Around PVHS: RPG Club

RPG, or role-playing game, Club here at Pahrump Valley High School focuses their play mainly on Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Dungeons and Dragons is a game of pure imagination. Mr. Williams, a teacher who hosts the RPG club here at PVHS, has said, “I think tabletop RPGs are one of the best ways to exercise your imagination and get out of the real world for a while.” Mr. Williams has been hosting this club since 2011, totaling 11 years. D&D is a tabletop role-playing game that anyone can play. It’s based on pure imagination as you come up with your own story fighting monsters and whatnot.

The Dungeon Master guides the game and players respond to their prompts. It is up to the players, mostly, on how the story goes. In order to play you need polyhedral dice, the core rulebook, and your imagination.  The rulebook of course has all the rules and it includes all sorts of monsters to fight from. Level ⅛ monsters are the weakest all the way to level 30 monsters being the strongest of them all. The polyhedral dice (D) come with 7 pieces, A D20 (a die with 20 sides), D12 (a die with 12 sides), D10 (a die with 10 sides), D8 (a die with 8 sides), D6 (a die with 6 sides), and D4 (a die with 4 sides). Some sets come with 2 D10s for percentage rolls. A D20 is used the most throughout the game and a D4 is used the least. A D20 is used for most things in the game, a D12 is like for damage rolls, for example, you roll an 11, so you do 11 damage on a monster, A D10, like I said before, is a percentage roll, a D8 is for specific weapon damage, a D6 is a regular six-sided die, the D4 determines damage for smaller weapons.

Of course, there are rules and the rules keep the whole game together so I asked Damon T., a sophomore here at PVHS, who is the DM (Dungeon Master) if it is hard to play the game based on his experience being the DM. He stated, “It’s not hard. You just have to follow along and keep track of what is going on in the game.” Mr. Williams also said, “Rules are just to keep everyone on the same page and sort of level the playing field between players and monsters.” Everyone should be on the same page at all times. DND is not a game where you have to keep scores at all times, it’s a game where you have fun, getting the experience of playing, making memories, and getting away from the real world for a while. Sometimes there is a specific storyline you have to follow in order to get to the end goal, depending on how long that will take. Some D&D campaign sessions usually end up taking 4-6 hours in total. Mr. Williams said that “[The games] we run in RPG Club takes like 4-6 two hour sessions. Some games I’ve heard of outside of the club can last a year of weekly sessions. It all depends on the players and their attention spans.” So, it usually depends on how people are playing and how much they pay attention to the game. Dungeons and Dragons is a fun and creative game to play if you like to use your imagination, even if it’s fighting a Tiamat (lvl 30) or a simple bandit (lvl ⅛).