By Reid Frame | Entertainment | November 14, 2026
ENTERTAINMENT DESK — A group of friends hoping to play Dungeons & Dragons has entered its fourth year of organizing the first session, an achievement rivaled only by the fantasy campaign they have yet to begin.
The group has already designed twelve characters, purchased seventeen sets of dice, developed a fictional kingdom with a complicated royal succession and debated whether a half-elf could reasonably have a mortgage.
Unfortunately, the adventure remains trapped behind a far more formidable opponent: the shared calendar.
‘Next Saturday works for me’ has become the unofficial battle cry of a campaign whose members have never all said it on the same Saturday. The party’s wizard can bend time in theory, but the person playing him works weekends.
The hardest boss is a scheduling poll
At the group’s most recent planning session, one player suggested a three-hour afternoon game. Another countered with a two-hour evening session. A third asked whether everyone could just send voice notes describing what their characters would have done.
The Dungeon Master, who has written 84 pages of lore and printed a map the size of a dining table, maintains that the opening scene will be worth the trouble. It begins, naturally, in a tavern. Nobody remembers why the characters are there.
Other classic Dungeons & Dragons challenges include a party spending 45 minutes interrogating an ordinary shopkeeper, a rogue inspecting a door as though it were a federal investigation, and a paladin asking whether diplomacy is possible with something actively eating the cleric.
But unlike these familiar hazards, scheduling has no dice roll, no saving throw and apparently no upper limit on difficulty.
The adventure continues, eventually
The group’s online chat remains active. Everyone has opinions about spells, snacks, character backstories and the quality of miniature dragons. A date for the campaign itself remains the one fantasy the party has been unable to make real.
To maintain momentum, members have tentatively agreed to meet next month to discuss meeting next month.
At press time, the Dungeon Master was considering making the calendar the final boss. It would be the most believable villain in the entire campaign.
Photo: Turn2538 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Unaltered archival tabletop dice photograph.
About the writer
Reid Frame covers entertainment, games and the entertainment industry’s ongoing arguments for The Tea Bag Times™. Meet our newsroom.
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