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*** Guest Post - We often allow small content creators to use our blog as a way to introduce themselves to our audience. John
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As of writing this blog post it has been 76 days since my country has issued a full lock-down. The health of people and their protection has to remain paramount, which is why I, along with everyone else have remained inside my home, except for a brief walk with my dog to keep us both sane.
I knew I’d miss a lot of things, Playing sport, Drinking with my friends, even being able to go to university, but amidst all my worries I failed to notice the positives that I would get to experience. I’ve spent this quarantine surrounded by family members, seeing my puppy everyday, working out everyday and perhaps most importantly of all re-falling in love with D&D.
My name’s Clark, and I’ve been playing D&D for about 3 years now. A committed DM, my love for storytelling,fantastical settings and heart-warming, mind-boggling, gut-wrenching plots meant that I was almost immediately hooked. D&D on top of all of this was a way for me to spend time with my friends, where often we didn’t make the time to meet up in person, we found ourselves arranging weekly slots to meet together, where we spoke about our troubles and bantered over cold beers and takeaway pizza, it was always just a bonus that we also got to spend it as Heroes and in my case a courageous Dwarven Barbarian named Talius.
Obviously this was in person, but luckily D&D is one of the very few activities that I was able to continue to do with my friends, over a variety of video chats. Met with the boredom that a quarantine creates, my mind was left unbothered to create up worlds populated by bloodthirsty Orcs, terrifying dragons and injustices and quests that could only be conquered by the bravest of heroes. Essentially, as you can tell my love for D&D has been re-ignited.
We often forget the difficult strain that being in solitary confinement creates on your mind. Feeling alone and trapped, appears is a common side-effect of COVID-19 that has been affecting most people irregardless of whether they get the illness itself. We recognise that mental health is so important, I am becoming an even stronger advocate for D&D for it allows me to sit and talk with my friends all be it over zoom, and reconnect, talk about what bothers me, feel loved, and provide that escapism that is so necessary.
I have been running an introduction to D&D on my channel on Twitch - twitch.tv/clarkhart , as well as campaign building and playing through my own one-shots and it has only helped me realise that the TTRPG Community is by far the place that I like spending my time in most. The support from strangers, coming to say hello on twitch, offering advice on reddit and genuinely caring about how I’ve been doing. It’s astounding.
If you stumble upon this, perhaps you’re new to the RPG community or rediscovering it like I have, I encourage you to surround yourselves with the same people that have become a very big part of my life over the last month and have only improved it! Moreover I’d love for you to come say hello to me as well, my channel is, like the rest of the community, wholly inclusive and wanting to meet you.
As a final note, when we’re shut up inside it is important not to neglect our mental health, to connect with good people, and to do what we can to be happy. I hope you find these things within the D&D community like I have.
Stay safe.
Clark Hart
Twitter: Clarkhart6
Twitch: twitch.tv/clarkhart
Youtube Clark Hart
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