Dungeons and Dragons: Maverick Style

Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game. The game consists of a Dungeon Master, also called the “DM” and a group of players. This popular game has its own club at Minnesota State, which is run by student Karl Betcher.

In Dungeon and Dragons, players can do anything — fight vampires, kingdoms and creatures of the deep. Players can also release a farmer’s cattle, as one of Betcher’s groups did.

To Betcher, the game is “a way to have fun and a place to go where you don’t have to worry about anything.”

A player’s actions are his or hers to bear, and they decide their own path, which can be very appealing.

“There is a whole bunch of creativity with the aspect of roleplaying. You get to step into someone else’s shoes and create their story,” said Betcher.

Besides offering a great way to have fun and test out character concepts, the Dungeon Mavericks club is a great way to make friends. According to Betcher, many people attending the club are just starting out.

But with every game come misconception. Betcher said the most common one he encountered with players was that “it is hard to start,” which could not be further from the truth, at least for Dungeon Mavericks.

“It is in no way, shape, or form hard to start. We give you everything you need and can help you make a character in 10 minutes,” Betcher stated.

One of the big things the club offers is the freedom to experiment. If a player tries a character and doesn’t like it, he or she is encouraged to try a different character. And if a player is worried about not remembering the rules or how things work, Betcher has them covered.

“I’m more than happy to pause the game and explain things because I love working with the game mechanics and helping players understand them,” Betcher said.

Besides offering a diverse number of choices for customization, Dungeons and Dragons has many pre-generated worlds in the forms of their published books and many Dungeon Masters that create their own worlds. This creates a world of choices for the players, where the possibilities are quite literally endless.

“I had this whole campaign planned out, but one of the players didn’t quite get the roll needed to advance part of the planned story, so I instead made up a different creature, and a new story started,” Betcher recalled.

Dungeons and Dragons has many choices that have consequences, both good and bad. But the number one thing you can do every time is “roll with it.”

“The best advice I can give is to roll with it, and that no call is a bad call,” said Betcher.

Dungeon Mavericks meet 5:30-10 p.m. Sundays in CSU 256.

Header Photo: The Dungeons and Dragons club, pictured above, is just one of the many on-campus RSOs that Mavericks can spend their free time taking part in. (Courtesy MSU Dungeons & Dragons Club)

Write to Kendall Larson at kendall.larson@mnsu.edu