Playing with dice may seem simple, but tabletop roleplaying games let your imagination push the limits.
Also known as TTRPGs, these collaborative storytelling experiences allow players to come together — in person or on online platforms like Discord — to bring fictional characters to life and share narratives in a fantasy world-building setting.
Players can take the role of a game master, who narrates the story and mediates the game’s rules, or of a character, whose actions determine the outcomes of the journey.
The dice have rolled all the way to the Western Association of Role Players. WARP conducts a variety of campaigns ranging from Dungeons & Dragons to lesser-known TTRPG systems like Cain and Masks: A New Generation.
WARP has about 100 members on campus and has been around for 18 years. Members of the club break into smaller groups to run their campaigns, where each group plays a different system that is pitched by the campaign’s game master.
Simon Agulnik, club president and a fourth-year economics student at Huron University College, runs a Cain campaign, in which members play as exorcists who hunt down “sins” — threats that manifest from human trauma.
“It’s a fun hobby. It’s not that nerdy actually,” says Agulnik, before laughing and correcting himself. “It is that nerdy actually, but no one’s gonna judge you for it.”
Carson Giles, a general WARP member and third-year philosophy student, is another member who plays in campaigns. Giles currently plays Masks, a system that centres around teenage superheroes.
Giles loves that he gets to interact with a fictional world in a way that is unique to TTRPGs.
While there are a range of systems to play in, Dungeons & Dragons is the most widely known. Since game designers Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson developed it in the early 1970s, the fantasy game has had the biggest impact on the tabletop RPG industry.
It’s estimated that more than 50 million people have been playing D&D since its debut, generating more than U.S. $15 billion in a competitive market. Not only that, but the game has become a mainstream inspiration for popular culture: monsters and spells in Stranger Things, the virtual fantasy immersion in Baldur’s Gate 3 and the actual-play web series Critical Role.
D&D has even made its way to the theatre in the world of purple and white. Theatre Western’s recent production, Purple Shorts, opened on March 5 at the TAP Centre for Creativity. One of the plays, “The Great Shadow,” centres on a group of friends playing Dungeons & Dragons, with a dead character haunting the narrative.
Julian Pawchuk, a fourth-year music student and the playwright, is a longtime player who views TTRPGs as a form of self-expression.
Pawchuk says people can feel safer stepping into a character to explore themes and emotions that they wouldn’t normally confront if they were just being themselves.
But Giles’ favourite part of WARP is the community.
“I just love having people who understand some of my interests and the broad range of interesting ideas that people are bringing to these stories,” says Giles.
Pawchuk believes D&D should be more appreciated as a medium for building relationships.
“You’re pretending to be someone that you’re not, but you’re also showing other people a part of your soul,” reveals Pawchuk. “I find that it’s a unique way of learning about your friends and how they see themselves and how you see each other.”
— with files from Dean Millar