It’s very easy to be cynical about celebrities considering that a lot of them do live a very lavish lifestyle away from the rest of society, but while that state of mind is easy to fall into, sometimes it’s better to dig a little deeper and see if there’s anything past the nonsense that the media wants to push as important in order to find something that could be positive. With Joe Manganiello, this is very possible since his desire to start up a Dungeons & Dragons club at a children’s hospital might sound a little silly to those that don’t play the game and might even sound subversive or more like a PR stunt, but the fact is that the guy plays the game and, being on the board of trustees for this hospital, wanted to do something that is quite positive since it’s possible to be a celebrity and a decent human being. It’s very possible to state that children that are suffering through one ailment or disease or injury won’t be entirely placated by playing a round of D&D, and it’s even more possible to say that some of them won’t be able to play an intense game, but the effort that’s put into giving them a chance to escape their life for just a few hours is still worth it, and anyone that’s played this game for a little while, particularly with a knowledgeable and fun-loving DM (Dungeon Master), will be able to tell you that the game can be a lot of fun since all it really requires, apart from an expensive investment in books and miniatures, is one’s imagination.
It is true that this game costs a good amount of money since the books alone can range from around $15 to well over $40, and the dice, characters, and other materials that people enjoy using can cost even more at some point. But in this case, the main draw is that Joe was attempting to deliver a good time and a chance for many kids to just enjoy themselves for a while and do so through the use and application of fantasy, which is so easy to fall into that some kids barely need any prompting. As someone that used to think that the game was for geeks and nerds (and happily joined in to become a D&D nerd), I can personally say that this game has been the inspiration that many people refer to it as. It’s not a game that leads to devil worship as some might want to think, or teaches deviant behavior, and it certainly doesn’t encourage violence outside of the game. In such instances that anything within the game has been taken to such an extreme, it’s often because the person committing such acts wasn’t stable, to begin with, and might have been triggered in one way or another.
This game is a way for people to come together and have fun, to enjoy the company of others while taking a journey through a fantasy land where their character can do pretty much anything they can think of, but with definite consequences that will be brought on by the rules and, more importantly, enforced by the DM according to the dice rolls. That’s right, the DM is essentially the god of the game, and a fair DM will make the game fun, engaging, and an experience that people won’t soon forget since they’ll keep the game balanced and not pick favorites. It’s easy to think that Joe might have taken it easy on first-timers at the children’s hospital, as the mention of fighting goblins, one of the weakest creatures in D&D, would indicate. But there’s still plenty of ways to make it fun considering that to a D&D newbie, even a small horde of goblins can prove a bit daunting. But that’s the fun of it, a person is taught how to think, how to react, and how to find solutions to various problems that may or may not involve fighting, since there is an entire list of skills that come with each character, and each character class (mage, ranger, barbarian, etc.) has a specialized set of skills and feats that they draw from in order to make themselves stronger and more effective in their given field. That’s how in-depth this game is since a person can customize their character with the power of their imagination. The only thing binding a character in this game is the limit of their imagination, and the dice rolls, which are insanely random but can swing towards favor as well as misfortune. Seriously, one of the best times in D&D comes from rolling a natural 20 while attacking or making a skill check, since that point a player will know pure joy.
Kudos to Joe for this, and for continuing to prove that celebrities are caring individuals.
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