The Purpose of Playing

This evening, I played a game of D&D with my siblings, but we didn't do much of what I had planned.

I had planned for us to track down a giant hoar, overcome an obstacle or two, and charm the boar into performing at an event we were invited to attend. Instead, we spent the entire session talking to some soldiers, pointing them in the direction of a dungeon we had cleared out, and following them to the dungeon and then back to their base of operations.

We did eventually get to the part where we found boar tracks, but that was about as far as we got along the line of events I had planned. Most other games would tell us that we had not accomplished our objectives, and had therefore failed.

However, this is D&D. The objectives can be whatever we want them to be. If we want to spend our whole gaming evening sneaking around some soldiers, chatting with them, and sneaking around them some more, so be it.

One of the main objectives of any game is to have fun. As long as we're having fun, we're playing the game just fine.

But more importantly, I play D&D with my siblings largely as an excuse to get together and hang out with my siblings. As long as we're spending time together, enjoying each others' company, that's what really matters.

I like D&D for many reasons. I like the stories we get to tell and experience, I like the wacky shenanigans we get into, and I like spending time with my friends and family (in manageably small groups; I'm still fairly introverted). Of those reasons, I generally count the last one as the most important. As long as we're all together, having a good time, I'd say it hardly matters how we're playing D&Dor even whether or not we're actually playing the game at all.