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Last night's D&D-themed episode of Community was excellent, in your humble host's opinion. It doesn't quite beat out the final episode of Freaks and Geeks for best gaming-themed episode ever, but I would call it a close second.

In it, students at a community college team up to help get one of their group out of his emotional funk by playing a game of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with him. There are a few jabs at the geekiness of the game, but nothing unfair or out of line, and everyone in the group ends up getting into their roles and generally enjoying themselves. A lot of the humor was based around inexperienced players trying to get a grip on the rules of the game (such as the title of this post, uttered by one of them as he tried to find something on his character sheet to defend himself from a horde of goblins).

Sure, there were inaccuracies. For some reason, only the DM was allowed to use the dice, and unless my bad eyes were deceiving me, he rolled the d12 for most everything. Likewise, there was a "seduction scene" when the party had to convince an elven princess to let them borrow her pegasus (for some reason, non-gamers always want to inject the other type of popular "role-playing" into the hobby). But other than these, the episode gave a pretty clear picture of how the game is played, showed a diverse group of people enjoying themselves with it, and even used it as a vehicle to help one of their friends with a problem.

Not unlike the aforementioned Freaks and Geeks episode, this one ends with the suggestion that they play again someday, which is the best way to wrap it up, I say.

Did you miss it, or want to see it again? Watch it here on nbc.com!

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