Kanab Library has a wide collection of books and literature, including hobby and game-books - game-books like manuals and paraphernalia for one of the oldest published role-playing games in America, Dungeons and Dragons, “D&D” for short. Kanab has a thriving D&D scene, many of whom meet up every Friday at the library at 5:30 p.m. to roll dice and tell stories by playing the game together.
Left to right, photos by Ty Gant:
The friendly group of gamers hosting one of Friday night’s D&D sessions – this group has added two new players in two weeks, and all it took was a simple, “Mind if I join you?”
DD 02: There’s always extra dice, just in case someone wants to join in!
In the majority of cases, D&D is a collaborative role-playing game, where rather than competing, players create a character to assume - hence the “roleplay” part - while they and their party members cooperate to overcome a series of challenges set by a Game Master, or “Dungeon Master” as they’re specifically called in D&D’s case. While this sounds dramatic, to quote one of the players that attends Kanab’s Friday night games, “it’s really just a bunch of people getting together and having fun messing around in a fantasy setting.”
D&D night at the Kanab Library is open invitation, with the library providing a handbook and some of the necessities to play the game - though as the weekly sessions gain traction, there are generally long-time players willing to share their resources like dice and handbooks (and snacks) with any newcomers. The length of a weekly session varies depending on the Game Master (GM) of a group, starting at 5:30 p.m. and generally lasting a few hours. Group size ranges from just three or four people, up to large parties of seven or eight, and new groups are forming consistently as more attendees arrive and the existing parties swell to numbers too large for a single GM to manage.
According to one of the first GM’s who helped organize the original sessions, “it was kind of the library’s idea, they posted mentioning they were thinking about it, and I thought ‘I’ve been playing for a while, I know what I’m doing, might as well start something up.’”
As of Friday, November 17, there were three groups for a total of between 20 and 30 players regularly attending, with room and resources to accommodate more in the Kanab Library’s general-purpose room. Everyone from curious newcomers to D&D veterans are welcome to come play - if you’re so inclined, you can bring a set of polyhedral dice, though most tables have a player with some to share, and the library has a few on hand. Anyone looking to prepare beforehand and get a brief tutorial on the game can access D&D creator Wizards of the Coast’s online tool DNDBeyond.com for free guides.
