Breakfast with Amber

June 2021: Dungeons and Dragons til Midnight

With May over, we venture further into summer. My summer research project was in full swing, I had my Japanese cultural exchange every other Tuesday, and I didn't have enough time to watch my newest video series of interest, the Dream SMP. Or maybe I was losing interest. Either way, I think I dodged a bullet with that one.

But this isn't about my research project or the Dream SMP. It's about Dungeons and Dragons. You see, in March, I decided to attend an "Intro to D&D" event held by the Trinity D&D club, also known as TriniD&D. Afterwards, I decided to join their GroupMe in case someone ever sent a message about a campaign they needed more players for.

And that message did come...in June. I have this vague notion of it being a Thursday for some reason, but there's no event in my calendar labeled, "Receive a message in the GroupMe about a D&D campaign that's going to suck up your Saturday evenings for the next year and a half." The message specified that the campaign was going to be on Saturdays starting at 7. I was hoping to get into a campaign, so I replied, "I'd like to join," and the DM, Andrew, sent me a link to the Discord server the campaign would be taking place in.

Or the campaign had already been taking place in, as the case may be. When I dropped into that Discord server on Saturday the 5th at 7, I thought that this was the first session, so I was confused by the lack of exposition.

Actually, did I say confused? I meant I had no idea what the heck was going on.

We were in some kind of underground temple awakening an ancient curse. I don't remember who exactly was in that session. I think it was Andrew, William who played as a warforged artificer named MDE-GRT, someone named Jacob (It must have been Jankowski; I don't remember Richmond joining until later on), someone named Olive whose character was just named J, and the newbies: me and another girl named Lily.

During the session, Andrew gave me and Lily the chance to introduce our characters. Lily's was named Megkovez Egitest (God I hope I spelled that right), an Earth Genasi druid whom I'm pretty sure survived for the rest of the campaign, which I couldn't say about any of our other characters. I, being the Miitopia nerd I am, decided to create Daph-Nii, a halfling rogue I based off of my character in Miitopia for the 3DS. I don't think I did a lot this session because most of it was exploration, and I usually don't know what to do unless we're in combat.

When I joined the session, I was under the impression that it would be at about two hours. Seven to nine. That seemed like a good time frame, so as it got later and later and the session didn't end, I began to wonder whether I should say something. Then at 9:45, I got a text from my mom asking, "Daphne, are you coming down?"

So I finally asked, "So when is the session going to be over?"

"About eleven," Andrew answered.

"Eleven?"

"Yeah. D&D sessions usually last about four hours."

And then I got this notion of, "They usually what?"

"But if you really need to go, you can," Andrew said.

So I logged off and went downstairs for my nightly dessert and episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and my parents asked, "What were you talking about up there?"

I explained that I had joined a virtual D&D campaign. They asked when it was, and I said on Saturdays from seven to (shudder) eleven, and faster than you can say, "Roll for initiative," Mom had sent an event to all of our calendars labeled "Daphne D&D session." They also asked what was going on in our campaign. Given that I had missed all the exposition, I had to mumble my way through what I was pretty sure was going on. What I did know was that the campaign was called "Up From the Depths."