Camping as Your Dungeons & Dragons Character

My level 6 cleric has all of the right equipment for the job, but I doubt my spells will work as well. There are some limitations to making Dungeons & Dragons real. Nonetheless, with the help of a friend, Tony Ho Tran went camping as Zaddy, his halfling bard character. Tran's first task was to acquire all of the items on Zaddy's inventory:

In his Explorer’s Pack, according to the D&D player’s manual, Zaddy carries the following:

A backpack

A bedroll

A mess kit

A tinderbox

Ten torches

Ten days’ worth of rations

A waterskin

50 feet of hempen rope

I already had some of these things: a backpack, a bedroll, and a wineskin I got as a souvenir from a trip to Spain. Through the magic of fate (read: Facebook Marketplace), I acquired a Boy Scouts mess kit, a survival tinderbox, and 50 feet of cotton rope. I also created ten torches by combining free paint stirrers from Home Depot with a few ripped-up T-shirts.

Once Tran and his friend and companion, Tanner, set up a crude survival shelter, they walked about the campground seeking out quests:

Once finished, I donned my equipment and we set out. In D&D, players accept quests given by NPCs (non-playable characters). I figured we could do the same by soliciting quests from strangers in the park.

To our surprise, folks didn’t immediately call the cops on us when we approached. In fact, we ended up completing quests and getting rewards like real D&D characters. Our quest-givers included:

A group of students from the University of Iowa. Their quest: for us to drink a shooter of Fireball. Their reward: two hard seltzers.

A lovely older couple traveling around the Midwest. Their quest: for me to play them a song on the ukulele. Their reward: a handful of Dove dark chocolates.

A young couple with excitable dogs. Their quest: for me to play them a song on my ukulele (I was afraid everyone else would want this, too, but luckily they didn’t). Their reward: a can of light beer.

It was an experience of a lifetime, but, unfortunately, did not result in enough experience points to result in leveling up.