“So Falreth the Righteous raised his gilded battlehammer high into the air and called upon the blessing of Thorimm to imbue his weapon with divine energies. By this point, Zylax the sorcerer was completely surrounded by bloodthirsty orcs and shouted “Falreth – lend us your aid!”. So Falreth, charged with holy fury, leaped into the air yelling “by the power of Thorimm’s Hammer!” and started cleaving left and right, spraying orc viscera and limbs everywhere – even over the trapped party! He then freed them from the cage and they went on to find the lost crown of Ambrielle. It was so cool.”

Marcus stared smiling at his friend waiting for a reaction befitting his tale.

“Right. So this is like a board game, is it?” Alastair replied, sighing out his strained interest. Marcus paused in his tracks and tapped his chin, contemplating his answer as though it held great importance.

“Technically, it’s a tabletop RPG, or a TTRPG for short, so you definitely can utilise maps, miniatures and props should you choose to. But the great thing about D&D is that you play it completely within the theatre of the mind! You really just need a set of dice, some friends and your imagination.”

Alastair had now listened to over forty-five minutes of Falreth’s completely fictional exploits as he and his oldest friend made their way up Ben Arthur’s walking trail. The forestry track had made for pleasant walking but now he felt that he’d been polite enough, asked a few questions to feign interest, but the boundary of his tolerance was crossed at theatre of the mind. It’d been a good six months since they’d last hung out together and they’d yet to even talk about the big three chat topics – jobs, houses, partners. Alastair had begun to wonder what the point in a catch-up-hike was if there was no catching up taking place. 

“Aye? Haha – that’s cool.” He attempted. “So how’s Suzy getting on? She was promoted a few months back, right? I think I saw she’d posted something about it on Instagram. How’s that going?” 

Marcus sighed and his voice flattened. “Yeah. Project manager now. It’s fine. Pays more but way more stress too. How it usually goes, y’know.” There was a pause as Alastair waited for more detail. Their walking boots crunched fallen pines and twigs under their feet and he realised that there’d be no more detail. 

“But did I tell you that she finally agreed to join our campaign?” Marcus sprung to life again. “She plays a moon-druid called Valuna and she has this hilarious thing going with the party’s rogue, Naresh, where they both try to steal the best thing from shopkeepers and taverns and stuff and let’s just say it’s getting way out of hand! There was even a time, during a quest where…”

Alastair’s mouth became a straight-line imitation of a smile as he buckled in for another rambled retelling of Falreth’s exploits. He knew that Marcus had joined a Dungeons & Dragons group a while back but had no idea that his interest had become so painfully intense. He looked around as the forest gave way to moorland and mountainscape and he let Marcus’ words pour over him like the cool highland breeze. 

Occasionally he’d tune back in to make eye contact with Marcus and do a wee smile-and-nod to give the impression of listening. Now it seemed he was talking about magical items, some kind of orb that freezes things. Christ. Alastair used the time to wonder about all the things his old friend might be running away from. 

A dead-end career? 

“…so how you work it out is you add your proficiency bonus…”

Financial concerns?

“…so the higher your stats the higher your modifiers which means you add a dice roll…”

Can’t get it up anymore?

“…so really you’ve got to plan out what spells you want to prepare ahead of time.” 

Maybe Suzy was cheating on him? He bet it was that. Marcus was nice but he had the look of someone who’d get cheated on, Alastair thought. It took him a moment to notice that Marcus had stopped talking and was looking to him for a response. 

“Oh right, aye. Spells. That’s cool.” He knew it didn’t sound convincing. They’d been walking for a few hours now and the growing ache in Alastair’s legs was inhibiting his ability to pretend like he gave the remotest of shits. Why wasn’t Marcus interested in his actual life, he wondered. They had loads to catch up on that they hadn’t touched on yet. He’d recently bought his first place with his fiancé, Mairi, for instance. They’d got a cat. Named him Tom after Tom Jones and he loved him very much. A real cat. With an actual body and a face and fur and not a made-up body or face or fur. Why hasn’t he asked about Tom? He thought to himself. Marcus had liked the Instagram post about Tom’s adoption so he knows that he exists. The more he thought about it the more pissed off he found himself becoming. 

“I got a cat.” Alastair threw the statement out there like a shot-put aimed at Marcus’ head. “Tom. After Tom Jones.”

“Oh yeah? Cool. Is that ‘cause it’s got white hair like Tom Jones does?”

“No, it’s…like the song – what’s new pussycat, woooah wooah-oh. We sing it to him all the time and he meows.”

“Heh, that’s nice.” Marcus smiled faintly.

The rocky path crunched underfoot and the breeze rustled in the mid-slope heather. Somewhere nearby a burn trickled quietly by. In the pause, Alastair could practically feel Marcus’ burning desperation to mention something he would bet his cat on was related to Dungeons & Fucking Dragons. It practically burst from Marcus’ lips.

“Valuna sometimes shapeshifts into a cat to sneak into places we wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. A few times she’s even been a cute decoy to distract a guard!” He smiled and shook his head as though remembering something fondly from the past. 

“Yeah, Tom doesn’t do that. He’s just like, a normal real cat.” Even Alastair recognised his emphasis on real was blunt but wanted to drive home the point. There were real things they could be talking about. He’d driven over two hours to get there and have a catch-up-hike and the big three topics had barely even been scratched! Just orcs and swords and magic and magic swords and magical orcs with swords. Alastair could see the peak ahead of them now and felt a pang of sadness at his own relief that they were nearly half-way done. 

“I reckon you’d make a good barbarian.” Marcus offered.

“Do you?” Despite sounding like a question, it wasn’t.

“Totally. The play-style is pretty straightforward which leaves a lot of space for adding character-colour and roleplay. It’s really fun and a good class for learning the basics.” Alastair said nothing to that. Marcus persisted regardless. “You know you don’t have to do voices if you don’t want to. And you could call him Alasthair or something similar to your own name!”

“Yeah nah I’m good thanks.” Alastair chided in response. He channeled his frustration into his legs, willing the hike to be over as soon as possible. They walked in silence as the path gradually steepened leading to the final section of the climb. Cobbler’s north peak was a series of complex rocky crags that flatten out to a small platform at its summit, exposed to high winds and panoramic views of the surrounding Arrochar Alps. Marcus had little scrambling experience but was first to begin climbing a simple looking path up the jagged rock face. Alastair took a path that looked more difficult but more importantly to him, looked to be out of earshot. He wanted to concentrate on the climb and hear no more about the paladin who existed only in his weird friend’s head. “What even is a paladin anyway”, he mumbled to himself as he took his first steps onto the rock.

Marcus reached the plateaued summit first. He took a deep satisfied breath and absorbed the vista with outstretched arms before looking down to where his friend was struggling. “Need a hand up?” He called down.

“I’m fine! I’ll be up in a minute.” Alastair replied, cursing the route that he now felt he’d been forced into taking. The hand and footholds were tiny and the route was unclear but after a few minutes of exertion Alastair had managed to get one hand up over the lip of the plateau’s edge. He was looking forward to reaching the top, enjoying the view and catching his breath. He pushed himself higher, stretching out his free hand to make the final grab when suddenly the foothold supporting his weight crumbled. It slid down the slope in a tiny shower of rock fragments. “Oh shit!” Alastair dropped down a few inches and his body thudded flat against the rock face. With no foothold he could feel himself slipping further. He feared the twenty foot drop but more so feared the sharp edges of the crags below. 

Marcus sprang forwards in reaction to the slip and leaned over the plateau’s edge where his friend hung. “Alastair! Are you okay?” He called down. 

“Shit, oh shit. Help me! I can feel the rocks slipping! Gimme your hand! Quick!” Alastair panicked.

Marcus smiled and took a knee. “Gosh, this so reminds me of a few sessions ago. The party were crossing a great canyon on a rope bridge and what’ya know, it snaps and they all go hurtling…”

He’s cut off – “Jesus Christ, Marcus! Just help me would you! I could die here! Forget your stupid fucking game and help me!”

Marcus’ eyes narrowed as he looked down at Alastair who was panting furiously, failing to find a grip with his scrambling hands. 

“Say, Falreth lend us your aid.” He offered coolly.

“Are you fucking kidding?! Marcus! Help me!” He slipped further. 

Marcus paused. “Say it.”

Alastair squeezed his eyes closed tight and gritted his teeth before calling out “Falreth! Lend us your aid!”

Marcus raised an arm into the air as though wielding a battlehammer and cried in a deep voice “BY THE POWER OF THORIMM’S HAMMER!” He leaped to his belly and reached down over the edge, clasping his hands around Alastair’s outstretched hand and began to haul him up. They both grunted and strained with the effort, Marcus’ grunts notably lower in tone than his usual voice, and with a final heave, Alastair managed a leg up over the edge securing him safely on the flat platform of the summit. They both lay on their backs panting as they tried to catch their breath.

Marcus was the first to speak after a few moments. “Wow, now THAT was a close one! You could say you nearly rolled a critical fail!”

Through still heavy gasps, Alastair replied “Heh, I guess you’re right. That was terrifying. Thanks Marcus – really.”

Marcus repeated himself, the good humour vacant in his voice. “You could say that you nearly rolled a critical fail…” There was a pause between them and Alastair stared into the clear blue sky before replying with total resignation. 

“…You could say that I nearly rolled…a critical fail.” 

“Haha, exactly!” Marcus laughed gleefully and let out a redolent sigh. 

Alastair’s heartbeat gradually steadied and his adrenaline dissipated. Meanwhile his brain tried to think of a better name for his inevitable barbarian than Alasthair.

At different times in my life, I have been Alastair and Marcus to varying degrees. There’s a special type of zealotry that D&D players seem to possess that they can’t help but inflict upon anyone nearby with ears. And I say this with at least enough self-awareness to know that I can still on occasion be one of those people. I say it also with the awareness that pretending to be an elf and casting imaginary spells just isn’t compatible with some personalities and that’s okay. We must find peace with that. It takes all sorts to make a world. And do I think that the world would be better if everyone played Dungeons & Dragons in their spare time? Well, yes – I do happen to think exactly that. But there are many Alastairs out there. And for them, we might engineer life-or-death situations where their survival depends on accepting D&D into their hearts. But like I say, it’s just not for everyone.