Back to the Dungeons

Twenty-six years after I last played it, I played Dungeons and Dragons again, two days ago.

At the Japanese junior high school I work at, a couple second year students (14 years old) are native English speakers--one has a parent from Australia and the other has a parent from Canada. The half Canadian student is a big fan of Stranger Things, a show that, oddly, is mostly unknown in the Japanese schools I've worked at. When I asked if she'd be interested in trying out Dungeons and Dragons like the characters on the show, she jumped at the idea. I could tell she wanted the experience of a group of friends like the one on the show and I sure wanted to make it happen.

I told her to ask around for students who might be interested in joining. The other native English speaker wasn't interested but the half-Canadian's best friend, a Japanese student, was interested. I announced the game in a couple of classes and got one more interested student, another girl. I recruited two boys from the English club so we ended up with three girls and two boys, all second year students except one of the boys, who's a first year student.

I ordered dice and the latest editions of the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide off Amazon, English editions both. Japanese versions are being released only later this month, though the older, "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons", was released in Japan years ago. I discovered the tabletop RPG Call of Cthulhu, based on the HP Lovecraft mythos, is widely available in Japan and is displayed prominently at the bookstore in my nearby mall. Which explains why the students recognised the big octopus headed monster I was doodling on the chalkboard one day. One of them was surprised when I told her it was created by an American writer. Whatever the quality of the tabletop RPG, it is nice to know Lovecraft's monsters and mythos are well known while his status as a political football in the US is meaningless.

Anyway, since Dragonlance is what I know, and my copy of The Art of Dragonlance managed to migrate to Japan with me, I decided to use the classic Dragonlance campaign. This meant I also had some ready-made characters if making characters proved to be too difficult or time-consuming for the students, assuming I could convert them to the new rules without any trouble. And generally speaking, I found the new rules to be simpler. I remember how long it took me to understand THAC0. Now THAC0 has been replaced by an attack roll modified by a relevant ability score (strength for melee weapons, etc.) and a proficiency score. I'm not sure if it's functionally simpler but it's easier to understand.

The artwork in the new Dungeons and Dragons books is pretty sad compared to the beautiful stuff in the old Dragonlance material.

Everything looks like it was hastily coloured with a graphics programme algorithm. Gone are the meticulous oil and acrylic paintings by the likes of Larry Elmore and Clyde Caldwell.

Which made me glad I was using old Dragonlance material.

I managed to get a classroom with a big TV I could hook my laptop to, which was helpful for visual aids, and I also used a playlist of fantasy movie soundtrack selections (from Conan the Barbarian, Willow, and The Thief of Bagdad, among others).

We ended up meeting for a total of two sessions. The students all have club activities and, in the wintertime, they all have to leave school at 4:45pm (whenever I tell students I went home at 2pm in junior high school, I'm met with astonished incredulity). So we could only meet on Thursdays, the only day none of the five students had club activities, and only for about an hour. I spent the whole first session explaining what Dungeons and Dragons is and how to make characters. We were still doing ability rolls when we ran out of time.

So before the second session, I made sure to have all the Dragonlance characters converted and distributed print-outs. Even so, most of the students seemed to be overwhelmed and opted not to come back. So for the second session, I had only the half-Canadian and the first year student boy. He's a real champ, that one. In the English club, I have them all practising sections of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and he has the section when Santa says, "On Dancer, on Dasher" etc. Every time he does it he tries to shout it louder and louder. He records himself on his Chromebook which he takes out into the hall to practice. Even so, everyone can hear him from across the school.

I gave him Caramon Majere because he wanted to use a human Fighter. Among the changes he wanted to make was to have him be 10,000 meters tall (converting everything to metric was another headache). When I had the two of them fighting a group of goblins and I asked what he wanted to do, he said he wanted to beat them all. It took some time to bring him down to earth but, once I did, he really got into it, running at the lead goblin with a spear. The half-Canadian student, meanwhile, managed to create a character I helped her with by rolling most of her stats. She wanted to use a spellcaster but chose mostly non-offensive spells. Even so, she managed to kill a goblin with her dagger (I had them both starting at Level 8). At the end of the second session, I was pretty happy, and now the first year student is asking for more. It's a shame next week is taken up by testing and my last day at this school is the 19th. Hopefully, the two of them will find a good way to feed this RP beast I helped them create.