The chittering cries of goblins echo around the four heroes. Ten – no, twelve – beasts. They are surrounded and outnumbered. The tomb smells of dampness and death, ancient stone, and moldering bone. Then a new smell assaults their senses: blood and fur. From the shadows lumbers a bugbear, a seven-foot-tall monstrosity with coarse fur and gruesome tusks. A whimper comes from the corner – the missing blacksmith’s daughter that the heroes have come to save, caged and terrified but miraculously alive. The bugbear raises its rusted mace and points at the heroes. “Surrender,” it snarls, “or die.”
You and your friends look at each other from around the table. What do you do?
This is the question that everyone faces when they play Dungeons & Dragons. Perhaps you manage to kill the monsters and rescue the girl. Or, you fail, and she dies. Maybe a rich character bribes the monsters, or a clever one convinces them that they’re surrounded and should “surrender or die.” Perhaps one of your friends sacrifices her character so that you can escape. The choice you make, and whether or not you’re successful, becomes a permanent part of your story.
The next time you meet up with your friends for drinks or dinner, you’ll reminisce about the time a poor stealth roll nearly got everyone killed. Or the time that the clever (and unexpected) use of a mirror led to some serious ass-kicking. Your story stays with you. It lives with you, and you add to it every time you sit down to play. You should be playing Dungeons & Dragons.
The Game
Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D, has been around since 1974, but in the age of social media and online gaming, it feels rebellious. Turn off your phone, pour a drink, and sit around the table with your friends as you explore dark dungeons, capricious cities, and forgotten forests. The closest analogue is playing a board game or open-world video game, but neither captures to the magic of Dungeons & Dragons. Unlike most board games, D&D is not a competition among the players – this is not a friendship-ruining evening of Monopoly or Settlers of Catan. Rather, you work together to overcome obstacles, solve mysteries, and defeat the bad guys.
Also, unlike most board games – indeed, different from nearly every other kind of game – is that the only limit to surmounting those obstacles is your imagination. The rules of D&D provide structure for interacting with the world and determining the range of success and failure, but they do not control the choices you can make. For many people, this freedom can be uncomfortable at first. Video games and board games only present you with predetermined choices, and neither can prepare you for the nothingness that hangs in the air after being asked “What do you do?”
Resurgence
The game has seen a huge resurgence in recent years. Sales have grown by double digits each year for the last five years, and 2018 was its best year ever (I haven’t found any numbers or commentary that include 2019 yet). This phoenix-like return is the result of a perfect storm.
Geek culture (a term I dislike) has become ascendant in recent years, to the degree that it has become of the dominant form of entertainment. What started in the early 2000s with X-Men, Lord of the Rings, and Spider-Man only accelerated with properties like Game of Thrones and the Marvel universe. Dungeons & Dragons also features prominently in Stranger Things. The monsters get their names from prominent D&D monsters, the main characters play D&D, and even the “party composition” of the main characters is directly influenced by the game.
There’s also the advent of platforms like Twitch, which have enabled live streaming shows of people playing Dungeons & Dragons. Being able to watch the game in action has hooked even more people and has given them confidence to play when perhaps they otherwise wouldn’t have. It doesn’t hurt that many of the most popular streaming shows are played by professional actors, so the quality of the games are topnotch.
Finally, a new edition (5th) of D&D was released in September 2014. This edition vastly simplified the rules and put the focus on storytelling rather than tracking the number of arrows in your quiver, which has made it more accessible to a wider audience. In the same vein, Wizards of the Coast (D&D’s publisher) has also made a concerted effort to make the game more diverse – both in representation and in actual players – and today an estimated 38% of all players are women. That’s a huge improvement from the early days when women made up a low single-digit percentage of players.
To see a concrete example of D&D’s recent success, look no further than Critical Role, the reigning colossus of D&D live shows. The players are a group of real-life friends and professional voice actors, and the weekly show attracts an average of 500,000 viewers. Early in 2019, they launched a Kickstarter to turn their first campaign into an animated show, with a target of $750,000. They raised more than $11 million, making it the sixth-largest Kickstarter ever, and the distribution rights were picked up by Amazon.
Nuts & Bolts
So, how exactly do you play Dungeons & Dragons? As a regular player, you first choose a class and race. This can be a fantasy stereotype (e.g., elf ranger, dwarf warrior) or you can turn a trope on its head (e.g., gnome barbarian, goliath rogue). This will determine your strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. You also choose a background for your character, what they were before becoming an adventurer, which adds both flavor and some useful social skills.
Besides you and the other players, there is another person at the table: the Dungeon Master, or DM. The DM is equal parts narrator, bad guy, and referee. They describe the world around you, move you from scene to scene, and act as any non-player characters that you interact with. They also play as the bad guys during combat encounters and arbitrate on rule-related questions. The DM has a big job, but the game doesn’t belong to them; they narrate the story as it unfolds based on the players’ choices.
When the success or failure of an action needs to be determined, a 20-sided dice is rolled. The higher the roll, the more likely you are to succeed, but the number “required” to succeed will change depending on the situation. Perhaps your elf ranger is trying to convince a dwarf blacksmith to give her a free sword. What you may not know is that this particular dwarf is prejudiced against elves, so the number required to succeed might be 19 or 20 – a difficult feat.
More importantly, the outcomes are rarely binary. Perhaps you rolled an 18 – the dwarf refuses to give you a free sword, but your honeyed words convince him to give you a discount. Or maybe you rolled a 1 – a critical failure. He throws you out of his shop and refuses to see you again. Now what if that blacksmith was the only one within a hundred miles, and you can’t complete your adventure without his help. What do you do?
Challenges
Dungeons & Dragons does require a level of commitment, but, in my experience, the hurdle is lower than people think. All you need is dice and your character sheet, and it’s easy enough to find pre-built characters online or in the official starter kit. The best way to learn is by playing.
For many, the hardest part is simply finding other people to play with. If you don’t mind strangers, local game/hobby stores often have regular games running on the weekends. A few months ago, I stopped in a local game store in suburban Chicago while visiting my parents. There were five different D&D games running, each with five to seven players. One table was full of kids that looked 11 or 12 years old. They were having a blast. It can seem intimidating or overwhelming, but most game stores are welcoming places. They’ll answer your questions, introduce you to players and DMs, and try to find a game for you.
If that isn’t an option, you can always convince family or friends to give it a try. This is how I did it, and there’s comfort in knowing that everyone else at the table is just as clueless and nervous as you. If you have an interested group but don’t all live in the same city, never fear! This is 2020. There are “virtual tabletop” websites that incorporate audio and visual chat. This includes Roll20 (free), and Fantasy Grounds and D20PRO (both have a cost). The hardest part is convincing someone to be the DM.
Benefits
You should be playing Dungeons & Dragons, and I mean it. The game is fun in a way that no other board game or video game can replicate. But if you still need convincing, here are a few more benefits.
Community: The game requires face-to-face time with the other players, and it isn’t competitive within the group. It rewards you for working as a team, learning about each other, and playing to the strengths and weaknesses of each character. You’ll bond over those experiences with your fellow players. The game can build real friendships that last for years, which is a powerful thing in the current age of superficial social media and disposable relationships.
Creative Thinking: To quote Ethan Gilsdorf, “role-playing teaches innovation.” When the DM asks, “What do you do?”, there is no list of pre-approved answers. This isn’t a multiple-choice test. In some cases, the answer will be obvious – I attack with my axe! – but most of the time you’ll be required to flex your imagination. There isn’t a manual. This is maybe the most difficult skill to learn, especially for anyone who hasn’t spent much time thinking on their feet, but it also perfectly replicates real life. Creative thinking is a muscle, and the more it gets worked in a fantasy game, then the more effective it will be out in the real world.
Brain Health: Dungeons & Dragons involves math, spatial reasoning, and memory recall, among many other skills. Various studies have found that when schoolchildren regularly played D&D, their academic scores and behavior improved. As one article put it, “…storytelling, decision making, invention, research, calculations, negotiation, role-play, and active spatial visualization can stimulate a developing intellect.” The game is also being incorporated into therapy for soldiers with PTSD, and to help people on the autism spectrum develop their communication and social skills.
The four heroes look at each other. They aren't going to back down now, not this close to rescuing the girl. They know what must be done. The dwarf paladin nods to her friends, then rushes the menacing bugbear. Divine energy radiates from her hammer as it smashes into the creature’s face, shattering bone. The dazed bugbear doesn’t hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet, but it feels the halfling rogue’s dagger slide between its ribs. The brutish beast, so threatening just moments before, crashes to the ground, dead. The two heroes sprint to the cage that holds the crying girl, where they join the perimeter already set by their friends, a human wizard and half-orc druid. The four heroes stand shoulder-to-shoulder and face the remaining goblins. Shaken by the loss of their chieftain, the creatures still hunger for blood. They charge the heroes, and the sounds of battle echo through the dungeon…
Resources and References:
DND Beyond. This is an official resource and has everything you need to get started, including descriptions of races and classes, adventures, helpful articles, and interactive character sheets.
Wyrmwood. This is an online shop, not a resource, but they create some of the most beautiful dice and dice trays that I’ve ever seen so I couldn’t resist including them.
Matt Colville. One of the best teachers in the industry, although his videos are usually geared toward DMs. He also has a production company (MCDM) that produces supplemental books, miniatures, and a live show (“The Chain of Acheron”).
Shows (the language on most of these shows is NSFW):
Critical Role. The big fish among D&D live shows. Incredible actors and storylines, and one of the best Dungeon Masters in the game.
Relics & Rarities. Run by Deborah Ann Woll, this is a shorter-form show that does a beautiful job capturing the magic of D&D.
Girls Guts Glory. A brilliant all-woman show of real-life friends (all actresses).
The Adventure Zone. Podcast-only, and one of the funniest pieces of content I’ve ever listened to (in any medium). I had to stop listening while on public transportation because I bust out laughing too frequently.
Jocks Machina. Organized by Joe Manganiello, these are two “one-shot” games (here and here) rather than full campaigns.
Force Grey. Shorter, lighter episodes, but with a great cast that includes Matt Mercer (Critical Role’s DM), Deborah Ann Woll, and Joe Manganiello..
Dragon Friends. Australian comedians. I haven’t tuned in, but that’s enough to get me interested.
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