A Welcoming Place

Greetings traveler, welcome to our little corner of the internet. We don’t know what brought you here, but you are welcome nonetheless. All are welcome at the Glowing Fool.

What is the Glowing Fool?” you ask? Well, the short version is that we are a group that wants to harness the power of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) to make the world a better place. Our guiding statement is that “the world would be a better place if everyone played D&D.” We hope to build that world.

The long version, is probably going to take a bit more explaining.

What is Dungeons & Dragons?

D&D is a game played with friends around a table. Picture from Stranger Things

Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D, is a tabletop role-playing game. And perhaps before we tell you what it is, we’ll first tell you what it is not. It is not a video game. It’s not something you play on a computer, or on a phone (although there are video game versions). At its core, D&D is a game of collaborative storytelling. It is a group of friends (usually 4-6 people) sitting around a table, and creating a shared story where everyone contributes to how the story unfolds. The game is played with nothing but some pen, paper, dice, and one’s imagination.

For more information, you can check out this video by Vox:

So what is the Glowing Fool all about?

As we have mentioned earlier, we want to create a world where everyone has tried playing D&D. We believe that D&D can be a positive social force. Because, aside from being a really fun game, it helps us build important skills. Communication. Creativity. Teamwork. Problem-solving. Empathy. All these skills can be gained and further refined through playing D&D. It can also have a positive impact on one’s mental health. Providing an opportunity to face one’s source of anxiety. Or help us open up more to those around us. Or just give us an opportunity to escape from it all for a few hours. D&D is an amazing game and we can gain so much from playing it. But don’t just take our word for it, take theirs:

So how are you going to go about introducing D&D?

A session of D&D starts with the Dungeon Master (DM) setting the scene. The DM creates a world that the other players inhabit and explore with their characters. Typically a D&D group consists of 1 DM, and 3-5 Players. The main challenge for new players is always finding a DM to run a game for them. DMing a game can be quite challenging. This is the bottleneck that we see with new people trying out D&D, a shortage of DMs.

DMs are key to any game of D&D. Pictured: Matthew Mercer, DM for Critical Role. Source: Geek and Sundry

How we hope to address this issue is through two steps. First, we would like to introduce more people to this wonderful hobby of ours. We hope to accomplish this by organizing “Introduction Sessions”, where we will run games as the DM for people who have never tried playing D&D before, but are curious to give it a shot. And then we move to our next step, training new DMs. Out of the group that have participated in our Introduction Sessions, we hope that some will express interest in becoming Dungeon Masters. We will then proceed to teach them on how to become DMs, give them the necessary skills, and opportunities to practice until they become confident that they can run games for themselves. Rinse and repeat.

We hope to be able to build a community of D&D players through this process. And hopefully get one step closer to that goal of everyone playing D&D.

What are your guiding values?

If we were to boil down everything we believe in, we could probably do so into a single word, being inclusive. And this comes in many forms. To start, we don’t think that there should be any barrier for someone who wants to learn how to play D&D. This is an amazing hobby, and by and large, everyone should be able to enjoy it. Cost shouldn’t be an issue, nether should access to resources or help. Which is why we try and make all of our sessions and training as open as we possibly can.  Anyone who wants to join, can.

D&D should be accessible to all. It is a safe space to have fun, and be yourself.

This leads us to the second (and more important) aspect. D&D is a game about acceptance. It’s about coming together and having a good time with your friends. To us, playing D&D should be considered a safe space where everyone is free to be whomever they want to be. Regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. If you want to join us in a game of D&D, you are more than welcome to.

We certainly are not the first to propose the concept of D&D as a positive social force. Nor do we think we will be the last. We are simply part of a greater gaming community that wants to spread love and empathy in this world. That’s what Dungeons & Dragons means to us.

Welcome, to The Glowing Fool. We sincerely hope you’ll enjoy your stay.

– Earl and Susanne