Vang: Saving the world one D20 at a time

A look inside the Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks network in Minneapolis that’s creating spaces where everyone — especially those historically excluded — can belong.

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The Minnesota Star Tribune
June 28, 2025 at 9:00PM
Regular players, affectionately known as “The Usual Suspects,” gather for another session at Bruhaven. The group has attended every Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks event since its inception. (Nicholas Campbell )

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The last time I played Dungeons & Dragons I was in high school, and the Dungeon Master was a Goth boy who wouldn’t make eye contact with girls unless they had +3 charisma and brought their own dice. I lasted two rounds, got eaten by a gelatinous cube, and decided that maybe my imagination was better suited to creative writing.

So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that in the Twin Cities, a Dungeons & Dragons community was not only thriving but flourishing into something akin to a grassroots movement. And not in a “let’s go to Comic-Con and talk about elves” way — no, this was something deeper, livelier and, dare I say, revolutionary?

The Minneapolis-based organization is called Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks, and yes, the name implies exactly what it sounds like: storytelling, dice rolling and community bonding — often over mocktails or the occasional mead. It was founded by Renee, a relationship therapist by day and fantasy world-builder by … well, also day, and sometimes night. Renee is joined by Marcus Sheeler, a marketing manager whose straight, white, cisgender résumé would typically make him an unlikely co-owner of a queer-centered gaming collective. But here’s the plot twist: It works.

What they’ve created is more than a game night — it’s a sanctuary where the only lines that matter are drawn on a map, and everyone agrees to fight the dragon, not each other. The Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks gaming is a joyful, noisy, welcoming experience, where queer folks, nerds, introverts, extroverts and people who haven’t played a board game since “Candyland” come together and become adventurers. It’s a space that Renee describes as “queer-coded,” which, for those unfamiliar, means the values of the LGBTQ+ community are embedded into the structure — radical inclusion, empathy and safety.

When I asked them if the group was exclusively queer, Renee smiled and said, “No, but it’s definitely built for us. Everyone’s welcome. You just have to be respectful.” Marcus chimed in with a term I hadn’t heard before but immediately loved: radical diversity. It’s not diversity as performance or checkbox, but a lived commitment to building spaces where everyone — especially those historically excluded — can belong.

The numbers are impressive. What started as four events in a year has grown into a thriving network of more than 1,500 adventurers. They host regular adventures, run happy hours, board game nights, and even family-friendly, sober programming at the Twin Cities Pride Cultural Arts Center. And yes, they bring D&D to the people — in haunted malls, at Pride festivals, and just last month they held their first adventure in Duluth. Their five-year plan? Expand community-driven D&D hubs to Chicago, then across 1,000 miles of America. It’s ambitious, but so was Frodo leaving the Shire.

What struck me most, though, wasn’t the scale of Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks. It was the way the organization connects people. There’s something profoundly countercultural about adults gathering to play, to pretend and to connect without agenda. In an era of hot takes and tribal politics, of headlines screaming “us vs. them,” and our elected officials being murdered, these folks are sitting around tables saying, “You see a door. What do you do?”

Renee said that some adventurers had no friends before this group. Let that sit for a second. No friends. Now they have 20-sided dice, a character sheet, and a table full of people ready to quest with them. Maybe even slay a metaphorical dragon or two.

Sure, they’ve faced questions about safety and backlash. There’s always the specter of the 1980s “Satanic Panic,” when D&D was accused of corrupting the youth. But Renee and Marcus aren’t sweating the critics. “If someone’s skeptical,” Marcus told me, “I’d just invite them to a game. See for yourself.” And really, how can you hate a group that states on its website: “Ready for camaraderie, chaos, and some friendly competition? Our tables are always open.”

So, no, I didn’t roll a character or join a campaign (yet), but I left my conversation with Marcus and Renee feeling something rare: hope. Hope that in a fractured country, where suspicion often drowns out curiosity, there are still corners of joy. Little taverns of imagination, tucked between spreadsheets and rent payments, where people gather not to win but to belong.

And in these strange, uncertain times, that might just be the most heroic quest of all. You can catch Renee, Marcus and all their Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks friends at the Twin Cities Pride Festival, where they will have a booth. They are looking for new adventurers. I hope one of them might be you.

Ka Vang is a contributing columnist for the Minnesota Star Tribune. She focuses on historically marginalized communities.

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about the writer

Ka Vang

Contributing Columnist

Ka Vang is a contributing columnist for the Minnesota Star Tribune. She focuses on historically marginalized communities.

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A look inside the Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks network in Minneapolis that’s creating spaces where everyone — especially those historically excluded — can belong.