Dungeons & Dragons as a great form of socialising through COVID-19

Despite being autistic and rather introverted I have found myself rather lonely through this pandemic, due to having to be locked away without much other social interactions apart from my partner. Don't get me wrong, my partners great, and I love them to bits, but life is all about balance. For a sustainable and healthy life you need a good balance between family, friends and your own personal space. For each person the amount required, of each of those aspects, can vary greatly. Personally, I get a lot of my energy from my alone time, about 70% in fact. Then a good 15% from each of the other categories. However, those requirements aren't being met thanks to good ol' COVID. However, I've found a loop hole. The magic of online gaming is honestly changing my life. And the gaming makes the conversations easier as, if you ever struggle to find something to talk about, then you can just discuss the game itself. Genius! For someone who struggles to start and keep conversations rolling, online gaming is definitely a game changer. My game of choice is Dungeons and Dragons Online and I could not recommend it more. It reminds me, somewhat of Skyrim (one of my all time favourite games). Let me briefly explain, through bullet points, the reasons as to why I'm loving D&D:

• Endless amounts of exciting storylines and quests to undertake.

• The graphics are pretty amazing, in my opinion. And there are some locations that are truly beautiful and very well designed.

• There are several different islands themed to suit players of all sorts. For example; Three-Barrel Cove is great for those who love pirates and old school ships. The Land of Barovia is perfect for people like me who love horror movies and get a thrill from being spooked. And there's many, many more different themed islands to choice from. Places with fairies, dragons, sea creatures and many, many more.

• You can create your own character with their own path and skill sets. Once the character is created and you play the game you can level up and progress on your current character path or choose one of thousands of different paths in which to progress your characters skills and strengths.

• You can be a plain old human, or spice it up by becoming an elf, a wizard, a dwarf, a goblin, a halfling, an orc and all sorts of other races if your willing to cash out. You could be anyone and anything.

• Extremely useful tutorials to understand how to play the game. In fact, there's an entire world just for newbies, with an extensive, practical tutorial set up throughout. It really helps the player adapt to the game and it's set up in such a way that it doesn't really feel like a tutorial as your going around an entire island completing quests and learning the ropes.

• You can hire hirelings which are cool NPC's which help you battle monsters and villains, as well as, purchase pets which you can keep by your side throughout the entire game (these also help fight on your behalf).

• On top of all of this, you can talk to people from all around the world. People who understand your geeky references and whom you understand their nerdy jokes. It's a great way to make friends with like minded people without the preconceived ideologies brought on by stereotypes of appearances. Saying this, I will suggest to take on full caution as you never really know these people and thus should never share anything too personal.

I hope that this short list inspires people to give D&D Online a try, through these difficult times as both a great time and a form of reaching out to other human beings. And remember that if you do decide to join the world of Dungeons & Dragons then please keep safe and have fun!