Recently we interviewed Anthoy, the president of our wonderful TTRPG Society in Ayr, to find out what it’s like being part of a society and how it can impact your university life.
This interview was broken up into two groups so we'll start with group 1!
What do you guys do in this society?
Ben – We play tabletop role playing games TTRPGs right now. I think both of our groups are playing Dungeons & Dragons right now because that’s the easiest one to get into, but we meet every Wednesday in the Ayr Snug Bar. We’re here from half 4 to 8pm, sometimes we run a bit later than that as we did a few weeks ago because we were in the middle of a rather stressful boss fight. But mostly we just sit here and have fun, make jokes, we play games and do basic level maths.
What is DnD?
Sam – many dice
Ben – Dungeons and dragons in its simplest of terms is tabletop role playing game. to put that into more simple terms, you get your friends, you get around the table, and you pretend to be characters like make-believe when you were a kid.
Megan H – you role many dice to fight people.
Ben – there’s someone that acts as the dungeon master, in this case me, creates a story or uses a story that has already been created and guides players through the narrative where they make decisions in character and perform off of the action of dice roles. Typically, it is a d20 (a 20-sided die) that is used for dice roles. that makes all the choices anywhere from a natural 20, which is the best thing you automatically succeed or a natural one as an automatic failure, and usually hilarity and sues when our teammates jam us with an axe or shooting an arrow directly through a tiny gap hitting your target perfectly.
Sam – there are many other TTRPGs, there’s Call of Cathulu, there 10 candles there’s mothership, the borgs, there’s path finder, and many many more.
Ben – yeah there are many licensed ones. I personally can’t wait to play the Star Wars one because I am a massive fan of star wars.
Megan W – Matthew Lillard recently came out with one not to long ago with his games company.
What are you currently doing in your campaign?
Megan H – we recently finished a big arc for my character Faceus. She’s is a half elf ranger who is a princess. Her empire was under attack by a group of necromancers who were after a necklace for some reasons which I still don’t know because ben won’t tell me.
Ben – and you won’t know for a while!
Go round the table and introduce your character and your experience so far with the game.
Brad – I play as conquest who is a dwarf. He's based very much on Gimley from Lord of the Rings as he was my favourite.
Megan W - I play Oza, who is a half ork warlock. I had never played DnD before coming here and I was always quite interested in it, and I’ve found this society is really fun flexible way to get into it.
Megan H – I play as faces the half elf who is both a ranger and I bard, I forgot to mention that earlier. This is also my first time playing DnD but with ben being one of my classmates, he told me about the society. One day I had to stay late after class, so I ended up sitting in on a session and then I was like, oh I’d actually really like to try this.
Sam – I play Rook who was a half elf and the unintentionally put their soul into a magical armour that their father created for their friend. The character is a fighter sorcerer, and my father created the WarForged which area race of living robots in the world.
Ben – I’m the DM so I don’t have a character but there are many modules and resources you can take from, but I have created my own world called Vervolgan.
Do you want new people to join the society?
Ben - Of course, you want new people. I have fought for so long to use more of the space we have, and new people would really help that cause. we would love to have new people. It’s a great stress reliver because we are all in the middle of assessments at the moment but were all here and having a laugh and a good time. it's a fun time you don't even need to know that people I only knew Meghan and Meghan when I came into that. when I first had the idea of creating it, Brad setting as a council member, and he's been a great help being all this set up and now he's in my campaign. And I couldn’t imagine not knowing Brad. Sam obviously came in later with Meghan but when they both came in, they immediately fitted in and then Ryan and Lee joined a little bit later as well.
Megan W – it was just the four of us to begin with but even with more people joining it has been really natural and simple to set up. All of us currently at the table are in performance style courses so that helps a bit, but that doesn’t mean you need to be incredibly out there or performing all the time to be a part of this group. You could come and do what you would like to do and play however you would like, you don’t have to be a heavy role player or anything like that.
How would you like to see the society Progress / what are the next step?
Ben – I would like to have multiple tables going at the same time, maybe even branching gout to other rooms in the building.
Sam – personally, I would love to dm some sessions so having another night where we get together or just different sessions would be fun.
What has been the best part about the society so far?
Ben - I think it was what was it was a few sessions ago. Ah, must have been near the start of this art. And as I said, it had been very combat heavy, but there was one session where there was lots of riding in carts and it was very roleplay heavy and I think today that is my favourite session because of how different it was and how we explored the characters.
Do you have any closing remarks that you would like to say?
Megan W – to be fair I think we’ve been hyping up the society this whole time so if people are interested you should come join.
Brad - I feel like this is the highlight of my week. I can actually be myself around this table, which is very, very rare for me so it’s definitely something I look forward to
Megan W – yeah kudos to Ben and the folk that run the society. Its more work than they probably let on so it’s always nice to see that they are also enjoying themselves.
Group 2
what do you guys do in this society?
Lucrezia - play DnD
Tam – we get together, we sit down and bring snacks, and we story tell for 4 hours.
Lucrezia – lots of dice rolling.
Oscar – lots of unhinged laughter
What is DND?
Daniel – Dungeons and dragons
Lucrezia - Yeah, it's a TTRPG, a tabletop role playing game where basically you have mechanics in place for you to become a hero of sorts. And you have a Dungeon Master, Who is basically in control of the story. And you have your characters and you roll dice to see how well you do things and you just roleplay a story and have fun.
Tam – all you really need is some dice, a sheet of paper and someone who would like to be the narrator who can guide you through the story with your imagination.
Lucrezia – right now we have a circus theme going in our story, so we have different decortions and foods to accompany that.
Going round the table and telling us who you are
Lucrezia – as I am dm I don’t have a character for the moment.
Daniel – My character is Maverick, a little engineer person (Artificer) who is completely crazy and insane.
Oscar – I’m playing Crowvar who is a paladin who has recently become a lich.
Tam – I’m playing Isa the Bly and I’m a werewolf who is a fighter.
Thomas - I play a character called albert Moss and he is a postman man. He also has a black and white cat called clarabella. He has managed to get himself all caught up in this mess and has recently disappeared.
Sam – I’m playing a goliath barbarian called Pythor.
Do you play any other games apart from DND?
Oscar – outside of Uni I have a kids on bikes game that I’m part of and I have many other TTRPGs available if anyone was interested to play them at some point.
Thomas – there are a few systems that I think would be really really interesting if people were interested in doing more one shots (one shots are standalone story or campaigns that are normally done in 1 session, sometimes 2)
Lucrezia – I actually have my own system that I developed a few years ago that I’m hoping for it to be fully introduced next year.
what course is everyone on?
Lucrezia – Education BA
Daniel – Commercial Music
Oscar – Broadcast production
Tam – TV Radio and podcast production
Thomas - Bachelor’s in psychology
Sam – I’m in the film making screenwriting course.
Why should new students join your society / do you want more people to join?
Lucrezia - that’s a bit of a loaded question for us. we would love new people to join our society, IF, more students come with more game masters! Right now, we have been taking lots of people in as much as we can but I DM for 8 people and it’s getting a bit harder to fully manage.
Oscar - I would love us to get more players because currently, it's just the 2 groups, and it feels a little, it almost feels a little bit like clicky, because it's just the 2 of us. I would love it if they expanded out on more people joined.
Daniel - there have been quite a few people in my course that have mentioned liking DnD, so I’ve been thinking of inviting them down and potentially have like a musicians table but that’s probably something to plan for next term.
Where would you like to see this society go? What’s the next step.
Lucrezia - I think it would be really interesting if we could get it streamed. Theres a lot of streamed DND campaigns that exist, and I think not only would it be good publicity for the society but may actually be good publicity for the university itself If it worked to get streamed and people were to enjoy it. it would also Show the students that kind of want to learn about it, but don't want to come in without the knowledge of what it actually is and without having to do a lot of personal research.
Oscar – we already have the broadcast students to facilitate something like this. As a whole what I think we should do with the society is see if we can have it run 2 nights a week instead of just the one we have now. This would allow other people to run sessions and for us to experiment more with the format of the night.
Thomas – I think introducing other kind of tabletop games would be good for the society. This could include things like board games and other less intense experiences for people to pick up and join.
How has this society affected your Uni life / why is it important?
Lucrezia – a lot of DND is played online nowadays through thing like discord and voice chats and that’s not always a bad thing because it allows lots people access that may not have the chance otherwise, but there many differences between an online game and the vibe you get when you’re playing in person
Oscar – a lot of my DM’ing experience has been online and that is vastly different from what we do here. I find it very isolating playing DnD online and it’s a lot harder to connect with the people you are playing with. Playing in person is a completely different kind of socialisation and it’s a lot better in my eyes.
Thomas – a lot of Uni students can find it difficult to socialise especially depending on where they live or who the interact with. A lot of students can find themselves isolated but stuff like DND and types of societies like this allows students to socialise in a way that doesn’t feel pressuring. This is all about storytelling and escapism and lets people feel safer to be themselves. it takes the pressure off of socialising but creates an environment for people to interact that is healthy and creative.
Tam – I mean its like these guys are my friends. It’s not like I don’t have friends on my course, but I don’t bond with them the same way that I do with the people here.
Thomas – being in class with people, sometimes you realise you don’t really know them or can’t gel with them the way you would like to, but you still hang out with them cos they’re in your class.
Tam - having that one hobby that you can bond over with people is really important because there a certain demographic for people that like DND.
Lucrezia - the big thing is when you’re doing a course in Uni, people will automatically think everyone doing that course shares the same hobbies and interests, but that could not be further from the truth. You will meet a lot of lovey nice people in your life but that doesn’t always mean that they’re your type of person to hang out with. I know a lot of people that like to go out drinking on a Friday night, I like to go home and right about my fictional characters and give them traumatic backstories.
Daniel – I think I’m the outlier in this group. I’m a musician and I very much like to go out on a Friday night.
Lucrezia – I’m probably closer to a lot of the people round this table than I am with the people in my course because we genuinely do just have that one connection and passion to bring us together.
Oscar – I really prefer coming to this class to the society over my class sometimes. I find my class don’t actually know how to treat me sometimes because of my wheelchair. But in this group everyone has welcomed me in with open arms and have been really accommodating and helpful. This society is my down time every week where I can come and be myself without any responsibilities.
What could the union be doing to help support the society?
Everyone In unison – Snack Funds
Tam – it would be good if we could have access to some printing facilities for all of our printing needs or some more funds for creating minis to use when playing.
Lucrezia - any help with figuring out the logistics of setting up streaming would be great!
Tam – it would be really interesting if we could do it on the radio.
Lucrezia - there’s lots of things we could provide ourselves for creating a streaming setup but just some extra help setting things up and getting permissions from the university would be very helpful.
Oscar - something like that would be great promotion for the broadcast course here. It would give a great opportunity for anyone wanting to get into this kind of work or just experience running a show to come along and join and help out. It would be a massive first step into the industry by making our own product.
Do you have any grand plans for the society in the future?
Lucrezia - I don't really think so I think we're kind of just like a players come, Players come. It’s a bit harder to sort out big scale events for DnD. I mean like I would happily have a full day of playing DnD.
Tam - We could do here; I had an idea where oh you're running like an hour-long session with people who want to try out.
Lucrezia - I would be happy to do test run campaigns for people who are wanting to give it a go.
Tam – we could also do ticketed events either for our own funding or for a charity that invites people to come along and play.
Multiple people – we could do a character sheet making class where people come and make their own characters or learn how to create one.
A huge thank you to everyone involved in the TTRPG Society for giving us an amazing insight into the goings on within Society life!
If you fancy joining the Language society, you can sign up here: Tabletop RPG Society Ayr
You can also check out a list of all our wonderful societies here: https://www.uwsunion.org.uk/societies/societies/