D&D Is the Greatest Gift I Have Ever Received for My Creativity

When I went to Molliefest 2025, a weeklong retreat in the Gaeltacht with my Irish class, the question on everybody’s mind was: “Why are you learning Irish?” And everyone had a different answer. Some people were American retirees whose families had immigrated to the U.S., and they wanted to reconnect with those roots. Some were polyglots that wanted a challenge. Some were Irish people that had learned in school, but for various reasons hadn’t kept up with the skill. When it would come time for me to answer this question, I burned up with mortification because the long answer would have me monopolizing a conversation for longer than I liked, and the short answer made me cringe: Dungeons and Dragons.

I’ve written before about how I believe that the creative path I’m on has been in motion for some time, guided by Brigid’s gentle hand when I picked up a book about the poetic form of the caoineadh. Let’s rewind to a time before that, before COVID, before I had a partner and two cats and a long-haired daschund, before the work burnout, but definitely in the middle of creative and personal crisis.

I was three years out of my BFA, I moved from the big city of New York to Texas following a humiliating breakup and chasing dreams of a job at Rooster Teeth, an internet entertainment company based in Austin. I met my now-partner a couple of years later on a dating app, and we hit it off immediately. We both loved cosplay, video games, and any other nerdy thing you can think of. She invited me to her Dungeons and Dragons group game, where I was introduced to a cast of characters that changed my life, and I mean the players themselves and the people they were playing as.

The group wanted a ranger to replace one that they just lost and because I had never done this before, I built a character based off of a favorite of mine from an anime (Black Butler. It was Black Butler, OK?). I always loved Monica Rial’s portrayal of Meyrin in the English dub of the show with her dual personas that even came down to changing the range of her speaking voice. So that’s what I ran with.

Maylene became a character all her own totally divorced from her original inspiration within the course of our time playing. I was obsessed with her arc: What decisions would I make this week that would affect her trajectory? Would she and her friends make it out of one more scrap as they ferreted out sources of evil in their world? Would she ever reconnect with the child that she gave up? Did her friends understand her the way she always yearned to be understood within her elven home?

That game, and the people I played with, gave me a lot. Even when I didn’t handle it as gracefully as I might now, it was at that table I began to feel not so out of place as I had throughout my life. It was there that I got the initial spark to write again after years of feeling like I’d wasted my college years in a program that cared more about beating the craft of writing into me more than it cared about what kind of work I could make.

I have been in many games since then, mostly run by my partner who, in my opinion, could be a Brennan Lee Mulligan, or a Matt Mercer, or an Aabria Iyengar with the way she crafts a campaign. My current D&D group has a running list of potential games, who could be the Game Master for any particular one, what system they would be, etc. One such game that my wife has been trying to get off the ground is one set in the Black Butler universe (as an homage to my love for the series). For those of you who don’t know that means a Victorian setting; angels, demons, and grim reapers; and political intrigue.

This game is called Fin de Siècle (end of the century), and it takes place in the Belle Époque of France rather than in the Victorian era of England. But, Sam, what does that have to do with Irish? For some reason, I just could never think of a character concept for this game. And amid all the many games that were in rotation, it just didn’t coalesce until the last couple of years. I knew I wanted to be a maid or a budding cabaret girl at the Moulin Rouge, but nothing else was coming to me. I did some cursory research on how households would’ve been arranged in France at the time, knocked around being a German governess or something because apparently those were very common.

Then it came to me: She’s going to be an Irish maid, and I want her last name to be Kelly in honor of my journalism and writing mentor Sean Kelly, a Canadian whose family had come from Ireland. So of course, that sends me down a research rabbit hole of the Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger) and the Penal Laws. I determine that it’s important this woman speaks Irish. Then, I’m hitting hyperlinks about a group of women known as the Wrens of the Curragh. Bhí mé like this is her!

And I thought, oh it would be great fun to use a cúpla focal when we play. My algorithm quickly became commandeered by Gaeltok/Gaelstagram, where I found my teacher Mollie Guidera, the woman behind Irish With Mollie. I watched clips from so many creators about the most unique traits of the Irish language—no verb “to have,” every language is feminine except Béarla (English), the way phrases aren’t so straight forward as saying “I love you” or “Thank you.” All of this in a context of colonialism and survival. Next thing I know I’m putting my credit card number in for a beginner’s course and the rest is history. I simply just fell in love with the language and its importance. And it made me understand more fully how my languages and culture as a white American descending from poor Polish and Swedish immigrants have been assimilated over time.

Anyone that knows me personally understands that I go through phases of hyperfixation. I’ve learned that most artists do. They have to in order to create. And this is mine. I can’t explain how these decisions were not so much conscious as they were a wild Atlantic current pulling me out to sea. What began as a guiding nudge was becoming more urgent—Brigid and ancestors jerking me up by the wrist as if to say, “Alright we’ve waited long enough. Scríobh anois!”

And so, along with an American discovering his family's inheritance is much more than money, a Welsh mechanic in disguise, a grim reaper on a mission from the Indian Reaper Division, an undead Polish resistance fighter-turned-vengeful-art-dealer, Clare was born to a game that speaks across borders and time. Where a colonial boom is taking place across the world on the behalf of war-making powers, and where resistance is rising by the numerous peoples being occupied, I knew I had to create this woman not from nothing, but from truth—the truth spoken by women everywhere today and time immemorial, but especially that of Irish women outcast by society, who would rather live among the gorse and the British soldiers at their army camp than be subjugated in other brutal ways.

Beyond a D&D game, I know there is a story I want to tell: one about a woman, far away from home, pulled by an invisible string to some personal adventure; that speaks Irish because her mother refused to let it die with her. A woman whose world is very small, but survival is imperative when colonial powers seek to take everything from everyone. I wonder what kind of power and identity of self she can wrest from those that would keep her, and people like her, a simple maid that assimilates into a new life. Like Maylene, I wonder what choices I will make that will change her course forever.

With the slew of holidays this season, I know I am dragging ass when it comes to your oracle. If you did not see last week's oracle on Instagram, here it is. In the future, these may get their own newsletter on the essay off-weeks.

Did you know that one of the Goddess Brigid’s aspects is inspiration? This was one of the first parts of her I became intimately acquainted with as a writer. After a decade of creative burnout, she found me, and I have never been more creatively energized.

I’ve spent the year writing poetry, working on bits of a novel, learning embroidery, and making my own devotional candles. All of this I dedicate in Brigid’s name. Perhaps it’s time for you to begin a new creative endeavor, or even pick up an old one long neglected, for nobody but yourself. The act of creation is divine and so are you.

Or maybe it’s your job to inspire others the way Brigid does – inspire them to act, to create, to do good. This is a role that is vitally needed in these times of uncertainty and chaos. Not everyone need be a frontliner. Sometimes it is enough to act with integrity to show others it is possible. Keep this in mind this holiday season.

Creativity is everywhere, even though our capitalist society seeks to deaden it, keep us from creating anything that isn’t “marketable.” We all need to eat, that’s fair, but we also need to nourish our creative spirits. As Julia Cameron would say, our creativity is a child and it has to be cared for as such.

• If you haven't heard, I will be going to the University of Galway for their International Summer Program in Irish Studies. Tá sceitimíní orm! As I still am looking for more consistent work, please consider sending this newsletter to people you think would enjoy it, or consider upping your subscription. I am also available for freelance editing work. Check out my rates below:

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