• Tiamat lore and origin

  • Tiamat ​has a ton of lore surrounding her; she's a complex figure in D&D that appears in several editions of the game. She originated from a Mesopotamian goddess associated with primordial chaos.

• Basic D&D rules and beginner's guide

  • There is so much information out there on how to play D&D, but I don't think you can really understand it until you've been involved with a campaign. To my understanding, a DM creates a campaign or finds a campaign they'd like to lead, and recruits a party to play. They create characters or use preexisting characters to go on the quest. Each game session can last as long as the players can handle, so sometimes people play for hours at a time. The DM and players are in character the whole time, only breaking when necessary and indicating when they do so. You start off at low power and experience and have to build up to higher levels with the more campaigns you play.

• Character class information

  • There are 12 classes listed at this link, but so many more in the Player's Handbook Ben gave me (somewhere around 30 I think). You can really create any character you want and devise powers and battle moves for them however you want. The creative freedom in this game is practically endless, which is definitely part of the appeal.

  • Note that "Demon Queen" "Demon Lord" and "Dark Elf" are not official classifications

Virtual Performance

• Zoom Opera blog

  • This article is about Kamala Sankaram's endeavor to create an online opera. She shares a lot of similar fears and frustrations that I experienced through the rehearsal process and months leading up to coming back to school. She also offers incredible advice on how to create successful online performance from how to dampen excess sound to making the show accessible for your audience.​

• Boston College interview

  • BC has, admittedly, many more resources available to them than we do. Their department was all-in and completely involved in the production of their online performance. This is a very different situation than we have at UMW, where our production is entirely student led. They can utilize the department's facilities (green screens, film equipment), while we're working with laptop cameras and our personal wardrobes. Considering the difference in our resources, I think we're doing something incredibly ambitious and difficult. We're doing it, though, and we're doing it to the best of our ability. Jorgenson is right, this semester really is an experiment for theatre departments across the US.

Qui Nguyen