Rayna LedyardFollow

Date Collected

Winter 11-16-2018

Informant

Elyssa Bowman

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Elyssa Bowman is one of my best friends. She is 20 years old and is currently a student at BYU. Elyssa is an avid Dungeons and Dragons player, and has played since she was old enough to understand the rules and roll the dice. She introduced me to the game in high school.

Context

Elyssa and I were chatting on Google hangouts in the evening. I was in my apartment, and we were swapping stories about recent events in our lives, as one typically does with their best friend. A topic we often discuss is Dungeons and Dragons (or just fantasy/sci-fi in general). The story below picks up as Elyssa was changing subjects in our conversation. Critical Role is a podcast featuring professional voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons. The podcast is rather popular with most D&D players.

Text

[Elyssa:] Okay also

Have I expressed to you how much I love critical role?

They have moments where they do something completely amazing or someone has a fantastic one-liner or a brilliant plan works wonderfully or they have awesome role play moments

But also I just listened to an episode where three of them spend twenty minutes trying to open a door that wasn’t even locked, it was just really heavy

I couldn’t stop laughing it was so funny

[Me:] ohhhhh my goodness XDXD

that is 100% something that would happen

to ANY party

[Elyssa:] And they’re all professional voice actors so they’re REALLY good with role play and improv

The gnome teleported inside to lift the wooden beam that was blocking the door but he was too short??? So they stuck a sword through the door and tried to use that to lift it but they failed and he cut himself on the blade and then the rogue went around the side and hopped through a window and the gnome bard summoned an Unseen Servant to help them lift and ALL THREE of them couldn’t lift this bar and then eventually the gnome just used a 6th level Bigby’s Hand on the one door and popped it open and he’s like “I used three spells on this door! And took damage!”

And when they reported back to the rest of the party he’s like “we fought a door and a banshee. ...the door was harder.”

Texture

Elyssa was sending the messages quickly, indicating excitement and humor at what she was sharing. This is typical behavior for both of us. There was a longer pause before she sent the bulk of the story, indicating that she took time to word things right to convey the humor of the situation. The run-on sentences also shows her excitement, as she was hurrying to tell me what happened.

Instructor

Lynne McNeil

Semester and year

Fall 2018

Theme

G6: Socializing Games

EAD Number

3.5.2.6

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