More and more Gen Zs and Millennials are hiring UK holiday homes in order to dress up together, away from the scrutiny of their parents, partners and society at large
More and more Gen Zs and Millenials are dressing up on holiday(Image: Georgia Johnson)
“It’s difficult playing at your house. You’re trying to get in the mood to slay a vampire, and then someone’s boyfriend comes in to get a snack.”
It’s a problem we’ve all had. Or at least, those of us who are among the growing number of British Dungeons and Dragons players who are swapping sunbeds in Lanzarote for a cottage in the Lake District, and trading their piña colada for a couple of D4s and an orc costume.
Driven by “cosy crime” hits such as The Traitors and Agatha Christie adaptations, one in four Brits and half of Gen Z have booked a staycation specifically to host a murder mystery, games night, or TV-themed weekend with friends or family, according to an exclusive cottages.com study.
An early adopter of this trend is young Millennial Georgia Johnson, who has just celebrated a decade of leaving the boyfriends behind in London and heading to somewhere secluded to roll dice.
“We’ve been to Valencia twice, a place in Kent, a friend’s house in Bath and up to the Lake District,” the North London DnD player explained.
For Georgia and her costume-clad pals, getting away from it all really helps to set the mood.
“One time, we knew we were going to have a fortune telling, so we put out loads of tarot cards and dice and had a candlelit session,” she explained.
“Cottages.com has spooky castles and chapels you can stay in, and a button that shows you a nearby pub. Generally, you get up, DnD, have lunch at a pub, come back, more DnD, then around midnight it can get a bit silly and hazy. At the moment, we are playing Curse of Strahd, which is modelled on Dracula. We are hoping to go to Whitby to finish the game. We want candles lit and spooky music.”
For the uninitiated, it’d be easy to overlook the ubiquity of role-playing games like DnD, or consign them to the ‘80s fad bin’ only recently revived by a starring role in Stranger Things.
In fact, they’ve been growing in popularity for years and continue to reach new peaks. 52 years after its invention, DnD has 13.7 million active players. One study suggests that interest in tabletop role-playing games has increased by roughly 85% since 2020. This purple patch extends to Nottingham-based Warhammer, which was worth £4.7bn at the end of 2024.
For many gentler souls, such games are a fantastic way of expressing oneself creatively. Among Georgia’s clan is Ben, an office worker during the week who dons a moustache and becomes “officer of the post” Derbert Clifton-Brown at the weekend.
He is joined by creative Kash, who has purchased ears specifically designed for people of colour, and Oliver, who likes to paint himself green.
Before the crew started travelling to play, Georgia’s mum walked in on them in the act. “She said she would’ve rather found us having an orgy,” the 33-year-old said.
Another great RPG lover is James Mackenzie-Thorpe. Not only has he travelled across the UK to enjoy weekend sessions with his friends, but he has also brought dozens of DnDers to a unique tourist attraction.
“My first day working at Kents Caverns I heard some colleagues talking DnD. I asked if I could play, but there was no work group. Later on, I woke up from a dream and thought I should write an adventure set in the caves. So I wrote it and played it with a group of five, in the caves. It went really well. Then another group. Then we decided to do it for the public. Now, for three years, I’ve run DnD in the cave for the general public,” James explained.
Kents Caverns are a network of prehistoric caves in Torquay, Devon, that lie beneath the hotel that inspired Fawlty Towers. James takes tours by day and hosts quests by night.
And he puts a lot of effort into it, paying for maps to be professionally painted and bringing rechargeable lanterns to light up the skull-lined caves.
“It’s been a tremendous amount of fun. You never know what you’re going to get with each group. We’ve had people travelling from Cornwall and Somerset. One group had been playing with each other online during Covid. They had never met in real life before they came and played with me in the caves. They booked an Airbnb and stayed together,” he said.
For James, the real joy of DnD comes in seeing people express themselves freely, which traveling to a cottage or heading underground can help some do.
“We have a young member who has been four or five times to play in the caves. They’re non-binary and are just starting to come to terms with that. To see everyone really take that person in hand, to really help that person come out of their shell, it makes me really proud,” he said.
