high as a kite after a game.) And bonus: there are cats in the neighbourhood which I’m slowly befriending! Now here’s another wholly unexpected benefit to the regularity. Finally, of course, there’s the anticipation which comes with having fixed points—even the action of putting my character sheet and dice into my bag becomes a tiny moment of pleasure.

I wonder if little things like this are another point of connection between the other players and me. Some of them have been playing for a while now. I wonder if the excitement stays the same, or decreases. I hope not. Maybe I’ll ask them.

Meanwhile, I’m just so happy I’ve found D&D and Kult, and these people to play with.