“My favorite part of the game is the journey of watching the weak and helpless players rise up to become heroes and legends of their ages,” states Ozzie Pagan ’27.
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game, and the new D&D club is officially bringing the game to the Ursinus campus community. Although the club is relatively new, over 50 people on campus are already interested. The club’s goal is to facilitate people to create their own parties and campaigns, and they will also be doing 1-3 mega dungeons for the club to get through.
The club plans to hold a monthly meeting on the last Thursday of every month in Musser, while also holding D&D classes biweekly on Thursday at varying locations. The club wants to grow D&D across campus, making the game even bigger than it already is while also creating a community at Ursinus.
“The only limit is your imagination!” says club president Gabe Glassic ’27. Glassic has been playing D&D since middle school after his friends in boy scouts introduced it to him while camping.
He has a lot of fun playing and believes that it is a great reason to meet up with old friends.
Stating his favorite role when playing the game, Glassic says, “I’m the forever DM [Dungeon Master].”
Club vice president Elijah Garland ’26, like Glassic, started playing D&D in middle school after being introduced to it by friends in boy scouts while camping.
“I was not a part of Gabe’s troop, it’s just coincidence that we share the same back story,” he says.
Garland loves the role-playing aspects of D&D and “being a completely different character than yourself.” His favorite type of character is a “Chaotic Good” character, and he is also a “forever DM.”
“I love nothing more than coming up with new character ideas, writing backstories, and selecting my abilities to best suit an overall character theme,” says club secretary Kay Speers ’27, exclaiming that their favorite aspect of D&D is character creation.
They started playing D&D on a whim in middle school in their friend’s basement, stating, “[I] have been BSing my way through since.” Speers founded their high school’s D&D club during the pandemic so that they could stay connected with their friends, “even if it was just playing the game over Zoom.” Speers’ favorite type of character is “Chaotic Good sapphics.”
Club treasurer Ozzie Pagan ’26 also started playing D&D in middle school after being offered to be taught by one of his friends’ older siblings.
“They ended up flaking on us after we had bought the books,” Pagan says. “ I was too deep in by that point, so I decided to read the books and figure it out as I went.”
Since then, Pagan has been DMing for his home group for some 4-5 years consistently, with one of the group’s campaigns even lasting a year and still continuing when he returns home for breaks. Pagan’s favorite character ranges in alignment, but usually has some sort of strange niche personal motive to constantly be working towards. He enjoys making characters that are well-bound to the world by family and history, so not tragic backstories for his characters.
“There are also a few tropes that I like to stick to: never money-oriented, defenders of their allies, cannibalistic, usually a little feral,” Pagan says, “and high damage dealing, the best form of healing is stopping your enemies from attack.”