About Roll Arcana
Welcome to Roll Arcana. We are a Dungeons and Dragons blog dedicated to bringing quality content to all audiences. We believe D&D is for everyone. Whether you’re thinking about starting a campaign for the first time, or you’ve been going strong since 1974, we want to be a part of your adventures!
To us, D&D is more than just a tabletop role-playing game. Dungeons and Dragons is a cooperative storytelling adventure that allows its players to immerse themselves and explore unknown lands, develop deep relationships with other characters, experience tragedy, love, loss, and maybe, just maybe, become a hero.
This sense of wonder and joy is something we hope to share with you. At Roll Arcana, Dungeons and Dragons is our passion. We simply cannot get enough. Seriously, we can’t shut up about it. We can have a 4 hour session and spend the rest of the week dissecting the plot, analyzing our characters’ decisions, and picking apart what we could have done better.
And that’s why we (Carson and Tori) started Roll Arcana. We want to share our love and experiences so y’all might have an easier time navigating the many facets of D&D. On this blog, you will find content and resources for players and dungeons masters alike. The campaign of your dreams is possible and we want to help make it happen.
Most of all, just as the quests we all play are collaborations, so too is Roll Arcana. We know our joys, difficulties, and achievements, but we want to hear about yours as well. We can all learn from one another, and sharing your adventures helps all of us as we explore distant worlds!
Before we start to explore together, let us introduce ourselves!
Carson
Hello there, I’m Carson.
I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons and tabletop games for most of my life. I have always been drawn to D&D, a game where you’re not just writing an organic story that evolves over time. I believe that everyone has stories to tell; stories that are uniquely theirs and worth telling. Dungeons & Dragons, as a creative medium, gives us the ability to express our stories and be heard.
I’m a software engineer, which is good, because I’ve always loved computers. I started programming at the age of eleven, making games and tools to help me with my childhood tasks. As I grew older, I started undertaking more complex tasks. I’ve written a physics engine library, and created a handful of games (nothing too interesting), and even created a chess AI. Eventually I got my undergrad in computer science and now I work for a grocery company in San Antonio, Texas. Throughout my career, one thing has become clear: creativity is one of our most important resources, whether we are debugging computer code, or expressing ourselves.
I’m a storyteller, and my creative outlets reflect that; game making, creative writing, and digital art to name a few. I have spent extensive time on worldbuilding a fantasy world, giving a setting for my creative writing. These outlets give me a way to explore my interests and see what kinds of stories I like to tell.
About a year after graduating college, I met my girlfriend Tori and to this day I am so happy to hear how excited she gets when talking about D&D. We have spent hours after gaming sessions talking about how we did, what could we have done better, what worked, and what didn’t.
When playing D&D, I most often find myself playing the role of Dungeon Master for my sessions around the table — a role that I love. Being able to give setting to the player’s stories and building a story with my players is a feeling like none other. Whether you’re a veteran player or a beginner, collaborative storytelling should be fun, inclusive, and freeing. That’s why Roll Arcana exists, to share stories and advice, and help build up people to tell their own stories in their own way!
I believe that everyone has a different way of looking at things and a different story to tell. Following that belief, I don’t want Roll Arcana to be a place where I write about how I think things should be, rather I want it to be a place where old ideas can be given new context and we can have a discussion on how we can take our stories to new worlds and on new adventures.
Tori
Welcome to Roll Arcana!
Hi there! I’m Tori. I co-found Roll Arcana with my boyfriend, Carson. Growing up, I buried myself in books. Sci-fi, real life, fantasy, you name it, I was reading it. Nothing really captured my attention as much as fantasy did, though.
I loved reading and writing so much, I found myself on roleplaying forums at the age of 13. Creating characters of all genders, ages, ethnicities, and getting to walk in their shoes was magical. Creating a story with people from across the country and even the world was priceless.
When I was 15, I tried acting in theatre for the first time and oh, did I fall in love with it. I was always a behind the scenes type of person. I was in the band or a sound or light techie. For that first audition, I refused to practice my monologue with anyone, even my friends who I’m sure were worried if I would have the guts to act on a stage if I couldn’t practice with them.
But when I got on that stage, I killed it. The world melted and I was my character fully. I felt the pain and sadness of my character. The words took on a different meaning. And I got the part!
I acted in other smaller roles but never continued out with theatre due to time conflicts. When I got to college, I abandoned reading and writing for fun almost entirely. My creative outlets at this point moved towards painting and drawing.
Through these phases of life, fantasy always held a special place in my heart. A place where I could escape into a world where dragons and unicorns existed. Where humans and elves worked together to overcome some great evil. And because of this deep love, my friend invited me to play Dungeons and Dragons with his online group.
I was so excited to get the opportunity to marry my love of roleplaying, acting, and fantasy, under one game. I drew my friend’s character for him and started working on my own. But unfortunately, school was just too much of a commitment for the both of us and scheduling never worked out.
I graduated from my undergraduate university with my B.S. in Psychological Sciences and Biology then continued on with my M.S. in Psychology. I moved to San Antonio, Texas and started my two year program learning the ins and outs of human behavior and psychological research design.
During my last semester, I met Carson. He was this perfect combination of technical and logical and creative and silly. He had explained that he’d been a Dungeon Master for several years and had been playing Dungeons and Dragons for even longer.
I was so excited to have the opportunity to play the game in-person, especially because I was getting so close to finishing my thesis. I was nervous, but Carson has this way of talking about D&D that you can’t help but fall in love with.
And oh did I fall in love, with both Carson and D&D. I was back in a world that I could be who I wanted to be. I played characters that were brave and strong and kind. All characteristics I realized were in me the whole time and D&D helped me make those realizations.
It helped me get over my embarrassment of making silly voices. I have a 60 year old gnome bard named Po who speaks in a southern belle accent and says “Oh, honey” a lot. Something I never thought I’d be comfortable doing in front of a small intimate group of people. But hearing Carson go all out his voices from serious guard to silly gnome to angry barbarian, I felt a safe space to explore and express myself in ways that were even better than roleplaying forums or even the theatre.
After every session, Carson and I would spend hours talking about what had just unfolded. His perspective as a Dungeon Master and mine as a player. I couldn’t get enough of it. And honestly, I couldn’t shut up about D&D. And what do you do when you can shut up about something? Start a blog!
So we created Roll Arcana. A blog to talk about what we love, Dungeons and Dragons. We want to share our stories – our successes and failures. We wanted to create a blog where other players, new or old, could find resources to improve their experience and grow, always grow!
And we want to grow too! Creating this blog, writing posts have made me reflect so much on my own characters and sessions and I can’t wait to hear what advice you all have to give and stories you have to share.
Thanks for adventuring with us!
