I started playing my first ever campaign of D&D during lockdown, using Skype and Discord to connect with some old pals. And I’ve absolutely loved it.

It has been a wonderful weekly piece of entertainment where my pals and use the power of storytelling to hold on to a little bit of control while the real world spirals on.

So much of life in lockdown has resulted in reduced freedom and opportunities to interact with people, but our weekly campaign is a fun creative exercise in agency and control.

If nothing else, it’s been a great help to maintaining my mental health as a way to connect to old friends in a way that doesn’t focus too much on the day-to-day grind of lockdown, but rather provides a portal for us to have meaningful communication despite without having to talk about the real world all that much beyond a quick catch-up at the start of each session.

I’m not the best at it – it still feels that I’m a bit limited at the creative aspect and having played too many computer RPGs that I’m concentrating too much on the “dungeon crawler” aspect of playing D&D. But, that’s what’s familiar to me and it provides the anchor to think about the more creative sides of the game.