Maybe a few days ago I played through a one-shot campaign organized by ZY. It was a beautiful little campaign with a fun storyline. One of the biggest elements of D&D that surprised me with it’s complexity was creating my own character. A large element of creating a character consisted of choosing their strengths and skills. I wanted my character to be a deception artist, so I maxed out their Charisma score and correlated abilities. Here’s what surprised me. 

I expected to be a pro at anything related to persuading other characters within the storyline to give me information/etc. However, the other large component of the game structure is to roll a 20-sided die to determine whether or not your character succeeds in any particular action. I was sure that with my maxed Charisma, I would succeed in these tactics. I rolled a 1. I failed my strategy. Another instance came up, and even with my maxed out statistics, the roll of the die led me astray. Then came another instance where I had to utilize my very low Sneak stat, but the die rolled favorably for me. Even with a starting disadvantage, or a starting advantage, my result was anything but expected. I had to think quickly and devise another plan. 

I’m sure you can see where this is going. I think that these instances often occur in many more ways than we can even perceive in our daily existence.

Moments of chance play out in ways we cannot expect.

Sure, our strengths may benefit us over time, but that says very little about our day to day interactions. And it says even less about finishing our campaign of real life. If we are to get where we need to go, we need to embrace chance, and embrace the unexpected. The only thing that matters is that we continue to move forward. Let the die roll. 

— J.R.