Dungeons and Dragons Club at Hershey Public Library Brings Happiness

Lisa Wang, Reporter

“By 2004, it was estimated that the game had been played by over 20 million people,” according to BBC News.

Hershey High School freshman Molly Sherma started the Dungeons and Dragons club at the Hershey Public Library. After several people left her original D&D group, she wanted to keep playing and started the group at the library.

The club has been growing and attracting the attention of many students. Every week, around 10 to 20 people attend.hey are divided into smaller groups with about an equal number of players for separate games.

The students come in with a different level of knowledge and experience, but they all have the same opinion: they enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Zoe Waschbusch, a member of the club, said, “My friends were already into it, and it [Dungeons and Dragons] kind of was a way to hang out and do things together outside of school.”

In Dungeons and Dragons, the players start off by creating their own unique characters. Different characters have different classes, a class is what a character does, its role, and its skills in the game. According to WikiHow, a worldwide collaborated how-to website, some common classes are wizard, rogue, and flights.

Additionally, the characters have a distinct stance in the games that are called moral alignments, which includes good, neutral, and evil.

Then, the players decide on a Dungeon Master, who is usually the person that begins the game. Every game, only one Dungeon Master exist, and this person has the chance to create marvelous stories for the other players. The stories generally are made up of various adventures, crisis, missions, and more, for the other players to encounter.  

To play Dungeons and Dragons, there is nothing much required. Each person needs a seven dice set, a pencil, and some character information sheets. Among these items, the dice greatly impact a character’s next move.

The set of dice usually contains one of each: D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, and D20. Since these numbers of dice are just the beginner set, the players usually bring more than one set. According to Diehard Dice, a company who designs and sells dice, said, “Gamers often prefer to have multiples of some die in order to roll pools of dice, such as 3D6 in one roll instead of 3 individual rolls.”

When dangers approach in the stories, the result from a rolling die or multiple dice can determine the Dungeon Master’s decision on a certain character. All of the dice except for D20 can be used for weapons, healing amounts, attacks, and more according to Diehard Dice. The D20 die is used to find out if the attempted action can be achieved or not. If the number rolled is high enough, then the actions can occur, or any number of other outcomes as regulated by the Dungeon Master.

The club meetings are always surrounded by laughter and debates, the members have been inspiring people around them with their dedication. Annika Sundberg is the volunteer coordinator at the Hershey Public Library. As the provider of the space for the club to meet and  a fan of Dungeons and Dragons for several years, Sundberg said, “It is a positive passion because they come in every week whether it is raining or whatever, they are here.”

Clockwise from left to right, Zoe Waschbusch, Megan Mehaffie, Diana Cozzi, Luke Wang, and Katherine Tootchen prepare to start a session of Dungeons and Dragons on April 26th, 2019. The group was investigating a mysterious slime in an adventure written by Waschbusch, who acted as the Dungeon Master. (Broadcaster/Lisa Wang)