Chevalier called Dungeons n Drafts the “one hobby that can get me out of my apartment” regularly. Playing has also tamped down his hyper-competitive spirit and made him more empathetic, he said.

“You’re putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, even if it’s a fantastical creature in a fantastical world,” said Chevalier, an operations manager who lives in Center City.

Making fighters out of first-timers

Dungeons & Dragons has a reputation for intensity. A single campaign can involve months of multi-hour sessions, and there’s a lot to remember: Players toss a 20-sided die to determine the impact of their character’s actions, which can include a complex array of interwoven spells and attacks.

It’s the Dungeon Master’s job to keep everything on track, and if you don’t know a good one, it can be hard to keep up.

At Dungeons n Drafts, these adventures are tutorials that often end with a bar’s last call. At the Yards’ session, paid Dungeon Masters like Zachary “JJ” Salamon handed out multi-page character sheets to help catch up first-timers and would pause the action to provide hints.

Salamon, a 28-year-old West Chester University student from Downingtown, fell into Dungeon Master-ing by way of theater. At Yards, he led six players on a mission to save a farm that was overtaken by gigantic acid-spewing bug monsters. To help his group envision different plans of attack, Salamon moved figurines around a game board.

His play style — which involves a lot of comedic irony and over-the-top combat — let Matthew Misetic take on a key role as Varg the Tabaxi, an agile humanoid cat that ended up clawing one of the monsters to death. It was Misetic’s second time playing.

“No one here is going to bite my head off if I make a mistake,” said Misetic, 27, who works in tech sales and lives in Fairmount. “I’m learning to think outside the box.”

Ankita Patil agreed. Patil has been playing Dungeons & Dragons online since 2018 as a way to keep up with her childhood friends, but she played in person for the first time at a Dungeons n Drafts session in November 2022. She’s now a regular.

“You can literally show up with no idea of what to do and a Dungeon Master will help you along the way,” said Patil, 31.

Solar, who managed a taproom in Orlando, Fla., before moving to Philly in 2020, interviewed all 80 of Dungeons n Drafts’ Philly Dungeon Masters himself, taking care to hire people who weren’t afraid to be over-explainers. Still, he attributes most of the group’s low-stakes environment to the game itself.

“I play a lot of other board games, and they’re all ultra-competitive. You’re there to beat the person across the table from you,” he said. “With DnD, it’s okay to have a laugh and be friends.”

Those connections spill into real life, too. Solar’s wife Dezarea said the game helped her stop worrying about how to make friends in Philly after being a lifelong Floridian.

Because of Dungeons & Dragons, “I now have really good friends who will show up at my doorstep if I really need them,” she said.

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