A few minutes after their scheduled start time, a couple young adventure-seekers made their way into a video chat room. Playing as a monk and a barbarian respectively, 13-year-old Allison Briones and 14-year-old Andy Foley greeted their dungeon master, Elizabeth Hood of the Athens-Clarke County Library. It was the partyâs third monthly Dungeons & Dragons session of 2021.
D&D is a dice-and-map role-playing game. Players create characters based on common fantasy models â think halfling, elf or dwarf â and customize their abilities. Games are played in an open world of the dungeon masterâs design, often guided by books detailing the monsters, storylines and maps encountered in each campaign. Players decide their charactersâ actions with dice, and whether the roll helps or hurts the player depends on their chosen traits.