Many of us have heard of RPG - role-playing games. But the likes of Dungeons & Dragons can seem very confusing to the uninitiated.
Tyne Shears, co-owner of gaming shop and cafe The Gates of Cerberus in Middlesbrough, and Jack Pattison, a 'dungeon master' for a group in North Yorkshire, guide us through.
Tyne Shears, co-owner of gaming shop and cafe The Gates of Cerberus in Middlesbrough, and Jack Pattison, a 'dungeon master' for a group in North Yorkshire, guide us through.
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00:00So it's TTRPG is tabletop role-playing game.
00:04I'm Tan Shears and this is The Gates of Cerberus.
00:07You role-player, you pretend to be someone, anything you want to be really.
00:12So my character is called Brock, he's an artificer, which basically means he makes stuff.
00:18He's primarily a blacksmith, he's a mountain dwarf.
00:21A tiefling is pretty much like a half demon, half human kind of thing.
00:25He's like a three-year-old that can only say the word gnasher.
00:30And he's barbarian so it means he just hits a lot of stuff.
00:33My character is Bjorg, he is a tiefling fighter.
00:37He basically is mostly on the front lines fighting with a sword, maybe a bow every so often.
00:43A posh, small human, he's a rock gnome.
00:47He's a rogue so he's like sneaky.
00:50That is what a tiefling is.
00:51There's tons of different ones, D&D is the most popular.
00:54It's like from the 80s, 70s, it's quite old.
00:57But it's now 50th year I think or something.
01:00And yeah, it's really, really popular.
01:03It's in Stranger Things obviously, that's where a lot of people know it from.
01:06Really just to get to meet people and also to be able to just get your mind off of stuff like work or things that will stretch you out.
01:13Very, very, very social, yeah.
01:15Because you get a bunch of friends together, you have your DM who's the storyteller.
01:19So to help with the theatre of the mind, we usually have battle maps like this and it's kind of meant to be scale.
01:26It's more to help out on the ease of combat, to understand where everyone is on the battle map.
01:34And just go on an adventure, like if you like Lord of the Rings, if you like Game of Thrones, you get to pretend to be in that world and it's really fun.
01:42Me, Nasha and Hader went to the docks to let off the fireworks as a destruction.
01:49Stalgar arrived there and tried to arrest us.
01:55Because of lockdown, a lot of people online played D&D.
02:00It was a good way to sort of get together with your friends and play a game that wasn't just a game, like Monopoly or whatever.
02:06So yeah, you get to pretend to be someone and have fun, be adventurous but not leave your sofa or whatever.
02:13So this has all been set in a world of my own creation which is based in Norse mythology.
02:18It's what?
02:20We borrow from existing literature, thank you.
02:24At the moment we're in a city called Jorvikstad and at the moment they are helping one group wrestle control of the city from another group.
02:34The current group is more of a, perceivable of a more tyrannical leadership who's kind of getting a bit old, not in the tooth and he's kind of getting towards.
02:47And at the moment they're helping a woman who used to be, who was the daughter of the man who used to be in control of the city.
02:55Sometimes if you're not sort of theatrical or whatever, it can be a bit so strange to be like, I do this? Yeah? No?
03:03So yeah, it can be a bit strange people but just get stuck in. It's really fun, I'd say.
03:07To guard one.
03:09And that is my turn, yes.
03:11And as your steel defender goes, looks at the final guy that surrounds you with his head just straight into him.
03:21And he launches back into the wall and swims dead.
03:25For my second attack, I like how you just used my steel defender.
03:29Do you have another rubber I can use?
03:31I do actually.
03:32Can I borrow it?
03:34I'm going to use my second attack to green frame braid him.
03:40It's literally just, you roll, there's various dice, you just roll the dice and that's it.
03:44You just gotta say what you want to do and the DM will go, okay, yeah, cool, do that.
03:51So that's seven.
03:53Seven.
03:54Damage.
03:55Too stoker.
03:56Man, I want to do the same thing again.
03:58I'm a nerd by heart.
03:59I always have been.
04:00Lord of the Rings is my passion.
04:02And then I found I could be in Lord of the Rings.
04:05I could pretend to be a hobbit.
04:06Oh my gosh, this is amazing.
04:07So that was about seven, eight years ago.
04:11And it's just, yeah, taken over my life, essentially.
04:13It's the amalgamation of three friends, essentially.
04:17Simon, who's downstairs, he is the card game player.
04:21I am obsessed with D&D.
04:23And Bon is our head chef cake extraordinaire.
04:26And we just all went, yeah, let's do this.
04:29Let's make a shop, make a cafe.
04:31Yeah.
04:32It's really fun.
04:33You could just be anything.
04:34There's even like sci-fi ones, like Star Wars, be an adventure in Star Wars.
04:37Or there's like aliens ones and horror side of things and stuff like that.
04:41So anything you want, yeah.
04:43Someone who's maybe like made a, made a deal with a demon for-
04:48No, not that.
04:49No, what was it again?
04:50I'm not good at describing the races of this.
04:52Why have you brought me on?
04:53That's that.
04:54Okay, so.
04:55What are we doing here?
04:56I mean.
04:57The game has no real end.
04:59When one story or quest wraps up, another one can begin.
05:03Creating an ongoing story called a campaign.
05:06Many people who play the game keep their campaigns going for months or years.
05:11Meeting with their friends every week.
05:14Also to pick up the story where they left off.