On May 2, Minneapolis Brewery Brühaven reported an unexpected theft. "This guy thought he was going to score a whole bunch of tools", the brewery said on Facebook. "Instead, he gets maps, mini figures, table cloths, and supplies."
These tools belong to D&D community Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks. Founder Renee Devereux says on GoFundMe that the theft represents "thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work" - and has devastated the group.
The thief apparently "stole practically everything we own". "Over 500 hand-laminated character sheets. Every Game Master binder. Every token, every sticker, every piece of material that makes our adventures run."
"I have been feeling wave after wave of grief", Devereux says. "Not because of the cost of what was taken. But because I watched our volunteers sit around tables laminating and binding those sheets." "They gave their time, their care, their Saturday afternoons to make sure a stranger walking into their first D&D night would have something beautiful to hold." "None of that can be replaced by a receipt", Devereux adds.
The GoFundMe page, however, offers a glimmer of hope for Dragons, Dungeons, & Drinks. It was launched on May 4 to recoup some of the group's losses, and in less than an hour, it had raised over $1,500 - enough to replace everything that was stolen.
As of May 7, the GoFundMe has raised $6,390. Devereux says on the crowdfunding page that the additional funds will be used for "commissioning new art", "experimenting with upgraded tokens", and "building a backup stockpile so a future incident doesn't put us back at zero".
If DD&D can reach its $10,000 funding goal, the group plans to publish its backlog of one-shot adventures as a campaign book. Plus, the money will be used as seed funding for the launch of a Boston branch. This national expansion was already in the works before the theft, but "your support means we do not have to choose between recovering from what was taken and building toward what comes next."
Dragons, Dungeons, & Drinks was founded in 2023. Devereux, a relationship therapist, says the group was founded "because I believed Dungeons & Dragons could be a cure for adult loneliness". As the group approaches its three-year anniversary, DD&D has over 2,500 members playing games under 150+ DMs.
In a YouTube video, Devereux says the theft "reminded me that the thing we've been building is way more than character sheets and tokens". "I have never felt more supported, held, and frankly loved than in this moment." "My heart aches because they took everything, but it soars because I still have all of you."
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