Dungeons & Dragons as a team icebreaker

This post comes with a warning: what I'm about to describe isn't remotely close to the rules of Dungeons & Dragons. DnD purists would be horrified at the lax rules, meta-gaming, and rampant inconsistency.

Recently our team spent two days reviewing our ways of working. It was sorely needed after a busy year, and we wanted to try and develop something a little more sustainable.

The trouble with any long meeting (and come to think of it, a lot of short meetings as well) with any significant number of people is getting everyone to contribute. Engineers have a bit of a reputation for being introverts, which can be a little unfair, but it's true that throwing them all into a workshop and hoping that everyone will start talking is optimistic at best. We had a reasonable first morning going through some basic principles and our successes through the year, and after lunch wanted to do a retro. At this point, the call got slightly awkward and everyone went quiet. We knew there was a lot to cover, and everyone was starting to hit the notorious post-lunch lethargy.

Credit for the next part goes to my girlfriend, Katy, who over lunch had suggested playing Dungeons & Dragons as a way to spark creativity, using Deborah Ann Woll's example as inspiration.

"OK everyone, we're going to play Dungeons & Dragons as an icebreaker. Each of you has a sword and a bow. You're in a forest at night – it's a clear night and moonlight is filtering through the leaves and branches. In the distance, you hear the snap of a branch. What do you do?"

I got everyone to roll a d20 (which Google helpfully has built-in) to figure out who should go first, and when they asked questions they rolled again to see what they could find out. Everything had a DC of 10 – if they rolled a 10 or higher they succeeded. I threw in a few things to help them such as a tactically placed Potion of Animal Speaking (ignoring that it only exists in Baldur's Gate, not DnD). Interestingly the team tried to push one of them forward to investigate, which led to a bit of friendly banter, and laughter and helped them to relax.

It was also interesting to see how they interacted with each other as a team. "Martin* charges forward with his sword" isn't doable if you're not Martin – you have to respect everyone's autonomy.

The whole session lasted no more than 30 minutes (a little rushed so we didn't spend the whole afternoon playing), with the team successfully negotiating their way past an owlbear. They've asked to play more, so I'm going to start setting them up with characters and introducing some of the mathematics of it.

If you're ever stuck for a way to break through the awkward silence of a meeting where you need everyone to contribute, I'd recommend giving it a go. It leans on collaborative storytelling as being the core of DnD and gets everyone to interact with something completely unrelated to their day-to-day jobs whilst building up their ability to work together. There is of course a health warning that the game isn't for everyone, so you've got to be careful not to go so deep as to accidentally exclude some people.

Nevertheless, I'm really curious as to whether there are other techniques which lean on collaborative storytelling. We'll continue to experiment with Dungeons & Dragons on the team and see where it takes us.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent!