The Dungeon Master Fortress
An immersive addition to the dungeons and dragons lifestyle
Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game that has an intriguing aura around it with players in costumes and a lot of immersive artefacts. Players also tend to be incredibly committed to the game itself, often dedicating hours every week to play, but what drives people to this game? What makes playing a character appealing? Why do people choose to immerse themselves in an alternate reality?
Through a series of interviews, attending events and a lot of online reading, the DM fortress was born. It is a tool to allow players to immerse themselves more into the game
Dungeons & Dragons also known as D&D or DnD is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG). The core of the game consists of storytelling and the players’ imagination.
Every D&D game has a lead storyteller known as the Dungeon Master (DM), and typically 4-6 other players, also referred to as adventurers.
The Dungeon Master describes the surroundings and the scenario the players are in. The players get to decide what actions they want to perform. In order to perform an action they have to roll a dice to determine if the action succeeds or fails.
The Dungeon Master determines the outcome of the action.
The game has no real end. When a quest or story ends a new one can unfold, creating an ongoing storyline called a campaign. Many campaigns go on for months or even years. The players meet up once every 1-2 weeks to continue the story where they left off and embark on new adventures. If you don’t have months to spare, it is also possible to do a one-shot. This is a shorter adventure that can be completed within 1-3 sessions.
What is DnD?
The DnD Lifestyle
Serious players of DnD immerse themselves into this alternate reality for hours on end for multiple sessions, with each session lasting about 5 hours. Hence, they have to be very committed to the game itself. They also prepare for these sessions by sometimes creating costumes, props and figurines.
Before the game starts the players have to make a character using a character sheet. The characters are partly based on game statistics and the player's imagination. Every character has their own capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, and unique personality. The Dungeon Master usually does a lot more preparation, some DMs prefer to have detailed descriptions of the villages, the adventures and the NPCs the adventurers might come across. Other DMs prepare a general storyline and improvise on the spot. Depending on how crafty the DM is feeling the DM might also prepare maps and other props, such as potions, to make the session more immersive.
DnD players tend to be very immersed in fantasy and most of the time identify themselves as nerds. They tend to be creative with an interest in storytelling. They are generally the type of person that also enjoys other types of fantasy gaming such as video games.
When talking to avid players, an interesting observation was that players tend to find it easier to talk about their character than about themselves.
“Everyone likes something about the game. So many variety of interests can come together to create a story and adventure”
Escapism
When talking to players and masters we found a common theme of them wanting to escape reality. They don’t feel like they fit in in the real world so they want to escape reality and want to find a way to experience things outside of what this reality would let you. They have made DnD a way of experiencing things that you can’t experience in the real world.
“It's really fun to experience horror in like a sense where you actually have control over what you can do. But, and not actually be in danger. And you get to sort of just play out.”
“I think everyone likes escapism to some degree. Doing something to get away from their daily lives. You get to be someone else for a while.”
Storytelling
A common ground everyone we spoke to had,
was the passion and love for storytelling. They enjoy the process as much as the story itself. The art of crafting a story and telling it together with all the characters is a way of expressing themselves and creating a whole world for themselves.
Alongside storytelling as a part of the game, they enjoy gaming, reading, movies, and fantasy where they consume stories as well. They love building characters that play a central role in their stories and sometimes become one with them as they adapt their accents and slang. More so than consuming stories, they like creating them as you can’t change the characters in a movie or book. Here, the decisions you make, decide how the story goes.
“The thing is, normally, when you watch movies or series or something, you don't have agency, right? You just sort of follow the perspective of someone that does things and like with video games, you can still get some levels of agency. But it feels very limiting because there is only a set number of things. The game is programmed to react to you, right? Right. So, for DnD it works both ways, like when you're playing and when you're running it. It is just amazing for agency because the world feels sort of real as it reacts to what you do.“
Control
A large part of what DnD gives them that they feel is missing from their life, is control and agency. A lot of their life seems to happen without their conscious decisions and this is not an experience they appreciate. Players and masters revere this sense of control that they have over the story. The control to shape how the stories go and what happens to the characters is very important to them and something they feel is lacking in their lives.
“So, in general, if I can't change something. I will just get annoyed by it even though I might not necessarily need to change it, but I want to be able to change it.”
“I feel like I do value agency a lot in real life, which is why I try and mould my environment as best as I can for my own needs.”
Not fitting in - together
A lot of people from this lifestyle feel like they do not fit in in other communities so they created this lifestyle for themselves. A lifestyle where they all get together to be part of something as a collective.
Reasons for them not fitting in are varied. Some of these are due to neuro-divergent conditions, like dyslexia, ADHD, and anxiety but others often categorize themselves to be “nerds” or “geeks”. This community allows them to embrace all of this that they feel they can not in the real world. They fit in here with all the misfits.
”It's a shared experience that is very very limited to very very small audiences. So it feels like you're part of something because it's very hard to really give that experience to someone who wasn't there for that.”
The product we created for the DnD lifestyle lets them experience the story more so than ever before. It lets them escape the real world with a more fulfilling experience and immerses them into the fantasy world that they have created.
The DM fortress provides an immersive experience to the players by creating the setting around the DM. The scene is now something everyone is a part of. Along with this immersiveness, it also allows for customizability, so the DM can change the setting with ease for everyone when they are in a different location in the game. The DM fortress is portable and can be disassembled and compacted for easy transport. Finally, the DM also has opportunities for added creativity as they can choose to design and create their own scenes and screens to represent it.
Mechanism
The fortress consists of a telescoping pole that attaches to the DM’s seat. Attached to the top of this pole is a hub with extendable rods that connect to hooks. The draped curtain is attached to this hook.
The new curtain can simply be hooked onto these hooks present to change the scenes.
