The Cork Dungeons & Dragons Meetup has been going and growing for almost two years now. We have many active members, with currently about 50 people playing on Red Wednesday and about 30 playing on Blue Wednesday.
However because of the restrictions on meetup.com and because we have been meeting and playing in a pub in the evenings, we have had to restrict membership to adults only. Well people over 18 that is, whether they have achieved the sensibilities of “adulthood” is questionable in some cases.
We have long been looking for a location where we could include teens on weekend afternoons. This is now beginning to look like it will happen in the next month or so. However meetup.com would not allow teens to use the site and I agree with this. Teens, young adults and even us older adults should always be extremely careful about meeting people in real life that they have met or found on the internet. That should apply here too. We need a set of guidelines for everyone involved and I am working on those. But first we need a website for all this and so here it is.
D&D is a great game for people of all ages. I started in my teens and now my teenagers play. I have regretfully had to reject many teenagers from the group on meetup because of the restrictions and many parents have made inquiries with a similar result.
The benefits of D&D are many fold. It helps not just with basic mental arithmetic but also with developing a understanding of probability. It hones your social skills. Makes you develop plans and adapt them when the enemy doesn’t co-operate. It helps with puzzle solving, sharing, teamwork and taking turns. But most important of all it’s fun and you make friends with the people you play with.
There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.”
– Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (J.K. Rowling)
Mike O’Regan Aug 2018
The Cork Orc 