On an uncharacteristically sunny day, Sitkans spread out all across town, kayaking out on the ocean and scaling mountains for a rare, clear view. However, one specific group of Sitkans is tasked with an important quest: rescuing a blacksmith’s daughter from a horde of goblins.
Armed with their gifted set of dice and assigned character sheets, the seven players wield their pencils to take notes on their surroundings. Gathered around a table at the Sitka Public Library’s multipurpose room, the players range in experience from this being the first time they have played the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D, to veterans with years of experience and D&D podcast recommendations under their belt.
Riley Whitson is what the game deems the Dungeon Master, a storyteller who guides the players throughout the whole gameplay experience, from helping them create their characters to narrating their characters’ surroundings. Having regularly mentored middle schoolers in how to play D&D under the city’s Parks and Recreation Division, Whitson was recruited to lead a two-week workshop for adults. Having played the game for over two decades, what keeps Whitson coming back for more is D&Ds unique collaborative nature.
“Dungeons and Dragons is kind of a shared story,” Whitson said. “You’re all characters in some type of adventure going on or some activity, and everyone gets a piece to kind of make it a living, breathing story. And that’s what excites me the most.”
After defeating the goblins and freeing both the blacksmith’s daughter and a captured paladin (played by an experienced player who joined that day), the party uncovers a statue of a knight with a mysterious riddle engraved below it:
“If you are to keep this, you must first give it to me…”
As a fantasy-game that prominently features riddles, D&D is a game that is fully dependent on the imagination of its players. As a born-and-raised Sitkan, Whitson believes that Sitka is a prime location for fueling prospective players’ imaginations.
“All I ever wanted to do as a child was leave this place,” Whitson said. “We’re very rural and isolated, and so your imagination kind of tends to take you on adventures no matter what, whether you’re imagining just going to Seattle for a weekend, or you’re off in a mythical land where it’s always sunny, you can just put yourself in a world that you want to go to.”
First-time player Carole Knuth was inspired to attend the library’s workshop by her grandson’s imagination, and wanted to learn how to play D&D in order to create an opportunity to connect with him. However, learning how to harness her imagination while learning the plethora of unique game mechanics has been a challenge.
“I’m more of a black-and-white person and to have this much — well, the numbers and the the variety and imagination was just really stretching for me,” Knuth said.
While it can be an adjustment, Whitson believes that the limitless imagination D&D encourages in its players is what makes the game so special.
“All of us played pretend when we were kids, and everybody has some part of them that still wants to,” Whitson said. “And so once you see people kind of get over that initial shock of, oh, there’s numbers and probability and math and stepping outside of your own shoes, you see people just take to it.”
It is moments of learning and camaraderie that the players experienced in their session that led Adult Services Librarian Margot O’Connell to co-create this event with Sitka Parks and Recreation. She believes hosting tabletop role-playing game events are an important way to facilitate community building.
“We kind of think of ourselves as a community living room,” O’Connell said. “And I think with games like Dungeons and Dragons or board games, they are inherently very social. And so anytime we can provide a space for folks to come and build community together, learn new skills, just come and hang out, I am thrilled.”
This fall, Whitson will lead some intermediate D&D workshops, as well as some middle school and high school campaigns with Sitka Parks and Recreation.