{"id":641,"date":"2019-12-12T19:01:22","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T00:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/?p=641"},"modified":"2019-12-12T19:01:22","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T00:01:22","slug":"she-kills-monsters-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/2019\/12\/she-kills-monsters-review\/","title":{"rendered":"She Kills Monsters Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Me outside the box office and my ticket and program from the event.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

She Kills Monsters <\/em>is a play by Qui Nguyen and was directed by Bridget Leak at Miami University. The play centers on the character Agnes after her whole family dies in a terrible car accident. After the accident Agnes is plagued by her idea that she never really got to learn about her younger sister Tilly. Tilly and Agnes were polar opposites, Agnes was the girl that was into boys and music while Tilly was more into nerdy things such as robotics and the popular game Dungeons and Dragons. Agnes, distraught by the notion that she never really bonded with her sister stumbles upon one of Tilly\u2019s Dungeon and Dragon\u2019s campaigns and decides to seek help from Chuck, a local nerd, in order to play the campaign. Throughout the campaign she begins to learn new things about her sister and about herself. I will be focusing on leadership and gaming in Dungeons and Dragons for the remainder of my review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            An important note is\nthat Agnes talks to Tilly throughout the play as though she is alive so please bear\nwith me changing my tenses while writing this review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Dungeons and Dragons is\na game where anyone can be anything they want to be! If you want to be a badass\nbarbarian that uses brute strength to conquer his enemies, you can make and\nplay as that character. If you would rather use your wit and magic to aid you\non your journey, there is a character for you. This means that players can\nexplore aspects of themselves that they can only dream about and this gives\nplayers a small sliver of wish fulfillment that they cannot experience in real\nlife. For example, Tilly is gay so in her campaign she gets the girl, Lily,\nthat she has a crush on. Other than wish fulfillment, Dungeons and Dragons\ngives players a chance to develop their personal leadership skills as they will\noften work within a party or group to play through their campaign. They will\nhave to utilize different leadership skills such as strong communication,\ndemocratic leadership, and affiliative leadership in order for their party to be\nvictorious in the campaign and have fun along the way. Dungeons and Dragons is\nalso a role-playing game and players need to be involved in the story in order\nfor their group to get the most out of the game. This means that players need\nto put aside personal issues like the idea that they may feel silly\nrole-playing in order for everyone to enjoy the game session. This is a great\nexample of leadership as players put the needs of the group above the needs or\nwants of themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In the beginning of the\ncampaign, Agnes is very sarcastic and kind of off putting to her group. She is\ngiven the name \u201cAgnes the ass-hatted\u201d as a result of her attitude. This\ndestroys the game for some members of her party and quickly realizes that for\nher whole group to have fun in the campaign it is better if she gets more into\nthe game rather that just judging everything in it. She makes this transition\nvery slowly over the course of the play but by the end she is very into the\nconcept of Dungeons and Dragons and admits to her sister that she had fun while\nplaying. This shows her development as a leader in the fact that leaders often\nneed to work well and consider group dynamics when working for, or in, a group\nsetting. Sometimes you need to put aside your own personal opinions for your\ngroup to be effective. If people feel judged by another member or the leader in\ntheir group it can cause them to contribute less or feel like they can\u2019t\ncontribute without judgement. Agnes finally develops this leadership skill and\nher group bonds quickly as a result. This is an example of affiliative\nleadership, as she caused the group to bond as she promoted harmony within the\ngroup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The major part of the\nplay that troubled Agnes was finding out that her sister was a lesbian. An\nexchange happened between Tilly and Agnes where Tilly says that her sister\nshouldn\u2019t care if she is lesbian because she is still herself. Agnes responds\nby saying that this is something that she should have known about her sister.\nShe was more shocked that she didn\u2019t know her sister even more than she previously\nrealized and focused more on that than being present in the moment. This caused\nher to upset Tilly. This happens quite a lot in the lgbtq+ community as family\nmembers often take personal responsibility, saying things such as \u201cyou\u2019re not\ngay, I would know if you were gay\u201d or \u201chow could I not see this coming\u201d and\nmany other responses. This puts the person that just came out in an awkward position\nwhere they now have to try and comfort themselves, their family members, and\ndefend the fact that they are actually gay and that it is okay, all at the same\ntime. In situations like these it is important for people to take a step back\nand realize that it is not about them. Coming out to someone takes tremendous\ncourage and is often a very challenging decision, if the interaction does not go\nas planned it can cause the member of the lgbtq+ community to feel like it is\nsomehow their fault and can cause them to internalize feelings of hatred\ntowards themselves. After this interaction Agnes meets Lily, the girl Tilly had\na crush on while she was alive. After talking to Lily Agnes realizes that being\nlesbian does not change who Tilly was but does mean that she had to deal with a\nlot of challenges that Agnes didn\u2019t previously realize. After this, Agnes\napologizes to Tilly taking responsibility for the way she acted and telling her\nthat she is sorry that she couldn\u2019t be there for her while she was alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Democratic leadership\nis also practiced in Dungeons and Dragons. Agnes and her party had to defeat a\nnumber of bosses by working together. Democratic leadership means that every member\nshares the power when making decisions. This can be shown to be important for\nwhen the group fought their first boss, a fairy in the forest. All the members\nof the group opted to charge the boss one-by-one and take a very\nindividualistic approach when fighting the boss. It quickly becomes apparent\nthat they need to work together and come up with a common plan of attack and\ngoal in order to be successful through their campaign. As the group worked more\nand more as a unit Agnes\u2019s skills in democratic leadership grew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Overall, I loved the play! I didn\u2019t think I was going to like it at all because I don\u2019t really like Dungeons and Dragons or those kinds of role-playing games. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how funny the play ended up being and caught myself laughing out loud a few times. I really like how they made some Dungeons and Dragons related jokes throughout the story and was presented in a way anyway could understand. For instance, at the end of the play Tilly tells Agnus that she isn\u2019t actually a Paladin and that she should have known because Paladin\u2019s can\u2019t cast \u201cMagic Missile\u201d but Tilly had towards the beginning of the campaign. In the end I definitely walked away with a newfound appreciation for Dungeons and Dragons, I still don\u2019t think it\u2019s for me, but I better understand what draws people towards the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~ Ryan Estep<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review She Kills Monsters is a play by Qui Nguyen and was directed by Bridget Leak at Miami University. The play centers on the character […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2789,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2789"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/tabletop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}