The first Dungeon Party
As soon as the final character selection had been made, it was photo-op time and voila, here is the first picture of our first Dungeon Party as they gathered still slightly hung over in front of the tavern:
D&D is a very complex involved game as far as I have been able to discern from YouTube videos. Very demanding on attention, imagination, cooperation. The version played here, with some hand-drawn maps and a variety of dice, kinda looks doable and not so daunting - UNTIL, you see and grasp the magnitude of focus, attention, cooperation that will be necessary to play this ONLINE as it is currently conceived. Wow...
In the meantime stuff was happening in the somewhat chaotic, though expectedly chaotic, chat. It was fun, and revealing ..there was going to be lots of opportunity for self observation :) - if you 'd rather skip that part, just go to the links right away.
Here they all are, ready to go (almost)
Remember the video I said would be good to watch? I mean here specifically the part where the screen goes black and the topic it is related to. Incredible story? Yes, but today, I could hardly believe my eyes. There was some fighting amongst the folks in the chat already, just like they said it happened years ago. Some called for stoppingto "attack" another group leader...hm..it was all 1 PoG I thought.
In our Dungeon Party there were 8 characters which all needed a subgroup to run it. Task was to divide up into 8 sub-groups. Each of those will have to “animate”, to play, each of the given characters of the Dungeon Party. In a regular D&D game you don't necessarily choose what you want to be in that your qualities are determined by a dice roll and than you choose and act according to your character's characteristics
Well then, there was noone running the dwarf warrior character. We kept asking there were a few concerned voices, but noone willing to switch -even from those groups that had several (ie.more than 2) team members - into the group that would play the dwarf/warrior. You can't really expect it from those who only had 2 people in the group to start with. Leaving the group of their personal preference in order to “man” the dwarf, that seemed too much. Again, it was a bit surprising.
I was thinking: What's up with that? They do not know how valuable dwarfs can be...they know so much about mountains, stones and minerals, they make great weapons of all kinds, have incredible strength,
they are at home in tunnels, caves and amongst rocks, they can make all kinds of mechanical things, and there was not anyone who wanted to switch? What do they think was going to happen? That they would leave without him? But basically it was like: why does noone switch? It can't even continue without him, and if it does, disaster will happen that noone but the dwarf can help with...they will all die without him....and so on...
Finally someone here in the live audience who happened to overhear us continue to say: "still noone for the dwarf-warrior" finally said they would be the dwarf . . . and then someone from another group tried to have him join theirs?
Extreme inattention to the various pleas and reminders that a team was needed for the dwarf, or total self absorption or selfishness or what was that about?
This was going to be a challenge, a test for the ego, communication skills, imagination, willingness to give something personal up for the good of the team. Also a demand for high sensitivity, as there were some voices pointing out the issue, but somehow they mostly got ignored, which brings up a need for persistence and courage to keep speaking up until you at least know you have been heard. It also left no doubt that very high attention will be necessary to follow this chat/communication. Groups assigned themselves different colors lettering for easier ID, that seems like a good idea.
In the midst of all of this, folks had to come up with names for their characters, all the while the poor dwarf had noone to speak for him. Lol, if was fun to watch and I am looking forward to the next episode of this adventure.