Mumbai-based Indrani Ganguly was 11 years old when she discovered and joined a niche role-playing community online. This international community introduced her to Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), touted to be the most common and easiest Table-Top Role-Playing Game (TTRPG). Though around since the 1970s, there has been resurgence in its popularity with shows such as The Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things. The game was designed by Americans Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974, and is strongly associated with the nerd/geek culture. Complex and rich in tasks and rules, it remains the game of only a few and is not as well-represented in the role-playing circles as characters from Marvel and the DC Comics universe.

In 2016, Samir Alam, India’s first TTRPG/D&D publisher and creator of the collaborative storytelling platform Panic Not! got into D&D after watching it on the show, The Big Bang Theory. “You need to read the books and know the rules,” says the 35-year-old. “It is a daunting task for anybody. Eventually, I came across one of the books and was fascinated. The whole structure of the game was nothing like I had assumed,” he says.