Mississippi State University students and faculty members interested in learning the fundamentals of the popular tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons were given the opportunity to sink their teeth in through a series of free workshops hosted at Mitchell Memorial Library last week.

There were three separate workshops in total, with each session covering a different aspect of Dungeons & Dragons, including character creation, combat, how to prepare for the first session of a new campaign and the basics of being a dungeon master.

Although it has existed since the 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons has been on a perpetual rise in popularity over the past several years, which can partly be attributed to portrayals or adaptations of the game in various other forms of media.

The television show “Stranger Things” (2016) prominently featured Dungeons & Dragons in its first season, while the video game “Baldur’s Gate 3” (2023) and the movie “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (2023) were both directly based on the role-playing game. Through these new mediums featuring the game, more and more people are getting introduced to Dungeons & Dragons for the first time.

Joy DuBose, an associate professor and MSU’s extended reality and gaming librarian, spearheaded the introductory workshops.

DuBose said she had witnessed an increasing interest in the tabletop game around campus. However, DuBose said the real inciting spark happened last summer when she passed groups of students in the library playing “Baldur’s Gate 3” together.

“This is something that other libraries have done — more like public libraries — and it’s gone really, really well,” DuBose said. “So, why can’t academia do it?”

DuBose’s own experience with Dungeons & Dragons stems from being surrounded by family, friends and colleagues who play the game and have influenced her enjoyment of it. However, DuBose said she knows how overwhelming the game can be for newcomers trying it out for the first time.

“They’re like, ‘I want to play this but I don’t know how,’ and if you look at Dungeons & Dragons from the outside perspective, it’s very scary,” DuBose said. “It’s like, you have 14,000 books, you have this giant sheet with numbers all over it and you don’t know really where to start.”

However, at its heart, Dungeons & Dragons is a highly collaborative game that can only function with a group of people working together. DuBose said this was a major motivator in the effort to introduce the game to people who might be completely unfamiliar with it.

“These were very beginner workshops. They were not for people who have played the game hundreds of times,” DuBose said. “These were for people who are like, ‘I know nothing. What is this?'”

For example, the first workshop centered on character creation basics. DuBose said she explained to many of the attendees who were unsure of what they could and could not do when building their own character that there truly are not many limitations as long as it works for the player and the character fits the world of the campaign.

DuBose emphasized how that level of freedom in creative expression is one of the biggest components in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. She shared stories of how one member in a group created a character who used a paintbrush to cast magic spells rather than a traditional wand.

“If you want to have a barbarian that has an intellect skill of 20, you can. It doesn’t make sense to other people but, as long as it makes sense to you, you can,” DuBose said. “Yes, there are some rules but not enough to take away from the fun. If you want to be a humanoid raccoon, you can be a humanoid raccoon.”

Over the course of the three workshops, DuBose said she saw many recurring faces — some even braved the storms on the evening of Sept. 24 to join in on the combat-focused session.

Although all of the workshops prioritized being accessible for complete newcomers to Dungeons & Dragons, the third and final workshop was slightly geared more towards those with a bit of experience under their belts because it was all about learning how to be a dungeon master, create a story and lead a campaign for a party of players.

A different MSU graduate student hosted each workshop. Meg McDougal is a first-year graduate student in the Department of English and she was in charge of the second workshop, which focused on a player’s first session of Dungeons & Dragons and how combat works.

McDougal said she wanted to be a source of guidance for others interested in the game since her first Dungeons & Dragons experience involved joining an already-existing campaign. McDougal shared how she would have appreciated having a beginner-friendly place to ask questions and learn what to do before diving straight in.

“It was very daunting,” McDougal said. “I hope to be that person to help other people where it was kind of scary for other beginners like me.”

Though McDougal did not try out Dungeons & Dragons for herself until her sophomore year of college, she has always been surrounded by fans of the game—particularly through her dad, who frequently played it in the ’80s. She said she wanted to join a Dungeons & Dragons group at MSU or in Starkville to meet new people, and that mission is what led her to immerse herself in the game through online tutorials and guides.

“It was a complicated process, but once you start meeting people that are doing it, it just becomes about hanging out with your friends, really, ” McDougal said. “So that’s, to me, the appeal: hanging out with your friends and doing something fun and creating stories together.”

Mitchell Memorial Library recently bought several Dungeons & Dragons books and has them on reserve. MSU students and other interested parties can pick them up anytime and use them in the library.

DuBose said she has already received inquiries regarding future Dungeons & Dragons workshops from MSU students who missed the first round. She hopes that the library will be open to hosting another batch of sessions sometime in the future.

“Really, it’s a great way for students to get to know people and have fun. A lot of students get lost on campus because our campus is huge,” DuBose said. “We want them to get together and have fun and this is a way to do that.”