- March 31, 2020
-
Megan Quick
- 3 min
Our team at Valiant Technology is working tirelessly to support the needs of our clients. Once our day is done, we get together remotely to play games and most importantly, stay connected. Last week, five members of the Valiant Technology staff used Microsoft Teams to kick off Dungeons and Dragons during our collective quarantine. It has a history of enjoying role-playing games including Dungeons and Dragons and, for a time, weekly games of Pathfinder. We thought the time was ripe to reinstate this tradition. From each of our homes with our ale in hand (or whatever beer/cider we had stocked in our fridges), we embarked on a fantastic quest.
It was a wonderful two-hour escape from everything going on in the world. We’re all finding ways to cope in this quarantine, whether it’s diving into a new book or watching Tiger King on Netflix. It was refreshing to play a game with coworkers in real-time. I am new to Dungeons and Dragons (I’ve only played once before), but it’s a lot of fun to engage in a creatively silly process with other people. Microsoft Teams made the remote adventuring seamless.
If You’re New to Dungeons & Dragons…
Dungeons and Dragons is a table-top role-playing game (RPG). For a brief history, it was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974. They based the structure of the game on miniature wargames that saw players engaging in tactical battles. Dungeons and Dragons took this structure to new heights by using fantasy worlds and in-depth character creation and development. The game has enjoyed a cultural renaissance in recent years as the joy of communal role-playing games is being re-discovered.
About Our “Valiant” Quest
We created our characters together right before the start of the game and the new players were aided by Maryann, our kind Dungeon Master. The company was made up of D’Justyne of Timberlake the Bard, Zsteve the Dwarf, Gio the half Orc Barbarian, and Barron Von Schloedy the Paladin. Their world is called Tomurfya, and the adventure started in a tavern (as it so often does) where our heroes were hired by an Alchemist to recover his stolen potions. The trail of the thief led to a mine where we fought some cooking Orc’s, saved a goblin, and Zsteve the Dwarf’s primary weapon was two empty pints that he hit together to intimidate his enemies. D’justyne recited some poetry and Gio defeated the Orc’s.
If you have Microsoft Teams or a comparable chat platform realize its potential and organize your own D&D campaign. We used the chat to communicate before the first session, and our DM was able to utilize Team’s tab layout to share the map of the world with us, D&D online resources and afterward we all had access to the notes she’d taken during the game.
We’ll be carrying on this campaign throughout this extended time of social-distancing and isolation. Please keep up with our characters, D’justyne, Gio, Zsteve, and Barron Von Schloedy, in Tomurfya!
