South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Everyone is playing Dungeons & Dragons
Everyone’s been playing Dungeons & Dragons without you: your co-workers, Anderson Cooper, Tiffany Haddish. More than 50 million people worldwide have “interacted” with D&D since it was created in the mid-1970s, according to its publisher.
The tabletop role-playing game became a household name when “satanic panic” began to take root in the suburbs. Since casting spells during a game could get you labeled a devil-worshipper or a nerd, Dungeons & Dragons went underground.
As a universe of dedicated players expanded steadily in the shadows, the game appeared intermittently in the pop cultural consciousness: D&D was either alluded to or mentioned by name in TV shows. Still, the general public’s impression of the game more or less remained the same: Dungeons & Dragons was for outcasts.
In the past decade, the tides of cool began to shift. Now, playing the game has become a social flex, an antidote to our more basic tendencies and cheugy proclivities.
Marisha Ray, 33, a Los Angeles voice actor and cast member of “Critical Role,” one of the best known D&D livestreams, recalled a moment several years ago when she realized “the nerd kids” had become the entertainment industry. Enter a decade of Marvel films, including four directed by the Russo brothers, who grew up playing D&D. The Duffer brothers, the creators of the hit Netflix show “Stranger Things,” were influenced by tabletop role-playing games like D&D and Magic: The Gathering.
But nothing spread the good word of D&D as effectively as the internet. Video game streaming platforms such as YouTube and Twitch showed how much fun the world of tabletop games could be. Online forums like Reddit, Discord and Twitter created digital homes for role-playing game subcultures to cross-pollinate and thrive.
Add all of that to a nearly two-year stretch when pandemic-induced isolation converged with a desperation for escapism, and there you have it: a potent spell to summon Dungeons & Dragons from the depths of our collective mother’s basement into its rightful place upstairs at the kitchen table.
Game time
This winter, I joined my first D&D game at the Brooklyn Strategist, which describes itself as a “community board game store.” My character was a Level 2 paladin orc named Atlas (after my dog) who carried a great sword, had 19 charisma points and was able to conjure divine smite. My fellow players and I partook in “Curse of Strahd,” a fifth-edition fantasy-horror adventure that, for us, began with a quest and ended on a cliffhanger, and since then I have not stopped wondering what might happen next. That’s how it keeps you coming back. A fourhour game is not uncommon. A typical D&D session takes at least three hours, and that’s just one chapter of a campaign that can last for months, if not a year.
“Play is a part of the experience of living on this planet,” said Siobhan Thompson, 37, a cast member of Dimension 20, a popular comedic D&D livestream show on DropOut and YouTube. “The other stuff is so that we get to play, as far as I’m concerned.”
A quick playbook for those who haven’t delved
into this world before: Players announce their characters, along with their characters’ classes, levels and races — dwarf, elf, halfling, gnome, dragonborn. With the help of an evolving rule book, seven polyhedral dice, addition skills and flexible imaginations, players determine their characters’ backgrounds, strengths, moral alignments and traits. These identity elements factor into every decision your character makes (with rolls of specific dice, which determine the intensity and impact of the action you wish to take). The dungeon master is more an omniscient narrator than an in-game player; it’s the so-called DM who leads the players through the twisting, turning valleys of what’s to come.
New blood and new voices It’s the newer generation
of players who make D&D what it is today.
Connie Chang, a 24-yearold game master who runs “a semi-Tumblr-famous D&D meme blog,” is the GM of Transplanar, “a non-colonial, anti-Orientalist” livestreamed game consisting entirely of players who are transgender and people of color.
“I really feel like marginalized people are the vanguard of making D&D blow up again,” Chang said. “People say ‘Stranger Things,’ but I’m like, ‘Nah, it’s the queer community.’ ”
“Within the community, it’s the Black folks, right?” Chang continued. “It’s the Asian folks. It’s the Indigenous folks. It’s the people of color who are really bringing cool, innovative, fresh, much-needed new blood and air and perspectives and voices and ways of GMing.”
Dungeons & Dragons
recently outlined several diversity, equity and inclusion goals. A June 2020 blog post by Wizards of the Coast, the game’s parent company, acknowledged that “some of the peoples in the game — orcs and drow being two of the prime examples — have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated.”
A list of course corrections followed: The company changed “racially insensitive” text in recent reprintings of “Tomb of Annihilation” and “Curse of Strahd,” two D&D books that players use to run campaigns. The game said it was working with sensitivity readers, promised to “continue to reach out to experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots” and vowed to seek “new, diverse talent” to join its staff and pool of freelance writers and artists.
In interviews, many players described using D&D to safely explore facets of their identity, to parse the enduring existential question of all humankind: Who am I? Adult players described the feeling of finding their niches in games like D&D. They spoke of reconnecting with childhood friends over virtual D&D campaigns, of overcoming childhood speech impediments and strengthening social skills, all in the comfort of a welcoming space. They spoke of meeting significant others, making lifelong friendships, of finally finding their people.
“D&D has showcased that we are an evolved species,” said Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, 34, an actor and dungeon master in Britain. “We want shelter. We want warmth. We want companionship. We want to be fed, hydrated. There are basic human needs, and I think storytelling is one of them.”