With the clack of 20-sided dice and the scribble of pens, the party, ranging from clever magic-users to fierce barbarians, journeyed across a perilous landscape. As the characters devised their next course of action, Dungeons and Dragons club co-president and experienced Dungeon Master Nikhil Maurya (11) formulated the next phase of their harrowing adventure.

Maurya and co-president Emi Nguyen (11) have been working to continuously enhance the club since their freshman year. Maurya said they want to give others what the D&D community has given them.

“D&D has been life-changing for me,” Maurya said. “You would not believe how unsociable I was in eighth grade, and then I went into freshman year and I was like, ‘Wow, I’m not an outsider here.’ So I really want D&D Club to be a safe space for people to be able to come to just hang out, have fun, and play D&D because it’s so fun [and] it’s also just helpful in so many ways.”

Since the club’s revival in 2020, three years before Maurya’s election and four years before Nguyen’s, the club has drawn crowds of beginners and experienced players to their weekly meetings. Initially these meetings focused on the executive board’s how-to presentations, which covered topics like the intricacies of being a Dungeon Master, known as DMing, and tips for the stories that are the crux of the game, known as campaigns. However, in recent years, vice president Oliver Kester (11) said the board began to doubt the effectiveness of their lessons in in-game situations.

“We wanted people to understand how to play D&D by actually playing it,” he said. “We taught them the basics first, but it’s better for them to understand how to play when they’re actually playing.”

This term, the executive board took a different, more hands-on approach: playing short sessions in hopes of better engaging members and giving them the ability to play confidently.

During typical campaigns players develop single characters that gain skills and experience to aid them on future adventures, but Maurya said to lessen the pressure and prioritize learning, the club grants members flexibility in the characters they play as. He said that this makes their meetings a good starting point for those new to the game.

“At club meetings it’s very different from having a campaign outside school because at club meetings, it’s a lot lower stakes,” Maurya said. “If your character dies, you just make another one next meeting, but if your character dies in an actual campaign, that’s a lot of things that you just lost, [so] if you’ve never [been a Dungeon Master] before or never played before, [the club] is great, low-stakes, but still D&D [and] still very real.”

According to Nguyen, while the club’s primary focus is kickstarting members’ D&D journeys, it also builds connection amongst students.

“With the club, all of us come together from our groups and we branch in together, rather than separating into small pods,” Nguyen said. “I think [with] a whole community of multiple groups, it’s a lot of different perspectives you get to see, and I think that’s what D&D Club really helps with: building a huge community within this [high-school] space that is so divided.”

Outside of school, the club also organizes more traditional sessions every few months in the Rancho Peñasquitos Branch Library where, according to Kester, the club is at its most collaborative.

“They’re one of the main fun things that we do as a club,” he said. “We write the stories for the D&D campaign, so we get to have the club work together on the stories and I think it’s more of a fun thing.”

During these sessions, campaigns are played in full.

“Playing during lunch is only half an hour,” Nguyen said. “We don’t do that much and people are eating and everything. But when we meet at our events, we have so much more time to get to know each other and build our community, make it stronger.”

Secretary Aren Dizon (11) said that at these events, the club curates their community by connecting with people between the ages of 10-18 from schools across the county.

“It’s most definitely about building relationships,” they said. “We even have people from outside of the school that are in our club. They don’t come in at lunch, but they’re in our Discord servers, so they know when our club meetings are [and] they know what we’re learning. Being able to talk to people who are similar, but also really different at the same time, I think is [the goal].”

Nguyen said that this diversity allows younger kids to enhance their D&D skills, as well as giving older players new experiences.

“One of my favorite [memories] is when I was at one of my first [library meets],” Nguyen said. “I was at a table, DMing for a bunch of 10- to 12-year-olds, [and] those kids are so out there. I don’t even know what goes on in their heads — I think one of the kids burned the old mansion they were in down, so they didn’t even end up getting to the end goal, but it was still really funny.”

For veteran members like Dizon, this connection with the next generation secures not only the club’s current relevance, but also its future.

“It’s important because it helps spread the word about our club, and maybe those little kids that we see playing are going to go here and then they’ll continue the club’s legacy,” Dizon said. “I think that would be pretty cool, being able to see a club that you’ve pretty much known since almost the start a few years after you’re gone.”

According to Nguyen, the club’s quest is to create a space where people can embrace their identity.

“With [people’s] stigma of ‘D&D players are all nerds,’ they’re right, but also we have more than that,” they said. “I think that term was looked down upon in the past, but now being a nerd isn’t that bad because [it means] you’re smart, [and] that’s such a huge thing to brag about. You can change the future, you can change the world with your nerdiness.”

Nguyen said that overall, they hope the club continues to foster friendships and fantasy.

“I hope the club helps people relieve stress, become more involved in their communities, whether that be around campus or outside of school, and learn more about D&D culture,” Nguyen said. “We’re very proud to be providing people this space to connect and we hope to see the club grow, helping even more students in the future.”