Duets and the Power of Story in Difficult Times

Hello friends, and thank you for joining me for this episode of Druidry & Lore. I’m going to skip over the usual greeting and closings and everything other than to say that if you’d like to learn more about playing one-on-one D&D, please visit us on dndduet.com. 

I’ve debated writing and recording this and similar posts over the last two years, sometimes because it feels too hard for me, sometimes because I feel I’m not the right person to speak. I want D&D Duet, our adventures, my fiction, to be a place of solace in times of need, a place where you can retreat and replenish your well of belief in how the world could be. 

But I would be lying if I said that’s the only reason I write or that the extent of my hopes for what you glean from these stories and experiences ends there. 

The truth is that part of what I find magical about Dungeons & Dragons, especially in a one-on-one setting, is that it gives us the opportunity to be our best selves, or at least to explore a better self. Playing our characters, engaging in fantasy stories, also allow us to practice wielding agency in a more pronounced, more powerful way than we often do in our daily life. It’s one thing for me to want to help the earth and reduce my carbon footprint, it’s another for me to play as an archdruid who can literally shape and heal the landscape to my will. 

However, I don’t think the magic in that circumstance is in pretending to be more powerful or more impactful than we are. The magic, to me, is in practicing re-seeing the world around us and our role within it. What we gain from role-playing or from reading fantasy is a recognition of ourselves as change agents, exactly as we are, here and now. The change we can create may look different, it may operate along different scales, but the key is in the shift in our perception. 

I write and record this in the face of yet more darkness. My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine, and I so strongly feel how limited that is, how it doesn’t go far enough, doesn’t bring immediate change or difference. That may sound contradictory to what I’ve just said, that the power of fantasy is in letting us recognize our agency and what I’m pointing out is limitation. But don’t the two, when seen clearly, go hand in hand? 

What I can do, at this moment, is tell you that you’re not alone if you’re afraid. And I can ask that if you see a chance to help, that you take it. Similarly if you need to step away, to refresh so you can be there for your family and the people in your life, I’d urge you to take that break as well. We can get so caught up in news cycles and the ever-flowing fount of information that we forget to give ourselves time to process, and that’s part of what D&D and our duet game have done for me—a step away so I can bring my best self to whatever is facing me. 

For the truly big things, I don’t have easy answers. All I know to say is to follow the urgings of your heart, to nod to and recognize feelings of fear but to not let those be what drive you. When we have the courage to delve deep, that’s how we find the answers for what we can do. 

In an online webinar I attended last week, one of my author mentors encouraged us to keep writing and to take care of ourselves. As creators, she said, we’re the counterbalance to the forces moving in our world. To my core, I believe in the power of stories. They’re what make us human. They’re how we make sense of the world and our place in it.

One of the first things we can do when we’re not sure what to do next is to pay careful attention to the stories we’re telling ourselves. Are those stories true? Or are they just a first sketch? What are they leaving out, or aggrandizing? What have we given too much power to, and to what have we not given enough? 

So often, we give vicious, aggressive acts and forces an outsized portion of power, and we limit the positive potential of change agents and virtuous acts. When we pay active attention to shifting that narrative and write our lives and outlooks according to a story that grants power to the people and things we believe in, we align ourselves and our actions with bringing those beliefs about. 

Thank you for allowing me to share this with you today. I hope that if there’s something Jonathan or I can do for you that you’ll let me know. You can find the contact form for our site here.

More soon,

💚 Beth