Mental Health Saving Throw

This week will mark the one-year anniversary, for most of us, of the end of normalcy. 

It was the day before St. Patrick's day in 2020 when my employer closed its offices and got nearly 300 people working from home in less than 48 hours, kicking off a year of working from home, schooling from home, regular mask-wearing, zoom meetings and hesitancy about dining out and going to movies. For the past six months, we haven't even been able to have guests over from outside our cohorts, which has put paid to dinner parties, game nights or even just having someone over to watch a show together.

If I am being honest, our household has probably gained as much as it has lost over the past year. We are all currently employed, and although online undergrad classes are challenging, Fenya is grateful for the study time she has gained by not having to bus or drive to university. I certainly don't miss spending an hour each day on a busy freeway, wincing as rocks bounce off my windshield.

But we all miss our friends, and having company over, and going to the cinema or seeing a live musical act and a hundred other things. And even with the vaccine on the horizon, it will take time to get to us and even longer to have the kind of impact needed before there is any sort of return to normalcy. Or "normalcy," for that matter.

In the meantime though, if anyone asks what the single best tool for maintaining my sanity and keeping an even emotional keel for the past year, I can quickly give my answer: it's Dungeons & Dragons.

(And having grown up during the Satanic Panic in the 1980s that saw games like this blamed (baselessly) for anti-social behaviour, suicide, and occult shenanigans, I fully appreciate the irony of that statement.)

Within our local circle, it was pretty common for us to get together for gaming at least a couple of times per month, sometimes a roleplaying game like the previous edition of D&D or Spirit of 77, but often boardgames like Big Trouble in Little China or Cthulhu: Death May Die. We would also gather in the out-of-towners for a weekend of Gaming & Guinness once a year as well. 

Knowing things would get worse before they got better, I suggested we try one of the online D&D games, and soon enough eight of us were playing on a regular basis - far more regularly than when we met in-person, to be honest.

With fewer commitments in our lives and limited options for recreation, Sunday afternoons became a welcome respite from the world, where we could turn our collective attentions to the fiendish machinations of the Cult of Dragons.

And, yes, the recreation is great, and rolling dice and fighting imaginary monsters is all well and good, but honestly, it is the simple act of coming together for a focused but fun activity, and being able to hear and see each other while we do it. I have known some of these people since high school or shortly thereafter, and this connection, as whimsical as it is, has become an important tether, at least for me.

Now I find myself playing in four different campaigns - one as a player and the rest as DM, and one in-person (mostly) with the others on Roll 20. There is always an opportunity to chitchat and catch up on each other's lives when we play online, but in every case, we eventually get down to the business of rolling dice and celebrating or bemoaning the results.

Some of my players are very new, while others have played at least as long as I have, but everyone is committed to that same notion of shared storytelling where the real drama is left up to the dice. The 5th edition rules are simple but deep and there is always a chance to learn something new. And the things we learn about each other! I had no idea how much awesome magical powers appealed to some of my friends, or that one of my daughters absolutely revels in brazenly bluffing or intimidating her way past guards. Or how much theatricality that friends I've known for decades can bring to bear when describing their character's actions or motivations.

And you don't even need monsters! Some of the best laughs in our game on Friday came from one player's inability to roll above a 5 on a 20-sided dice over multiple attempts while piloting a small boat. This misadventure ended leaving one character needing to change his trousers after being dunked waist-deep in an icy lake while another one got knocked overboard - but into a smaller boat, thank goodness.

In between games I read up on the two different adventures I am DM for, write up a summary of the last adventure for yet another blog and paint miniatures in anticipation of joining players outside my family at an actual tabletop instead of a virtual one.

This weekend I have played three times since Thursday - a real treat, but not even the best part of the weekend. On Saturday afternoon, The Rare Hipster showed up on my step with a t-shirt, the brainchild himself and Jeff P., commemorating the completion of our first adventure, Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The front of the shirt displays the adventurer's collective sigil, while the back lists all the players and their characters (plus a DMing credit for yours truly).

The weather was beautiful Saturday, so standing outside and admiring the shirt, sharing a beverage in the 13-degree sunlight, was just what the doctor had ordered. 

In the current ruleset, there is a clever mechanic called advantage which lets you roll two dice and take the higher result when determining your success at something. When rolling a skill check, for instance, to see if you can read a language or pick a lock or force open a door, a nearby character can assist, granting advantage on that roll, and perhaps doubling your chances of a positive outcome.

To me, this describes the very effect gained by purposefully getting together with friends for this activity, and all the positive mental health benefits I derive from it - advantage on saving throws versus boredom, anxiety, loneliness and despair. And I am far from the only one who feels that way, it turns out.

Sure, I could schedule an online meeting every other week and maybe even suggest a topic for conversation, but without that compulsion to see what lies around the next underground corner or to discover the fiendish plots of the Dragon Cult (or, in my case, to delight in unfolding them!), would we all be so keen to make time for it? Would we still reflect back on conversations from ten-months past the same way we periodically lament poor Skollvog the Relentless rolling a 1 on his death save and perishing on only his third session? Would two of us have conspired to print up t-shirts celebrating a year of drinks & discourse?

It seems unlikely.

And so I will continue to pursue this strangely constructive escapism we call D&D, a game that requires more work than some, but comes with greater rewards than most others. A game in which no one player triumphs over the others, but in which everyone, including the gamemaster, can feel like winners.