Reality Check

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Clearly, society’s only hope is a high school junior who thinks he’s a gnome bard.

“He’s a gnome. And he’s a bard,” Connor Sims carefully explained on this day, as if the reporter taking notes on his fantasy role-playing club at Greene County High School had never seen a 12-sided dice before.

“Bards are generally musically talented,” Sims continued. “I have a lute I play songs on.”

Of course, he also has short swords and a light crossbow, so go ahead and snicker at your own peril.

But just when you fear that society is sure to one day crumble under the weight of a million selfies, tweets, memes and vapid status updates, you look around Room 110 of the high school on a Thursday afternoon and it’s what you don’t see that gives you real hope for the future.

After all, this is the first generation to instinctively register the # symbol as a hashtag, not a pound sign.

And, yet, no one is checking Facebook.

No one is incessantly looking down at a phone, either waiting or hoping for a text that will give them permission to snub the person across from them.

In fact, at the biweekly gathering of Greene County High School’s new fantasy role-playing club, you’ll hardly see a phone at all.

“They enjoy each other’s presence so much, they don’t need it,” observed Luke Boyd, the math teacher who got roped into serving as the club’s supervisor.

“They don’t need anything else.”

The only thing that’s truly needed to play “Dungeons & Dragons” for an hour and a half after school is an imagination.

“If you have a limited imagination,” Boyd conceded, “it might be kind of boring.”

A club in which the participants all sit around a table thinking up adventures of swashbuckling and goblin-slaying — then rolling a weird-sided dice to determine whether an arrow from a make-believe crossbow hits or misses the frost giant standing in the way of your quest — just seems so painfully low-tech in this day and age.

How could this possibly appeal to kids today, you ask?

Participation in the club has exceeded Boyd’s expectations, with nearly 10 members.

It’s even got him wanting to play.

“My wife says school work comes first,” Boyd, 28, said with almost an air of sadness.

Tuesdays are for playing “Magic: The Gathering,” the strategy card game developed in the ’90s in which players cast spells and summon creatures (the usual stuff).

Thursdays are devoted to “Dungeons & Dragons,” the granddaddy of fantasy role-playing.

The Greene County School Board officially approved the club’s creation in March, a decision that instantly legitimized a pastime once deemed a moral scourge — an invitation to demonic possession, the crazies all claimed.

Amusingly, “Dungeons & Dragons” is now the property of Hasbro. (Of course, Hasbro also owns the Ouija trademark, so maybe one of America’s most trusted toy companies has a secret satanic agenda after all. Don’t get us started on My Little Pony.)

What was said about the game in the ’80s — that you’re just a 20-sided dice roll away from murder, suicide and/or satanic ritual abuse — has long since been debunked, but like subsequent generations of metalheads, gamers now wear all those urban legends like a badge of pride.

“I’m surprised we haven’t gotten any complaints,” high school senior Gabe Jensen scoffed. “There are like five churches in town.”

Try 14.

Alas, “D&D” is now about as subversive as Ozzy Osbourne.

After all, the 42-year-old game on Nov. 10 was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, joining such other kid-friendly icons as Barbie, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky and “Candy Land.”

How it works is that players create a character (like, for example, a gnome bard).

If you don’t know your elves from your dwarves, go back and rewatch “Lord of the Rings.”

That way, you’re also not completely stumped when someone says something like ...

“I don’t want to be a wizard. I want to be a sorcerer,” argued Jacob Sunde, a recent Greene County High School alum who still partakes in the action on Thursdays.

A Dungeon Master (usually Sims or Jensen) acts as a moderator who leads the players through their adventure.

The club as of late has been exploring a subterranean citadel populated with goblins and the like.

“You can do whatever your imagination wants,” Jensen explained. “You can do good or you can wreak havoc.”

There’s one label, however, that “D&D” hasn’t been able to shake since its creation in 1974.

“There’s a connotation that comes with this,” said Boyd, the math teacher who oversees the club. “It’s kind of nerdy.”

“Super nerdy,” Sunde piped in.

Jensen and his brother, sophomore Ian Jensen, are officially second-generation “D&D” players, having inherited their love of the game from their dad, Harry.

“I can see people thinking it’s a real nerdy thing,” Gabe Jensen said.

“It might not be nerdy,” Ian Jensen clarified. “It might be geeky.”

What’s the difference?

Good question, but when you also find out the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer, let us know.

“We’ve gotten this far (in life),” Sims said. “I don’t care what people think.”

Mr. Boyd, it should be noted, wasn’t asked to supervise the club completely by accident.

He talks fondly of his eighth grade birthday in his native Fort Dodge — the one in which he and some friends played “Magic: The Gathering” all night.

He likens the current mainstream popularity of “escape rooms” to role-playing.

“All an escape room is is ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, ” he said.

The club was technically chartered as the LARP Club, which stands for live-action role-playing.

Think “D&D,” only with theatrics and foam weapons.

They’ve yet to do any live-action role-playing, but that’s the plan.

Boyd said he wouldn’t be surprised if live-action role-playing grows the club even more, simply because there aren’t as many curves to learn.

In LARP, if you get hit in the arm with a fake broadsword, you lose the arm.

Having an official school club gives the players a dedicated place to play, not to mention a central location, with members from Jefferson, Scranton and Dana.

Being official also gives them access to school transportation — like the field trip they took at the end of last school year to Mayhem, the comic shop in Ames.

As a result, though, members (even the half-orcs) can’t have any failing grades.

And, no, 90 minutes after school isn’t nearly enough time for an epic quest.

“We usually continue where we left off last time,” Ian Jensen said.

That’s presumably the real reason a teacher is there to supervise — someone has to make sure they actually leave.

“I’ve gone five hours before,” Sunde noted.