GUELPH/WELLINGTON – Under most circumstances, a child finding a sack made of human skin in a chest would be horrifying.
But in Dungeon & Dragons (DND) this is just another item you might find during a campaign in a game that has been seeing a resurgence in players in recent years according to organizers and players.
And that sack made of human skin? Henry Reeve, 12, is going to keep it. After all he is an evil sorcerer, or at least he is when he’s role playing in DND.
He’s part of a small group of young teens that meet up occasionally at the Puslinch library branch in Aberfoyle for a DND group run by the Wellington County Library system with an employee acting as the dungeon master (DM) — a person who is in charge of the creating the details, challenges and story of a campaign.
Reeve has been playing for a couple of years, introduced to it by his uncle. He said he really got into it through the ability to create characters.
“You can be incredibly creative, it’s basically a blank canvas where you can choose any race. You can become anything you want,” Reeve said.
Colton Hunter, a 14-year-old member of the Puslinch DND group, added that beyond becoming anything you want, you can do just about anything too.
“There’s almost no limits, you can do anything that you want as long as the DM says it's okay,” Hunter said.
Rosie Krul, Harriston library branch supervisor and DND player, said the creative side of it Hunter and Reeve see is what draws players in.
“You don’t have to necessarily play yourself and if you’re playing someone else sometimes it's more easy to play traits or qualities that you’d like to give a shot at,” Krul said.
“Maybe you’re very shy in real life but your DND character is a charismatic bard or maybe you’re kind of small but you might play a half orc-barbarian and that can be really fun as well.”
The Harriston branch has been running DND groups for a few years, for both adults and teenagers, and there are also groups run at the Arthur and Fergus branches with a new group starting up at the Mount Forest library soon.
These groups tend to have a good draw, Krul said, specifically because the library provides a DM and it can be difficult to find someone to run the group.
However, Krul said generally it seems like DND is having a bit of a resurgence in recent years.
“I think the reason it's so popular is because it has that ongoing connection piece by being a game with a story line that can spread out over months or even years,” Krul said.
“I think also the online element has made it more popular, like with YouTube watching people play campaigns online or having it referenced on popular TV shows can kind of show how fun and creative it can be which I think has helped the popularity as well.”
Longtime DND player Roger Carroll from Rockwood noted the online presence as having a big impact on the popularity as well.
Carroll is a DM and the president of the Order of the Bear, a Rockwood based non-profit club that runs and has created a community out of DND and board game nights.
“It’s definitely gone mainstream and like the last three or four years COVID really pushed everybody into the online space and with people having more time at home and less things to do, they started watching people playing DND online and stuff,” Carroll said, adding all of the club’s DND campaigns are currently full besides a drop in night.
Amy Chop, manager at Downtown Guelph comics and game store The Dragon, said campaigns there also fill up really quickly and the store is often looking for DM volunteers.
“I think people are no longer worrying as much about what playing DND could be deemed as for your social standing,” Chop said. “I know that in the 80s and early 90s you were considered on the geekier side or a little bit of an outcast, but everybody plays DND now.”
Chop also pointed to DND making appearances on YouTube, podcasts or TV shows like Stranger Things as driving people to give it a try.
But this requires spaces for people to play which can be a bit more difficult to access in smaller towns like in Wellington County, Carroll explained.
There’s often spaces for sports or music but a place for role playing and board games can be hard to come by.
This is why the Order of the Bear made connections with the township to get a room at the community centre in Rockwood.
“We provide access to people out in a rural community like this to be able to play role playing games and board games that they might not otherwise have access to,” Carroll said.
Carroll finds something it to be a better social experience than something like video games which he said can be vulgar and unfriendly.
On the other hand he said he’s found DND to always be a welcoming environment in his more than 30 years of playing which he pointed to as another reason people are getting into it.
“You can be a complete stranger joining in a DND game with nobody you’ve ever played with and maybe never even played the game before and you’re pretty much guaranteed to have a good time and make friends,” Carroll said.
