Boccob's Blessed Blog

Everyone knows that all great D&D adventures take place in a tavern. Well, the Drinks and Dragons crew take that literally. Today we sit down with the group’s founder, Don Caraco.

Drinks and Dragons Interview

What can you tell my reader (Hi mom!) about Drinks and Dragons?
Well, first I would like to also say hi to your mom. I am Don Caraco and in 2016 I founded a community-based group called Drinks and Dragons an open RPG gaming night for adults to have a safe place to meet other gamers, teach new players the joy of TTRPGs, and possibly start their own games. Designed with the idea that as it grew I might be able to start letting others that are a part of the local community start to be more involved and start taking a larger part of the gaming community here in Philly. We started thanks to the generosity of the American Sardine Bar letting us use the upstairs for free. With food and drinks onsite all we needed was a few DM/GMs and the players, and boy did we get players. Our first gaming night must have had over 35 players and we packed the joint. From there it just kept growing. We have just started our fourth open gaming night here in Philadelphia PA and are already looking for the 5th venue to game at.

Where can people learn more about Drinks and Dragons?
If you are looking for more info on our open gaming nights you can find us on Facebook @drinksdragonsPHL, I am also on Twitter @DM_Don_C., along with several of our community have started a discord chat, and an Instagram account, all searchable.

Is my parole officer out to get me or am I being paranoid?
Well, I haven’t heard anything yet. But one of my old friends made the mistake of friending his PO on Facebook and ended up getting arrested and sent back to jail because he announced that he was doing a DJ gig out of state. That of course was a violation. My advice, don’t friend your PO on social media kids.

How many tables (separate game groups) do you run each Tuesday?
So the four current Drinks and Dragons events are the first Monday of every month at Wahoos tacos and more, at least 5 tables with room to grow plus some outside seating when the weather is nice. So far is our only handicapped accessible location. We run the second Thursday of every month at the Black Cat Tavern on 12th, normally 4 large tables with room for more. The third Wednesday of every month our flagship location at the American Sardine Bar, we have had 6 tables max and I believe the most players we have hosted has been around 45 to 50. The newest event is the 4th Monday of every month at Bourbon and Branch, it is a slightly smaller space but still up to 5 tables there.

What’s the wildest thing that has happened at a Drinks game night?
So far I would have to say it’s been pretty tame at our gaming nights. On occasion, you get a table yelling natural 20!!! Or NOOoooo! One of my game nights an Oni charmed my tables’ monk and he beat the Druid to perma death. Not so wild, but messed up. At some of the tables we set out a shot of cheap booze called the Quaff, if you hit a bad roll you can take it and reroll but you have to replace the shot once you do with whatever shot the player wants to buy. In one game a player of mine drank 4 Quaffs back to back. Not sure if that is wild and crazy. But I don’t make it to all the game nights due to dad life. So one never knows, what happens at drinks and dragons stays at drinks and dragons. Minus all the pictures that I post.

Any chance Drinks will start popping up in other cities/states?
We have definitely talked about it. For some time it looked like we had an in in Texas, Delaware, New Jersey, and Virginia Beach. But they have all seemed to drop off, hope that means they just started their own thing. I think it would be cool to write a short how-to book, buy the domain name along with the copyright, and then start a franchise. But I fear that as cool as that sounds I am not sure it would be worth the money and time, but that isn’t to say that drinks and dragons isn’t coming to a city near you. The most important part for me is that ppl get the chance to experience positive ttrpg gaming, learn how to play well with each other, hopefully, start running their own games, bust off the imaginations that the world tends to stomp out of us as adults, and get back to face to face storytelling.

This entry was posted on October 10, 2018 at 12:00 pm and is filed under D&D 5e, D&D Fifth Edition, Dungeons and Dragons, Interview with tags American sardine bar, black cat tavern on 12th, Drinks and Dragons, Drinks and Dragons Philly, Wahoos tacos and more. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.