When a group of first-years faced the summer before their inaugural year of college, they looked at the club listings and saw a gap in Willamette’s repertoire: a D&D club. Looking to fill this empty spot, club leaders like Elizabeth Loveland (’28) wrote a constitution over the summer to build a club from the ground up. The group, having met only once during a Bearcat Day, spent all summer communicating online and sorting out the details of the organization now known as the Mill Stream Adventurers Guild. When they finally met in person again at the start of the term, the club leaders were ready to bring the club to the public.
The product of this hard work is a club that functions like no other on campus. There are no regular meetings, only a once-a-term guild meeting that covers updates for the term. In lieu of traditional gatherings, the club stands in as a resource to its members, helping them with their individual projects. Loveland, now the club’s president, says the club is more of a “catalyst for what the DMs and campaigns want to do,” providing them with the resources that they need to successfully launch and continue their adventures.
Dungeon masters, more commonly known as DMs, reach out to the club for supplies and often players, and players can reach out to find a campaign that is to their liking. Campaigns are individually-run groups that are playing the game together for one or multiple sessions. While campaigns don’t require the club, they can lean on it as a resource — the guild can help students realize the full potential of their creativity, keeping DMs from stressing too much about finding like-minded people who are excited to join them on their quest.
By acting as the middleman between the DM and the casual player, the Millstream Adventurers hope to bring students together to help foster a community for D&D players at Willamette. The club’s mission is to make the game accessible to more people, spreading the joy of D&D to all who seek it. As Loveland said, “D&D is hard if you do not have the resources, so we are just bringing those resources to campus.” To carry out this mission, club leaders do their best to not only provide the platform and resources to connect students with one another, but also facilitate the campaign's gatherings to ensure players have a place to meet and follow through with their well-planned expeditions.
Having only been in session for one term, The Mill Stream Adventurers Guild hopes to continue to grow. The main question that arises from their once-a-term guild meetings is how to improve, so they are working on expanding their reach and doing their best to cater to the wants and needs of their members. The guild’s first term in action is quickly coming to a close, and in this short time period, the club has gained over 40 members.
Current club leadership is hopeful for the guild's future as well as its potential as a community on campus; “You can do anything if you roll the dice high enough,” said Loveland.
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