The Sidequest Tale of The Dungeon Minister
This Sidequest Tale been shared with us by The Dungeon Minister (The Dungeon Minister - YouTube), an Anglican priest and self-confessed Olde School D&D Nerd. With almost 3000 Subscribers and approaching his 300th episode, he also has managed to invent/promote/run a great RPG Convention suitably named "Clericon".
This year marks the 3rd incarnation of this event in Glen Williams, Ontario from October 24 - 26, 2025. This year's event has grown to nearly 100 participants and multiple vendors, attracting them from near & far. Attendees can expect good old-fashioned roleplaying goodness, fun and community while keeping the Convention at "just the right size" to be welcoming to all.
The Sidequest Tale of The Dungeon Minister
My Sidequest, from parish priest to YouTube sensation (hey, you'll get some sort of sensation watching me...probably annoyance or boredom, but those are sensations), began in 2021, when I started my YouTube channel.
Though, in a way, it began 1983...when I was eleven. That's the year someone, and I have long forgotten who, bought me the famous red box, the Basic Dungeons & Dragons rules as edited by Frank Mentzer. It's the B in BECMI, the best how to play intro in the history of the game and, to my mind, the most robust but simple version of D&D ever published.
Anyhow, as I'm an only child of divorce, who was moved from place to place every couple years of childhood and thus short of friends, it was an odd gift. You need a DM and players, plural, and my mother certainly wasn't going to play. (I'm classic Gen-X, complete with the extreme hands-off parents.) I played the solo games in the Player's Manual and then...well, what? I did find a group in my neighbourhood who were playing, but they were Big Kids and barely tolerated my presence for a few sessions. So mostly I looked at Elmore and Eisley's brilliant artwork, imagined fantastic worlds, and then lost interest.
Until I got to high school. With a much larger catchment, it really didn't matter where we moved in town - I was still going to be at that school, so I actually had a chance to make some close friends. On my birthday - I think my 15th or 16th - I had a sleepover party. Poorly named, as we didn't sleep. We rented a VCR (as was the custom at the time) and the movie Critters, ate too much pizza and chips, and I ran a D&D game.
Ryan played a Fighter, Zephyr. Michael was the Cleric Zeno. Charlie was Morpheus the Thief. And away we went. They enjoyed the first game and so asked for another. I furiously scribbled (silly me, thinking the dungeon had to be finished before playing) and we ran again. They enjoyed it again, so I ripped out a third. Less fun, which isn't a surprise as I was writing it at 3am, but we were hooked. This became our regular entertainment for the rest of high school.
I dabbled in university, mostly with Vampire: The Masquerade, but soon discovered that, unlike in high school, girls in college were actually interested in me. Just like in high school, the girls were NOT interested in RPGs. So the hobby dropped off once again. Eventually I sold my by then impressive collection of BECMI box sets and modules.
Fast forward 29 years, to early spring 2021. I'm now married, ordained as an Anglican priest, and the regular bedtime guy for our three boys, at the time ages 11, 8, and 6...none of whom want to go to bed. They want to stay up as long as possible, and this evening their tactic is to ask "What toys did you play with when you were my age?" After exhausting their ages they expanded, and eventually asked "What toys did you play with when you were a teen?" Well, teenagers don't really "play," I lied, pretending I'd left off Thundercats and Inhumanoids and Mask by my teens. I did play a lot of D&D, of course. "What's that?"
So I described it to them. They were fascinated. "Can we play D&D?" OK, sure. I went online that night and discovered there was a new edition of D&D, 5E...which I ignored, because you can find the BECMI books as PDFs and they're so much better. My wife was taking online courses at the time and had an exam coming up. She had to be completely alone for it, lest our 6 year old whisper answers from the other room, I guess. It was easier to just go somewhere than to try and keep them busy at the other end of the house, so we packed off to the church offices to play D&D at the parish council table.
I figured a game or two would satisfy their curiosity and it would be done. I was wrong. Four years and change later we still play. They roped their mother into the game, so it's an en famille experience (though she mostly knits and rolls dice when the boys tell her to). Their characters have developed in depth as the boys have become better and better role players. The story has become very involved and the stakes increasingly high.
And at some point I decided to start telling that story. To be honest, it was partly out of lockdown boredom - this all kicked off in 2021 - but partly also a response to what I'd seen online. When searching for the 1983 edition of D&D I saw a lot of residual anger about the Satanic Panic. It had never touched my world (even my VERY churchy grandmother was perfectly fine with fantasy, and knew how religious Tolkien and Lewis really were) but clearly others had suffered the consequences of this misplaced fear.
So with a story to tell and a point to prove - that faithful people can enjoy the game - I set up a YouTube channel, got an opening sequence from an online company, gathered a few vaguely medieval looking props as set dressing, and recorded my first video. I told the story related above, and addressed how misguided the Satanic Panic was. In subsequent videos I recapped the game as if it was a bedtime story, and occasionally tried my hand at craft projects like a dice tower. I figured a hundred or so people might watch and be entertained.
I had no idea.
For a while it was like that. Then someone who was dialed into the OSR YouTube world saw my channel and posted it to his social media. Then more people did. And more. And within a year I was cresting a thousand subscribers. I was a bit shocked, to be honest. Pleasantly shocked, but shocked.
The other surprise (though I admit I was more prepared for this one) was how many people reached out to me for spiritual guidance, advice, counselling, and prayer. Without divulging any names, I've spent Christmas Eve talking to a suicidal guy (he didn't do it), helped someone overcome addiction, guided an adult back to his faith and to confirmation in his local church, heard confessions, prayed with and for lonely gamers, helped connect a guy to pro-bono medical assistance, and been the source of levity for a number of people going through rough times.
None of this is extraordinary. None of it is beyond the normal work of a priest. What's amazing is that these folks are all around the world, from Australia to the UK and all points in between. That and the fact that they only found a priest because they went looking for D&D.
The overall feedback has been that the story my players and I are creating is engaging, and that the novelty of a priest as DM is refreshing. What I gathered from this was simple - people react to authenticity. My players are kids and their mom, not professionals looking to score big scenes. I'm not polished, nor am I an expert. I'm a bit goofy and VERY disorganized. But I'm real. Real I can manage. If I'd been phony, just pretending to like RPGs the way some clergy try to make their liturgy "relevant" (instead of timeless and, frankly, weird) I'd have been spotted immediately and gotten nowhere. Legitimate love for the game was the lingua Franca that made it possible.
And it has spilled outside of the online world. I began running a game at the Friendly Local Game Shop, in clerical collar, and there interacted with a whole other swath of people. The reactions were the same - surprised and amused by the collar, impressed that it's really me and not an act, and a chance to reach people where they are. You haven't really ministered until you've pronounced absolution to a crying 50-something guy while standing between a shelf of World of Warcraft models and a rack of WizKids D&D miniatures.
Beginning in 2023 I've also hosted an annual Old School RPG convention, named CleriCon by my fans. We're well on our way to the 2025 convention, and it has grown to twice its original size. I'm going to put the brakes on here, though. It could get too big, and I don't want that to happen. As it is, it gathers mostly 50-60 something guys, the sort of men who don't have a lot of social connections (Is the answer to the male loneliness epidemic found at CleriCon?), and creates instant community. Guys who just met Friday night are best pals by Sunday afternoon. It's beautiful to watch.
There's a lot of talk in the church right now about "mission," about going out into the world rather than expecting the world to just show up on Sunday morning. The Dungeon Minister allowed me to do that, to go where people were. It allowed me to share a common passion for the game, while also explicitly representing the passion of Christ. Viewed in dozens of countries, by thousands of people, closing in on 32,000 hours of watch time, I've gone further and touched more people as the Dungeon Minister than as a parish priest.
To think it began at a time when we weren't allowed to go anywhere or see anyone. Funny old world.
If you want to see what I'm banging on about, check out my channel.
You can find out more about The Dungeon Minister:
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