An Unsuccessful Foray into the Dungeons

Last Updated on 29/11/2020 by Alex Squire

A new Dungeons & Dragons group started recently in Lincoln and I was quite excited about it. It’s a game I have known of for years but have never had the opportunity to play it until now. I went to try it, but unfortunately, it didn’t exactly go to plan.

If you are not familiar with Dungeons & Dragons this is how it works. It’s basically a role-playing game. You play it in a group, on a tabletop, and each player creates a character. One person is the main storyteller, known as the “Dungeon Master.” The players have to describe what their character does within the story and the outcomes of any action are decided by rolling dice. So, if I wanted to attack someone I would roll the dice to determine whether the attack was successful or not.

That is very simplified, and the rules are a lot more detailed than that but you get the idea. It seemed like a fun game and a good way to meet new people, so I was excited to try it out.

The group are holding a number of different sessions each week in a couple of different venues in Lincoln city centre. The one I went to was held in Comic Culture which is a games store. They have a number of tables available so that people can sit down and play board games or other types of tabletop games.

There are also rooms upstairs but they don’t have a lift so I can’t get up there. When I arrived the group was upstairs but they came down when they knew I had arrived.

Everyone sat around a long rectangular table, with me at one end.

Soon after I arrived I realised that it was going to be difficult for me. There were quite a lot of other people in the store talking so there was quite a lot of background noise. I struggled to hear what the other people in my group were saying.

Because Dungeons & Dragons is based on storytelling it’s important to be able to understand what the other people are saying. The long table that we were using didn’t help. I couldn’t see everyone’s mouths to lipread and some people were far away from me. There wasn’t much room to get around the sides of the table because it was too close to the shelf. So I couldn’t go and sit in a better place.

I stayed there for a couple of hours, trying in vain to catch what people were saying, before deciding to leave. There wasn’t a disabled toilet in the store either. They had normal toilets upstairs but that’s no good for me because I can’t get up there.

I don’t think I will go back because there’s not really much point if I can’t understand what people are saying. It’s a shame because I was quite excited about playing it.

All is not lost though, as I’m going to try playing D&D online. That should work out better. Reading text on a screen is infinitely easier than trying to listen to people.

In other news…

After many years of searching and hoping for a lipreading class in Lincolnshire… I HAVE FINALLY FOUND ONE!

I came across it completely by chance too. I just searched for lipreading classes in Lincolnshire purely out of hope, and not expecting anything, and lo and behold there was one taking place in Lincoln and beginning on Friday, 15 March.

It would have been just my luck for me to have missed it. But no, luck was on my side this time.

The classes will last for 9 weeks and hopefully by the end of it my lipreading skills will have improved. My hope is that this will make me better at understanding what people are saying in noisy environments.

Time will tell, but I am going to give it my best shot.

If you are interested in attending the lipreading class visit this link for details.