Summary

• D&D offers fun and educational benefits, including stress relief and mental health benefits.
• Breaking D&D rules can lead to memorable gameplay and encourage critical thinking.
• D&D can strengthen friendships and maintain connections, serving as more than just a game.

I've been a fan of how D&D is good for mental health. But it's also a ton of fun, and that's probably the reason why most people continue to play it.

Every Friday night, for the past four years, my group and I have ed up to run through the Feywild as harengons, drive infernal machines across Avernus, or try to stop a deity from destroying Icewind Dale. We've laughed, we've cried, we've accidentally dropped a pyramid on an entire town. And along the way, I learned some valuable lessons about DnD and the real world, too.

D&D Rules Are Meant To Be Broken

RAW Is Fine, But Sometimes It's More Fun To Ignore

One of my first times playing a tabletop game I got called a "rules lawyer." At the time, playing a game like DnD by the rules made sense - as a beginner, it's important to learn the rules of any game before diving into the deep end. There's nothing wrong with playing the rules as written (RAW), but some of the best surprises from DnD come from a player asking if they can do something and the DM simply shrugging and saying, "Sure, why not?"

As a DM, it's especially good to know what you can allow your players to get away with. It means a by-the-books adventure can turn into something a bit more chaotic and memorable. It also means you can ignore some of the rules everyone in your party hates. The rules provide nice guidelines and are great for teaching and learning, but after a point, being more flexible with the rules is almost always better.

D&D Makes The Best Improv Class

Critical Thinking In Campaigns & One Shots

Critical thinking is an important skill, and anyone playing DnD regularly probably gets pretty good at thinking up solutions on the fly. It's one of the greatest parts about being a DM. Even if you've considered 300 possibilities about how your players will react to a situation, the party will come up with 301 and throw you for a loop.

As a DM, it's especially good to know what you can allow your players to get away with. It means a by-the-books adventure can turn into something a bit more chaotic and memorable.

In one adventure, for instance, there was a book that could turn anyone into ice. In the adventure, it's clearly written in such a way that players won't even think about touching the book. But, of course, that didn't happen. At this point, the party were all pretty invested in their characters, so when one character touched the book and turned to ice, everyone was devastated.

There was no section in the adventure titled "What To Do If They Touch The Book And Turn To Ice." In a situation like that, you have to think quickly because pausing to flip through the book for five minutes causes momentum to take a massive hit. Instead, the party carried their frozen friend around for the rest of the dungeon - Weekend At Bernie's style. By that time, I had thought up a solution to get the person unfrozen, and after a little side questing, everything was cool again.

Death Is A Part Of Life In Dungeons & Dragons

Character Deaths, Meat Grinders, & You

This isn't to say letting the player get unfrozen was the right solution, either. Character deaths can be impactful and not allowing characters to die can take away the stakes of the adventure. It really just depends on the party and the DM - after all, having fun is the most important part.

There's definitely merit in playing "safe" sessions where players can have fun without dying, but like most things in DnD, it's really all about balance. At a certain point, taking away death can detract. If someone with a level 2 bard knows they can poke a beholder in the eye and face no real consequences, of course they're going to poke the beholder in the eye. But if that sounds more fun than having the beholder kill the person, then by all means do it.

For the longest time, I leaned toward the safer side of things, but between DnD and less forgiving tabletop games like Mörk Borg, I've learned to embrace the meat grinder. An adventure in which everyone will most assuredly die is sometimes just as fun as an adventure in which death is never really on the table. They both offer nice ways to mix things up, and it really just depends on what kind of mood everyone is in.

D&D Taught Me How Important Friendships Are

Sometimes D&D Is About More Than Dungeons Or Dragons

My weekly D&D group started because of COVID lockdowns. A friend and I used Discord to video chat and started doing DnD one-shots in 2020. Within two weeks, we had another friend us for a long campaign. Within a year, we had two more friends ing us for regular meetings online and, although we've added people or occasionally lost people due to scheduling conflicts, the five of us have been mainstays.

As fun as D&D is, it's not always about dragons or dungeons. It's about getting to see each other, even if it's on a camera, and catching up. There have been times when we start chatting about something fun like X-Men or something boring like taxes and realize three hours have gone by, and we don't even have time to start up a session. We don't mind. We know it's more than just about the game- it's about maintaining those friendships. And as cheesy as that may sound, it's still the truth.

Adult friendships are hard. Everyone in my group has a full-time job, many of us are married, some of us have kids. We also all live in different states, some of us more than 1000 miles away from each other. Without D&D, we probably wouldn't talk all that often, let alone every single week.

It's hard to say how involved we'd be in each other's lives without a weekly tabletop game. These are people who I consider my best friends, some of whom I've known for more than twenty years. Dungeons & Dragons has been a way for me to stay in with them and keep up those relationships, and I'll forever be grateful for that.