Kat Burke
Tales of Resilience
Tales of Resilience is an Honors experience that follows a group of students as they play through a homebrew D&D campaign that takes place in the fantasy college of Zardigash University. D&D, or Dungeons and Dragons, is a popular role-playing game created in the 1970s. It allows the players to come together to tell collaborative story using interpersonal and problem solving skills. During the campaign, we faced several issues that affect us in real life through the lens of fantasy, like discrimination, classism, and mental health. Players also tackled interpersonal issues between characters, with bigger concepts like trust and vulnerability.
Art of my character, Calliope Eirwan!
What I Learned
Calliope’s story and the campaign itself taught me a lot about the importance of vulnerability and relying on people. I think this is one of the more important lessons I’ve learned from this experience. I’m a really independent person, and I hate asking for help because it does feel like a weakness. This is a trait I passed on to my character, as I wanted to explore how the need to be independent when facing a problem. However, D&D is a game that strongly relies on group trust and team building. By experiencing trials and tribulations with my character, I was able to learn the importance of community and friendship in the face of adversity. This experience taught me that It’s human nature to rely on and be relied on in turn. Asking for help isn’t a weakness and is in fact a strength! Being able to recognize that you need assistance and who can help you just ensures that the problem is more likely to be solved. This experience was a fantastic way to explore vulnerability and mental health in a safe, supportive environment through storytelling.
Going forward, I plan to use what I've learned storytelling with sensitivity in my future campaigns. I really enjoyed discussing topics like classism and mental health through the viewpoint of our characters, even though it could be difficult at times. I really appreciated the safety tools that were put in place, and having time to reflect on the more intense sessions was a great opportunity to slow down and sort of detach from what happened. Going forward, I plan to implement everything I’ve learned into my future games. I recently started a campaign with my cohort members from this semester (pictured in the gallery below) , and I hope to use what I have learned about discussing important issues in sensitive and empathetic manner to improve my own writing and storytelling skills.
