Our Ayr Tabletop Role Playing Games Society have been active for the last year. We interviewed them to find out what it’s like being part of a society and how it can impact your university life.
The 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). 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, play games and do basic level maths.
What is D&D?
Sam: Many dice.
Ben: Dungeons & Dragons is a 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, who 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 actions based on roles of the dice. Typically, it is a d20 (a 20-sided die) that is used for dice roles. That makes the choices anywhere from a natural 20, which is the best thing (you automatically succeed) or a natural 1 (automatic failure), and usually hilarity ensues when your teammates hit you with an axe or shoot 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: Personally I can’t wait to play the Star Wars one because I am a massive fan of Star Wars.
What are you currently doing in your campaign?
Megan H: We recently finished a big arc for my character Faceus. She’s 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 reason, which I still don’t know because Ben won’t tell me.
Ben: And you won’t know for a while!
Would you like to 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, half warlock. I had never played D&D before coming to uni. I was always quite interested and I’ve found this society is a really fun, flexible way to get into it.
Megan H: I play as Faceus the half elf who is both a ranger and a bard. This is also my first time playing D&D 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 then 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 War Forged, who are a race of living robots.
Ben: I’m the DM so I don’t have a character. There are many modules and resources you can use, but I’ve created my own world called Vervolgan.
Do you want new people to join the society?
Ben: Of course. You want new people. I’ve worked to get more use of The Snug for the society, so it would be good to bring more people in to be part of this. We would love to have new people. It’s a great stress reliever 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 anyone before joining. I only knew Megan when I first had the idea of creating it. Brad then became a council member and he's been a great help getting everything set up. And now I couldn’t imagine not knowing Brad. Sam came in later with Megan but when they joined they immediately fit in. Then the same happened with Ryan.
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 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 steps?
Ben: I’d like to have multiple tables going at the same time, maybe even branching out to other rooms in the building.
Sam: Personally, I would love to DM some sessions, so having another night where we get together would be fun.
What has been the best part about the society so far?
Ben: There was one session where there was lots of riding in carts and it was very roleplay heavy and I think that is my favourite session because of how different it was and how we explored the characters.
Do you have any other thoughts on the society that you’d like to share?
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 in this society, 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.
We then got the chance to chat to the 2nd group:
What do you guys do in this society?
Lucrezia: Play D&D
Tam: We get together, bring snacks, sit down, and we story tell for four hours.
Lucrezia: Lots of dice rolling.
Oscar: Lots of unhinged laughter.
Lucrezia: Right now we have a circus theme going in our story, so we have different decorations and foods to accompany that.
Tell us a bit about your characters.
Lucrezia: I’m DM.
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. 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 D&D?
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 interesting if people were wanting to do more one shots (one shots are standalone stories or campaigns that are normally done in one session, sometimes two).
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 & Podcast Production
Thomas: Psychology
Sam: I’m in the Filmmaking & Screenwriting course
Why should new students join your society? Do you want more people to join?
Lucrezia: We would love new people to join our society, especially more game masters! Right now, we have been getting lots of members. I can only DM for eight 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 two groups. I would love it if we expanded out and more people joined.
Daniel: There have been quite a few people in my course that have mentioned liking D&D, so I’ve been thinking of inviting them down and potentially have 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. There's a lot of streamed D&D 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 we got it streamed and people enjoy it. It would also help the students who 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. I think we should see if we can have the society run two 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 kinds 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 D&D is played online nowadays through things like discord and voice chats. That’s not always a bad thing because it allows lots of people access who may not have the chance otherwise, but there are 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 D&D 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 socialising and it’s a lot better in my eyes.
Thomas: Uni students can find it difficult to socialise, especially depending on where they live or who they interact with. A lot of students can find themselves isolated but stuff like D&D and other societies 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: 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 in the society.
Tam: Having that one hobby that you can bond over with people is really important because there’s a certain demographic of people who like D&D.
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 lovely, 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 write 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 find my class don’t actually know how to treat me sometimes because of my wheelchair. But in this society, 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.
A huge thank you to everyone involved in the Ayr TTRPG Society for giving us an amazing insight into the wonderful world of their society!