A Seat at the Table // Hannah Lee Jarvis

Aspart of our guest-edited month, “D&D and Creativity,” Hannah Lee Jarvis has shared a piece about the incredible bonds made at the campaign table.

The books smell like Pokémon cards—that freshly opened seal of something painted and created and etched in a press that knows whoever is going to hold it will never crease its pages or scuff its covers. There is a careful way that teenagers at my library look through the books, one hand holding it against the table while the other flips through the pages with unhurried curiosity. They would never take such care of a Batman comic or YA novel about lost princesses with swords. No, there’s something different about D&D books.

Unlike most games, it starts with a piece of paper and a pencil. Only pencil. Never pen. We give that warning like it’s a cautionary tale. You’ll find out soon enough. Then, there is the odd shift of looking at the books and looking at the paper and realizing that you need to pick your own race and class. Race. Class. Something that we can never choose. Something that sounds like it was pulled straight out of the richest white man’s daydream, imagining what being somebody else might be like but without the consequences or hunger or disaffected rage.

Maybe you’ll be a half-orc barbarian. That sounds brutish and rough. Gender is an afterthought—boy or girl or neither? It doesn’t matter here. Sexism is for modernity and we are somewhere else.

Somewhere. Else.

You’re looking up from the numbers and dice and see people sitting with you, asking questions to the person speaking the loudest and dropping hard plastic rocks on a laminate conference table. He’s tugging meaning from the runes with a thoughtful frown. Maybe these are people you know. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe you just went to enough board game nights at the local comic book store until someone, anyone, caught you outside your usual night and asked, “Do you want to play with our group? We meet on Wednesdays.”

Maybe it’s been two years since you’ve had a friend. A decent friend. Areal one. Maybe you’ve been wandering through daytime and nighttime. Your only confidantes are the people you supervise at work and the teens who drift in and out of the library asking about life decisions you only ever made poorly.

There’s a girl here. You feel a sudden flush of secret joy, even though you’re not quite girl and not quite boy yourself. Maybe it’s because she’s Chinese, like your boyfriend at home. Already there are things only you two know and you’ve barely spoken. There’s a man in his forties, twisting his words to not be French. His children will join later, after your boyfriend asks you to marry him and you tender a question to this future group, “Is anyone here ordained?”Then at the wedding, when you’re bombarded by nerves, you find the mat Table 4. It’s like they’ve got a magic of their own—this family you chose.

Somebody makes a joke and the player closest to your age starts laughing. His laugh is high and light and so infectious that you see everyone in the room smile and you know you will keep on smiling every time this particular man laughs in this particular way. Even when you’ve been playing together for five years. Even in the months when your depression sinks you so low that getting out to see other people becomes the hardest part of your week.

But not yet. These people are still strangers to you. There is still an energy to that air that reads like inside jokes and names of old friends you’ve never met. Just now, there’s a paper and a place that asks your name. It isn’t your name you put down, but someone new. You write an “8” by intelligence and chuckle to yourself, suddenly aware of how this person, one you barely know, has changed. In your head, you can see a bumbling half-orc with fists the size of full hams scratching at his green-skinned chin as he puzzles over whether the treasure chest is a container of sweetmeats or a new friend named Reginald the Box. He’s rather sweet.

You look up. The excitement you have for this imaginary person, this imaginary thing, is like treading water with only your arms, no sand or algae-slick ground beneath. You’ve made a secret. And when you look around you, you see that everyone at this table has that same light in their eyes, a secret that they made in this room with you.The potential of all these words sit, a car at the top of the roller coaster, a book you’ve only seen the cover of, a story that has not yet begun.

But where do you go from here?

This is where I’ll leave you—with a secret behind your teeth and a room full of strangers. The story is only yours to tell. Welcome to the table.

Hannah Lee Jarvis is a small-press published Appalachian poet and short story writer in the United States. She is the three-year champion of the oldest D&D convention in the world, PrinceCon, and she uses her skills as a professional storyteller as a Game-Master-for-hire for local libraries and bookstores. Talk to her on Twitter about some of your favorite D&D stories @hleejarvis.

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