Wednesday nights at the Capital City's Game Emporium are full of hustle and bustle.
There's Little Caesar's pizza and bags of every size holding any chip or pretzel one can imagine, not to mention bottles of sports and energy drinks and soda stacked atop plastic fold-out tables. The one-room store space echoes with the sound of 20-sided dice clacking as they roll and people imitating goblins and the latest in mythical creatures, or speaking in broken Olde English accents. The tables packing the storespace are crammed with folks of every shape and size. Some are tall, some are small; some greying in their temples and some young enough to be in the thick of elementary school.
It's the weekly night of Dungeons & Dragons at the Emporium, and it's a geek's paradise.
Jesse Peterson sits at a table with five other players toward the back of the store and a four-panel board sits in front of him, a detailed red dragon with flame-orange eyes printed on it. Peterson - serving as dungeon master for the night's game - has been coordinating games at the store for the last five years.
"I had a weekly game that was going on and a couple friends of mine asked me if I would run a game for them and we decided to play here (Capital City)," Peterson said. "Then one of the store owners asked if I wanted to do it (organize a weekly game for the store) and I was like, 'Well, we're already doing it anyway, why not?'"
The weekly game has been going on for half a decade strong now and, according to Peterson, the store averages anywhere from 17 to more than 30 players a week.
Now 26, Peterson first began playing D&D his freshman year at Potomac State College of West Virginia. He was drawn to the storytelling aspect of it and the ability "just to be somebody else."
Dungeons & Dragons is a table-top role-playing fantasy game. Any number of players, familiar and unfamiliar with the game alike, sit around and pretend to be heroes going on an adventure. Each game is led by a dungeon master, who helps navigate the story line, mainly by setting goals and tasks for and offering rewards to players.
D&D isn't set up like any average board game, however. The goal isn't to kill off other players by sinking their battleship or buying all their property. Instead, the goal is ultimately to craft a captivating story on the fly, going from scenario to scenario that's enjoyable for everyone.
D&D wasn't published until 1974, but it actually has a history of approximately 51 years, dating back to 1967. According to the game's website, that was the year co-creator of D&D Gary Gygax started the The International Federation of Wargaming. D&D seemed to hit peak popularity in the '80s. The first set of published D&D booklets took about 11 months to sell all 1,000 copies printed. By 1980, D&D had sold around 250,000 units before the start of the new year and was selling approximately 12,000 units monthly. D&D also made an appearance in the 1982 film, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and had its own cartoon series by 1983.
Between shows like "Games of Thrones" - whose eight-year run is coming to an end in 2019 - and Cartoon Network's "Adventure Time" - whose eight-year run will come to an end this September (both shows have roots, in some fashion, in D&D), there's been an uptick in popularity for the game in recent years.
That's not necessarily where the uptick stops, or even where the popularity peaks for that matter. While the D&D villain, the demogorgon, was a reoccurring theme - and debatably its own villain - in Netflix's hit series "Stranger Things," the popularity comes from much more than TV shows. There's also been an absolute slew of D&D-based podcasts that have come to the forefront in recent years. Between pods like Nerd Poker, Critical Role and pod-turned-TV show HarmonQuest, there's a lot of mainstream content for both low-key and high-key D&D fans to get their hands on.
Between news pods and popular TV, this all also points to one thing: a new generation of D&D players.
Christian King, 16, is a regular at the Missouri River Regional Library's monthly D&D club games and sees it as a monthly bright spot.
"It's like my favorite time of the month," King said, "it brightens my whole month. Anytime I'm not playing it, I think about the next time I'm going to come to the library."
King has been going to the group since it first started in February, when teen programming associate Meghan Mehmert decided to branch off from the table-top gaming club and create the D&D group. According to Mehmert, the group consistently sees at least two dozen players during its monthly meetings.
"(The club) had 30 players (at the first meeting), consistently between 25 and 35 people since we started it in February," Mehmert said. "That's been really consistent. And I see new faces a lot, which is really encouraging. It's not just the same people over and over again, and I think it will grow again once school starts back up."
Between the spike in popularity and its implications for a future wave D&D players, Mehmert sees it as a positive thing for the community of players.
"I think it's great," Mehmert said. "It brings more attention to something that - it's not necessarily under the radar but I think its been associated with sideline nerds, and so the fact that they're bringing more attention to it is it's really helpful."