Just eight weeks after its creation, WSU Vancouver’s Dungeons and Dragons club has accumulated over 50 members, with goals of expanding even further and sharing the fantastical role playing game with as many people as possible.
“D&D club is a place that I want anyone and everyone to be able to come in and hang out — it’s a place where people can get together and play any of those kinds of games and just have a good time and sling spells.” – Giovanni Scarpelli
Dungeons and Dragons, created in 1974, is a tabletop game based on role play, where chance, dice rolls and the player’s imagination set the stakes of this multi-layered experience.
Players create multi-dimensional characters and generate complex background stories for each persona. Participants can choose from a number of “races” — such as human, elf or half-dragon — and a number of “classes” — such as fighter, ranger or warlock — to lay the foundation for their character’s origins and goals.
Giovanni Scarpelli, junior management information systems major, is the president of the Dungeons and Dragons club and also the Dungeon Master. The Dungeon Master’s job is to orchestrate the game, creating and maintaining a narrative and a world for the newly created characters to embark into. Scarpelli created the Dungeons and Dragons club because he said he saw nowhere else for students to engage in this tabletop game with each other.
“Because of [shows] like ‘Riverdale’ and ‘Stranger Things,’ people have kind of taken more notice of [Dungeons and Dragons]. I think that there’s also a very large number of people that like to play things like that, but they don’t really have a space to be able to play it. I just wanted to provide that for people,” Scarpelli said.
His most recent efforts to make the club more accessible for students is by making official Dungeons and Dragons books available to every student.
“One of the main enemies of D&D is scheduling, so I wanted to combat that by making all of the books that our club has available to everyone,” Scarpelli said.
Ryan Hoffman is the club’s vice president and a junior pursuing a degree in electrical engineering. He is a long-time Dungeons and Dragons veteran, having played consistently over the last ten years. Hoffman described how intimidating it can be for new people to get involved and play with a group for the first time, recalling some of his own experiences.
“I’ve been running games for, I don’t know, probably eight to ten years now. And my players consistently laugh at some of the ridiculous voices I do … I used to get embarrassed about it, but not anymore because I realized that you know everybody’s laughing, everybody’s having a good time.” Hoffman said.
In addition, Hoffman 3D prints everything from customized character models, to enemies and terrain — all of which bring the game that much more to life.
“It’s not necessarily vital to have miniatures and things like that but it is certainly helpful. And I’ve never met somebody that says that it was bad to have miniatures. Everybody always seems to enjoy them. So, it just kind of adds another level of enjoyment to the game,” Hoffman said.
Scarpelli and Hoffman share ambitions to make the Dungeons and Dragons club the biggest student organization. Part of their efforts included participating in the Autumn Harvest Festival — dressing up as characters while hosting games, displaying their miniature figures and sharing their guidebooks.
“D&D club is a place that I want anyone and everyone to be able to come in and hang out — it’s a place where people can get together and play any of those kinds of games and just have a good time and sling spells,” Scarpelli said.
Aaron is a freshman studying earth and environmental science at WSU Vancouver.