Paige FTW: The Rabbit Hole Of D&D
I’ve mentioned in this space before that I recently got into Dungeons & Dragons.
Recently might be a bit of a misnomer, though — our weekly, eight-hour session campaign has been running in earnest since May 2018. We are level 14 and still not even in the endgame, nor have we done anyone’s backstory quests. It is very likely we will be going on into 2021.
At the time of this writing, we are trying to un-curse our ranger from a Night Hag’s curse, shortly after we had an almost-deadly encounter with a Roc (the tension in the room was overwhelming) and a comedic, sticky encounter with a bunch of Mimics.
Anyway, we started out casual. It was fun. The DM gave us dice and we were all content.
But time goes on, and the creep catches you — the overwhelming urge to keep optimizing and get more.
That’s when everyone starts buying more sets of dice (I am particularly guilty of this), and then someone brings in a dice tower, and then the next thing you know, we’re all sitting around painting custom minis.
We’re at a stage now where we dole out actual coins that represent Inspiration, the bard has little miniature lyres he gives out for his Bardic Inspiration and the druid has miniatures for all the elementals she can turn into. And let’s not talk about the, like, seven dice sets I own. (When I whip out a crit on a Divine Smite, I won’t need to grab from the party pool of random dice soon.) We even have matching party shirts.
What is the point of this column, you may ask? It is a warning from me to you.
When you find a hobby you really love, things get really expensive.
