DnD is a great game for ruining friendships. And by ruining, I mean weeding out all the fakes. If you can’t handle me at my murder hobo barbarian, you don’t deserve me at my sweet and smart DM. DnD is a great thing to start doing among your friends if you have a taste for adventure and you want to start creating major scheduling conflicts. When it’s good, it’s so good. But when it’s bad, it causes you to want to disband your entire friend group and start again. What do you mean you don’t «feel like» solving the puzzle? We literally need to, or else the dragons are going to get us!

But in the right moments, it brings you closer together than you could ever imagine. You’re astride each other, making decisions in parallel, role-playing flawlessly, and getting everyone on your side. It’s like a well-played symphony when it all goes right.