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“You want to be a snail?” I ask my friend incredulously. “How is that going to help us succeed?” We are creating our Dungeons & Dragons characters and I have my sights set firmly on victory and treasure. A slow-moving mollusc doesn’t seem the best choice for our mission.
“Well, actually,” the Dungeon Master interjects, “if she decides to play as a druid who can transform into a snail, that could be pretty handy. Her small size could help you sneak into locked rooms, and the shell offers strong defence against monsters.” I decide to take his word for it. After all, it is his job to take whatever ideas we dream up, no matter how farfetched, and seamlessly incorporate them into an epic fantasy adventure. So it is decided: my friend will be a snail.
As a gamer and fantasy fan, I’m well aware of the enormous influence of D&D in the world of tabletop and video games, as well as its resurgence in popularity over the past decade, but I’d never managed actually to play it before. The doorstop rule book was too intimidating, the onus of finding a group of friends who would commit to meeting every week too challenging in our busy lives.
Such barriers are exactly what prompted the creation of our venue for the evening: RPG Taverns, a new London venue for tabletop role-playing. While the nearby pubs fill with office workers clutching pints, I and my band of fellow beginners descend into the pub’s basement to sip mead and become druids, wizards and — in my case — a singing turtle with a criminal past.
Those as green to the game as we were may need a brief introduction. D&D is a tabletop role-playing game in which players create characters and go on fictional adventures guided by a Dungeon Master (DM). It’s part board game, part improv theatre. Players collaborate rather than compete, and the game proceeds via conversations and die rolls — when you decide to try to sneak past a guard or hurl a fireball at a goblin, you roll the famous 20-sided die to see whether your action succeeds.
But RPG Taverns is not just a place to play D&D away from home, it’s also a fresh take on the game that is purpose-built for time-poor urbanites. While a traditional game would involve a group of friends gathering every week to tell a long-running adventure that might span years, RPG Taverns lets you drop into its ongoing story at any time. The idea is to offer the fun, creativity and social pleasure of fantasy role-play without the commitment.
In a room decorated with colourful flowers and giant toadstools, the DM guides us through character creation, telling us that our avatars are “extensions of ourselves”. Unsurprisingly, my doctor friend opts to be a cleric with healing spells. Another decides to be an ancient wizard and gamely speaks in a croaky voice for the rest of the evening. I choose to be a bard who can inspire the group with rousing tunes and talk himself out of trouble with a silver tongue.
It quickly becomes clear that the job of DM is not an easy one. Ours ably guides us through the complexities of the game’s rules and encourages improvisation at every turn. He is narrator, world builder and referee combined, voicing all the characters we meet along the way. His storytelling style delights in words like “vellum”, “vituperative” and “bonhomie”. Having the “yes and” approach of an improv comedian also helps — when one friend (who isn’t entirely following the rules) decides she wants to pretend to be an orange, the DM asks her to roll her die to see if bystanders are taken in by her ruse. She rolls a five, convincing nobody — but l am left impressed by the DM’s ability to apply nimbly the game’s systems to our chaotic inventions.
I’d been surprised how many of my non-gamer friends were keen to join for the evening. Hobbies such as D&D have shed their social stigma in an era when comic-book-based movies and Game of Thrones have defined mainstream culture. In its 50-year history, D&D has grown from a pastime enjoyed by nerdy schoolboys and beardy middle-aged men on pencil and paper to a worldwide phenomenon with a diverse player base that uses digital tools such as virtual tabletops and a bespoke app. Meanwhile, the game’s rules have undergone a series of transformations and simplifications — they are currently in their fifth edition.
This renaissance is partly due to the monster success of the Netflix series Stranger Things, which heavily features the game; films such as the 2023 box-office hit Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves; and video games such as Baldur’s Gate 3, which uses the D&D ruleset for its gameplay. There was also a spike in popularity during the pandemic, when those craving social interaction and escapism turned to virtual campaigns as a ritual that provided creative endeavour and a reason to meet regularly. In 2020, D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast reported the game’s most lucrative year to date (though more recently its parent company Hasbro has been struggling).
Live-streaming technologies have given birth to a new way to enjoy D&D with the “actual play” genre, in which groups such as Critical Role and Dimension 20 gather to broadcast their D&D campaigns. Some of these attract millions of viewers who have realised that watching people role play can be as compelling as TV drama. One such series, Dungeons and Drag Queens, featuring stars from RuPaul’s Drag Race, was my own fabulous introduction to the game — it had the best costumes.
Back in RPG Taverns, since we are beginners, our DM decides to lead us on a rather simple campaign. Our adventurers are tasked with finding a particularly magnificent sandwich (“with lashings of chutney”) that will be used to lure out a legendary beast that a scholar wants to study for the next volume of his bestiary. The catch is: the sandwich has been stolen. This is a comic tale, but D&D can also be used to tell serious stories of political intrigue or focus on strategic combat. It can also expand thematically beyond fantasy to horror, sci-fi or realistic settings. This flexibility is key to the game’s success, as fans and players create their own spells, stories and even entirely new games built on D&D’s foundations. (There has at times been tension between these homemade inventions and the corporate interests of Wizards of the Coast.)
After visiting the Inventors’ Guild and the Farmers’ Guild, our party eventually locates the sandwich thief sitting up a tree. I cast a charm spell to tempt her down, but then a huge griffin descends from the sky and prepares to attack. While my bard helpfully plays rousing ditties, my teammates hurl fireballs and ensnare the griffin in magical roots. Unfortunately, my druid friend never gets the opportunity to transform into a snail because, mid-combat, another companion remarks that we’ve actually completed our mission of allowing the scholar to observe the griffin, and didn’t need to defeat either the monster or the thief.
And so we walk away and leave them to their unknown fates, perhaps letting other players pick up the narrative. Ultimately, I realise, it was never really about winning or losing — it was about the stories, laughter and magnificent sandwiches we shared along the way.
