“It’s a bigger kind of magic…it offers players this incredible low-stakes sandbox for courage, for empathy, for laughter”
When the Graywolf Lab team was thinking about games as a theme, my mind immediately went to my first ever Dungeons & Dragons campaign, played over a single evening at a local bar with total strangers. I created a character (a wizard-elf with low wisdom), rolled my first Nat 20, and got to beat the final boss. The event, organized by Dungeons, Dragons, & Drinks (DD&D), provided an accessible space for a newbie like myself to participate in a game notorious for its lengthy campaigns and deep lore.
Here, the founder and Grandmistress of DD&D in the Twin Cities, answered our questions about games, RPGs, and the labor that goes behind nights like this.
——Nirali Sheth, Associate Publicist, Graywolf Press
DD&D
What is Dragons, Dungeons, and Drinks, and how did it start?
Dragons, Dungeons, & Drinks is a growing community that helps people experience the magic of D&D without all the usual barriers. I started it back in May 2023 because I was sitting with two very real adult problems: It’s hard to make new friends, and it’s hard to get into D&D unless you already know someone who plays.
During a holiday trip to Las Vegas, I visited a beloved player for whom I had been the Game Master back in Minneapolis before she moved. She invited me to a D&D night at the eccentric tiki bar where she worked. It inspired me to think I could make something similar——a space where anyone could come and play D&D, no matter their background or experience level.
I convinced a friend who bartended at a downtown venue in Minneapolis to pitch the idea to the owner. Since that first event, we’ve been joined by nearly a thousand players in four different venues and now host games multiple times a month.
What's your personal history with the game and what's your understanding of its overall history?
I was lucky. In college, someone invited me to a game, and that little moment opened up a whole new world for me.
I’ve been playing and running games for years now, long enough to have seen D&D through a lot of its evolutions. But at its core? It’s the same as it’s always been: storytelling. It’s one of humanity’s oldest traditions——sitting around a fire, weaving tales of heroes and monsters, building connection through imagination.
Every person at the table brings a different color to the canvas, and the end result is something none of us could have made alone.
How is playing in a large setting different than playing in a home game or more intimate environment?
It’s a bigger kind of magic.
At a home game, you build deep, personal connections. But at DD&D, when you walk into a room buzzing with a hundred people, all there to play, you can feel something else——a sense of belonging to something wider.
We seat people personally at every event, matching players thoughtfully so that even in a big crowd, your table feels welcoming and right-sized. But the bigger setting gives you a sense that you’re part of a living world——a world where a hundred stories are unfolding at once.
What's the goal of an RPG campaign for you?
The goal has never been winning in the traditional sense. You can slay the dragon, sure. You can find the treasure. But the real win? It’s when a group of strangers sits down and leaves as a team. It’s when they carry the memory of a funny moment, a heroic sacrifice, a twist they never saw coming.
At DD&D, every adventure is a one-shot you can jump into, but if you come back again and again, you'll start to notice there's a whole story unfolding.
In D&D, and in life honestly, the most important games are the ones you want to keep playing. DD&D was built around that idea—— that the best thing we could offer was a reason to come back, to tell the next chapter together.
Would you consider D&D/RPGs a kind of art or writing?
Absolutely. It’s collaborative art. It’s storytelling in real time. It’s writing without the delete key.
When I design an adventure, I’m not just writing a plot——I’m building a living, breathing world. And then when our Game Masters take those guides and our players step into them, it becomes something even bigger.
It’s the most human kind of art because it’s imperfect, surprising, and alive. It’s not polished and scripted; it’s full of unexpected detours, bad accents, bold choices, and beautiful moments that could never happen twice the same way.
How does the structure of the game help you move through improvised storytelling?
Structure is what makes the improv possible. It’s like setting up the stage so the play can happen.
The rules, the character sheets, the dice rolls——they give just enough shape to the chaos so that you can actually build something instead of just getting lost.
At DD&D, I design adventures to be beginner-friendly but full of choices, so players never feel stuck. The magic happens when you give people permission to say, “What if I tried this?”——and the structure makes sure there’s always a next step, no matter what wild idea they come up with.
How does the roleplaying element interact with who you are, and what does this offer a player?
Roleplaying lets me——and anyone——try on pieces of themselves that don’t always get airtime in daily life.
Maybe you’re not usually brave. Maybe you’re not the first one to speak. But at the table, you get to be the rogue who runs headfirst into danger or the bard who always knows what to say.
It offers players this incredible low-stakes sandbox for courage, for empathy, for laughter. You can fail spectacularly, you can succeed unexpectedly, and no matter what happens, the story keeps moving.
As DD&D has grown, it’s taken up more of your time and become more formalized——you pay your Game Masters and work with a team who help you with marketing and design. Has this changed your relationship to the game, and where do you see DD&D going from here?
Running a game is work. It’s joyful work, but it’s work: holding a table, guiding a story, managing energy, and creating an inclusive environment for a group of people you’ve just met—that’s a skill set, and it deserves respect.
I’m rolling fewer dice and making more executive calls, and that’s fine by me. DD&D has leveled up into a full-scale community of not just strangers or customers but my friends. Duluth is our next stop, other states are on the radar, and if the dice keep falling our way, you’ll see DD&D coast to coast before long.
Grand Mastress Renee is the visionary force behind Dragons, Dungeons, & Drinks, a wildly popular D&D event series blending immersive storytelling with craft brews and community magic. Equal parts Game Master and mastermind, she orchestrates epic adventures, champions inclusivity, and commands a loyal following of gamers, geeks, and goblins. With a flair for the theatrical and a spreadsheet always at the ready, Renee alongside her Business Barbarian Marcus bring fantasy to life across taverns, cons, and battle maps alike. Whether rallying Game Masters or conjuring up chaos, Grand Mastress Renee leads with wit, wisdom, and a fierce dedication to the realm she’s built.