Class Description
Celebrities and civilians are coming out of the nerd closet to play Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the venerable fantasy role-playing game involving elves, dwarves, wizards, magic, evil foes, and multi-sided dice. Now you can too. In this new, innovative hybrid workshop designed for newcomers to D&D, you’ll learn how to play, but also use the game to flex your writerly muscles --- and maybe slay some orcs and score some cool treasure along the way.
This class is designed for those who have never played D&D but have always wanted to. We’ll be using an easy to learn, customized version of the game to get you up and playing pronto. We’ll spend the first part of our day together discussing some of the concepts behind and origins of the game (wargames, improvisational theater, reenactment societies) and literary influences that shaped it (mythology, legends, and authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, J. R. R. Tolkien). Game-inspired writing exercises will help you develop your character with stakes and backstory, launch the story, and dive into world-building – as well as provide the foundation for fun and exciting role-playing. After a serious session of game play --- your first quest ---we’ll end the day with a debrief of the experience, and more writing to capture the adventure, the stories, and your hero’s journey.
Mountain Dew and Doritos and other surprises will be provided. Bring paper, pencil and an open mind. Join us, adventurers!
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.