It’s okay to not always attack.

For me, the roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons has had two strikes against it.

The first: for years I had a prejudiced belief leftover from school that only nerds played DND.

I’ve gotten over this prejudice, since for the past year or two my family has been playing the game with my brother as dungeon master—and it’s been really fun. Maybe we’re nerds. But maybe nerds have more fun anyway.

The second strike is that I suck at playing.

I had it in my head that in Dungeons and Dragons whenever you come across a creature—goblin, giant, whatever—you’re supposed to knock it upside the head with your sword or axe. You’re supposed to fight. Attack. That the game is supposed to be one epic battle after the next.

Only problem is I never fight first. I always want to ask questions before taking any action.

This is in line with my character—a noble wood elf who’s a bard. She sings. She has an entourage. I just can’t picture her going up to a beast and bopping it on the nose before she asks it about its business.

But for many sessions, I’d thought I’d been doing DND wrong because of this. I’d thought her character was too passive and didn’t do enough action. To put it in book terms, that I didn’t have enough plot.

This was embarrassing because I’m supposed to be the writer, right?

I spoke this fear aloud last night, though, and learned that it’s totally okay to not always attack. That many players don’t go into every segment thinking that a fight is the first thing that must happen.

The relief I felt went deeper than a roleplaying game, because it felt like it was okay to be her—and by extension, that it was okay to be me. That I didn’t need to put on someone else’s skin and be something I wasn’t. (Of course if I wanted to create a character and do so, I’m sure I could.) But I’ve been wanting to explore this elf character and really get to know her.

Get to know me?

And having permission to not play the game the way I thought everyone else played it made me so much more relaxed.

I learned, yet again, that I shouldn’t assume things are the way I’m perceiving them. Because I could be totally wrong.