Individual Entry: Adults playing D&D
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February 01, 2008

Games : Adults playing D&D

For reasons I'll not go into here, I was asked to write an essay in defense of adults playing Dungeons and Dragons. Since I liked the result (and since I find myself using this blog as a repository of any non-fiction writing I do), I decided to post it here.

BTW – for my perspective on Christians playing D&D, see this previous post on the subject.

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First, it needs to be acknowledged that “playing Dungeons and Dragons” in not a uniform experience. Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a very flexible set of rules to play a game where much of the game experience comes from the players themselves. Therefore there is great variety in what “playing Dungeons and Dragons” means for different groups. This is in fact no different from the experience playing other kinds of games. Consider card games: One group might meet to play cards where the card game itself is secondary to the purely social aspects of the gathering (talking, eating, and drinking). The next day, one might even remember who won since winning was secondary to the purpose of playing. A different group might take the card game very serious where each player is entirely focused on winning. One can not therefore discern a great deal about the experience simply from an observation that “they played cards”. The same is also true of D&D: Some groups (often those involving juveniles) play the game in a rather “juvenile” way. Others use the game as an excuse of social gathering where the game itself is secondary. Many groups of adults meet to play D&D as an exercise in interactive story telling.

Interactive story telling can be difficult to explain to someone who has not participated in such a group. Each player comes to the meeting with a character whose story they want to tell. One of the players - the “game master” (or “dungeon master” when playing D&D) - comes with a setting some key plot elements that provide the context in which the character’s stories can be told. They all then cooperate with each other to try and tell a “good story” while at the same time competing with each other to make their character “the hero” (or sometimes “the villain”) of the story. To make this exercise fair for all players, some rules are needed to constrain what a player can claim their character does (you can’t just claim your character does 10 impossible things and immediately saves the day) and over the years the various version of D&D have proven to be very useful at providing those necessary boundaries for the creation of interesting stories.

This is perhaps not a surprise since Dungeons and Dragons itself was originally inspired by Tolkein’s classic “Lord of the Rings” books and the desire of the game’s developers to recreate such adventures on their table-top. Fantasy is a natural genre for such interactive story telling because of the volume of heroic fantasy literature draw on and because the existence of magic and monsters within fantasy provides more flexibility in the directions a story can go over trying to do this within a purely natural setting

In my own experience, it is this interest in interactive story telling that tends to attract adults to play D&D. They are looking for an outlet that is both creative and social, and playing D&D provides opportunities for both.

Playing D&D can be a profoundly creative experience – creating a character, considering how that character would responds to the situations presented in the game, trying to understand how a character like that would think and feel. Some groups include in this creativity actually “acting” the role of the character (speaking "in character", using accents, etc.) while other groups only have players describe their character's actions. Many players use this to explore what life might be like for someone who is different from themselves (a different gender, handicapped, from a different culture) – the process of character creation allows them to put themselves in another’s shoes for a time.

This creativity does not however end with the creation and portrayal of a character - it is also necessary to work with the other players to try and tell a “good story”. A player’s contributions must both contribute to their own character’s individual story and also to the larger story in which everyone else’s character is a part. A good interactive story teller playing D&D will make sure their character behaves in a way appropriate for their character but also that they act in a way that leaves opening for other characters to react and interact in ways that improve the overall story. This is what makes the experience different from simply sitting down to write a book (although many D&D players have gone on to become authors as well) – one must work with the other players to create an enjoyable overall experience. Those interactions provide a social context in which many long-lasting friendships have been built.

This kind of play, using the D&D rules, is not uncommon among adults who play the game. Some started playing as children and their play style matured as they matured. Others did not start playing until they were adults. The increasing numbers of adults playing D&D this way can be seen in the influence they have had on the revisions between the various versions of D&D (the current version of the rules is 3.5 with version 4.0 due out this summer). Each new version has substantially increased the flexibility in character creation and interaction while simplifying the more action-oriented aspects of the game that have traditionally appealed to younger players. The developers of the game would not have done this if there had not been a demand for it. These days, juveniles are far more likely to be interested in playing “Magic the Gathering” and similar collectable card games than playing D&D.

So while one can play D&D in a fairly "childish" manner, one can also play in ways that mostly adults would contribute and enjoy.

Posted by Steven at February 1, 2008 05:00 AM