These are five moments we all hopefully experience during a D&D session, whether we are the DM or a player. These moments can’t be manufactured, and they’re rare enough to be truly memorable. Yet, when you’ve got a good group, elements of these experiences can be an undercurrent beneath nearly every session.
What’s interesting about this list is they all describe feelings or moments that aren’t necessarily obvious at the time. You may not realize they’ve happened until hours or even days later. You think back and go, “That really was an amazing session.”
1. You lose all track of time
These are the moments when you look at the clock and realize you’ve been playing well beyond your intended time frame, and notice that you were so into the story and the action and the intrigue that everything else was forgotten.
Real life outside disappears and you get immersed in the action. For a lot of people, this is one of the more important reasons they play D&D in the first place, as an escape from all the noise and stress the real world throws at you. You’re in the game but still aware that the real world is waiting for you outside the game room door. But you occasionally get those moments when the game really does possess 100% of your attention and time just flies by without even realizing it.
2. Consumed with emotion
Be it fear or triumph or trepidation, the players’ emotions are super intense and real. As DM, some of my most memorable games were the ones where the players were experiencing intense emotions over what was happening in-game. In fact, generating strong emotions in my players is one of my goals in adventure design.
I once had a player choose to leave the game because the themes went into emotional territory that unexpectedly made them feel uncomfortable. They had nothing but good things to say about how the adventure was going, but the intensity of the emotions it sparked in them was more than they wanted to handle. To their credit, they insisted that nothing in the game change just for their sake, because they recognized how much fun everyone else was having. Still, it was bittersweet when they bowed out, but it speaks to just how personally impactful table-top role-playing games like D&D can become.
3. Legendary improv moments
As a DM, some of the most appreciated adventures by my players were ad hoc sessions that I made up on the spot. They weren’t tediously and meticulously crafted, nor were they meant to fit an overarching plan. Perhaps that’s why they were so fun for the players, because I was forced to make them immediately fun and actionable in the moment.
That spontaneous creation can come from players, too. They can get into character in a way that becomes almost transcendental, where they stop getting in their own way because of anxieties or self-consciousness and just let it all out. And when they do that, the dynamically created moment becomes a memory that’s still talked about months or even years later.
4. Going left instead of right
There are times when the players make a choice, often on a whim and without planning, that takes the adventure or even the entire campaign in a whole new direction. That new path is often what gets remembered well after the session ends.
I’ve spoken about how my railroaded plot got derailed by player choice in another article, but thinking back, there are far more situations where the players going left instead of right made the game orders of magnitude more fun than anything I had prepared. It’s why I suggest DMs adopt the mantra, “Semper Gumby” and develop the ability to adapt and shift as the game progresses organically, rather than adhere to a rigid plan.
“Semper Gumby” – Always Flexible
5. The friends you make along the way
There really is something to the bonds that can form around a D&D table that go beyond the game itself. It can be like the trope-ish scene in a lot of movies when the two main characters have this intense moment of falling in love after going through some harrowing hardship together.
I’ve seen friendships, and even romances, form because of D&D. In fact, I’ve got a friendship that has lasted since 1988 all based on my buddy, Dave, and I creating something we called, “The Dwarven Blitz.” We both were playing dwarven fighters in AD&D rules, and on the spur of the moment we asked the DM if he’d give us some bonus damage if we charged ahead and attacked as a unit instead of one at a time. We went on to use that table-rule technique to great effect and many great memories we still talk about today.
Dave and I don’t see each other very often anymore, because of life and all that, but when we do, we get these huge grins on our faces and shout, “The Dwarven Blitz!” when we greet each other.
And for those paying attention at home, no, this is not the same fictional ‘Dave’ I sometimes talk about in my videos. You know, the Dave that makes the game awkward or whatever, although my real friend, Dave, thinks those references are hilarious.
