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Dungeons & Dragons' Influence and Legacy
An anonymous reader writes: This year is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Dungeons & Dragons, and it's getting a lot of mainstream attention. Long-time and former players are examining the game's influence and its legacy, even as it's being introduced to yet another generation of kids. "For countless players, Dungeons & Dragons redirected teen-age miseries and energies that might have been put to more destructive uses. How many depressed and lonely kids turned away from suicide because they found community and escape in role-playing games? How many acts of bullying or vandalism were sublimated into dice-driven combat? ... How many underage D.U.I.s never came to pass because spell tables were being consulted late into the night?" Meanwhile, as people who played the game long ago have grown into adults producing their own works, our culture has reaped the benefits of D&D's influence. "The league of ex-gamer writers also includes the 'weird fiction' author China Miéville (The City & the City); Brent Hartinger (author of Geography Club, a novel about gay and bisexual teenagers); the sci-fi and young adult author Cory Doctorow; the poet and fiction writer Sherman Alexie; the comedian Stephen Colbert; George R. R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (who still enjoys role-playing games). Others who have been influenced are television and film storytellers and entertainers like Robin Williams, Matt Groening (The Simpsons), Dan Harmon (Community) and Chris Weitz (American Pie)."
I'm in middle management and make at least half of my decisions with a d20. Better than any MBA.
Bringing the DM screen into meetings is still not very well accepted, however.
The gaming community really doesn't need this old stereotype of gamers as uptight nerds who are scared to step outside the bounds of adult-imposed propriety. I played D&D in high school in the 1980s, but I found plenty of time for illin' like any other teenager. I bought a lot of weed, sold some, and I also did a lot of grafitti tagging in my neighborhood. In these activities, I was often joined by peers who I would also meet for D&D.
And software process methodologies as hokey as that game.
There's Charles Stross, who's doing pretty well as a SF author these days. His first commercial creation was the Slaadi and their deities, a D&D monster type from the realms of pure Chaos. Would you say an author's first paycheck is part of them becoming successful?
Who is John Cabal?
"For countless players, Dungeons & Dragons redirected teen-age miseries and energies that might have been put to more destructive uses. How many depressed and lonely kids turned away from suicide because they found community and escape in role-playing games?"
On the flip side, how many hours were wasted the could have been put to better use? Studying Maths or computers or foreign languages or Music or Science or Drama, or even spent at football or wrestling practice? How many trebuchets were not built because the teen-agers were busy playing games? How many young men were not Eagle Scouts? How many snow forts or tree houses were left empty, or even not built in the first place?
Tunnels and Trolls and Traveller had more of an influence on me than D&D.
D&D did teach me to take the parts I liked and screw the rest.
METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA IS 40 YEARS OLD WHERE IS THEIR PARTY???
Been meeting with the same group for more than 30 years now on Saturday night. I started playing the when the 1st red-book with crayons came out, I was like in 6th grade, and yes I still have the boxed set and nearly EVERY other book, module, and accessory. I'm 46 now and NO other form of RPG online or other can compare to the fun and comradeship of a face to face pen and paper RPG. More imagination, more interaction, and for those of you who doubt it is family fun, our group consists of 2 single ladies, 3 single guys, 2 married couples all my relative age (mid 40's) and 3 much younger players in their mid 20's ( 2 guys and a girl. We have 3 players who rotate as Game Master and we play in a long standing organically customized world. We have been at several Gen-Cons and we ran a full tourney game that was very successful several years ago.
Long live D&D
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Quit playing D&D and finish the Ice and Fire already.
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it. -- Calvin
Depressed kids can always find outlets. I drew, listened to music, taught myself 68k assembly language for my calculator, read a lot, and lifted weights. I often reflect on how a depression based self education led to a career.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
The great thing about D&D (that's often lost on people) is that it was a social thing. All your friends get together, kinda like college poker nights (except you're NOT trying to drain the sucker next to you). Best campaign I ever had we were ten kids in a room (on a rainy day), working together, hashing things out. The DM was really prepared, and we got completely immersed and the hours flew by like they do when you're really having fun. It was great.
The fact is, it's just damn hard to get a good campaign together, get a lot of people interested. Probably much harder now because D&D has that (false) anti-social stigma these days, and who needs a DM when you got a computer? D&D takes a lot more work than just firing up WoW (or, for that matter, Zork) by yourself in the basement. Even in the day, if your friends weren't into it, role-playing games kinda suck. On the flip side, if your friends are stoked, your DM puts in the prep-time, and you're all keen to cooperate and work with each other, D&D can make some of the best memories you'll ever have. 'cause it's with your friends.
Most people I know who shit on D&D either never played it, or had a lame experience in a lame campaign. That's a shame, but that's life. Anything involving people, from drama club to Boy Scouts to playing football can leave a bad taste in your mouth if the people in it don't care or are uncooperative assholes.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
You can solve anything with the d20 system.
I'm from Europe and I didn't learn English in class. Instead I learned it from the AD&D (2nd edition) material. Together with a class mate who also had DM aspirations, we swapped and traded material through BBSes.
We were so far ahead of the class, the teacher would set us apart and just let us do whatever we wanted. As long as we whispered, we could talk and read separate from the rest of the class. Of course that got us nasty looks, but we got to talk for a solid two hours about Planescape or Forgotten Realms.
After class, we'd ask the teacher words that we couldn't find in the dictionary. He couldn't them either. I remember finding out what "to be marooned" meant, ahead of the teacher.
I also remember that me and my gaming buddy got an A- on our final exams. After the verbal part of the exam, the teacher said he was a bit disappointed in my verbal skills. But because he knew I had it in me, he'd give me an A-.
I stopped gaming when college started, I couldn't find a gaming group. After almost twenty years, I found out my current employer has a group of colleagues who regularly play Pathfinder, and I joined them. I'm playing a fifth level thief, and it's an absolute blast.
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They would be wise to get a celebrity D&D campaign. Just imagine an evening with Cory Doctorow, Stephen Colbert, George R. R. Martin, Matt Groening etc, all sitting around a table, trying to lawyer rules and hold off a raid of hobgoblins! That would be a "reality" show that I could watch!
That would be ridiculous.
It was the unholy power they gained after their subsequent introduction to the occult. Their success is most likely to do Satanic influence.
Here's a healthy dose of truth for you poor misguided souls
Required reading for internet skeptics
D&D was loosely based on concepts from "The Lord of the Rings", recently published back then by Ace in paperback format. The American publisher of LOTR had allowed the copyright to lapse because the books just didn't sell. And the people at Ace were explicit after-the-fact -- if the had been required to negotiate royaltie payments the project would never have been done. The consensus at the time was that adult fantasy does not sell.
Within weeks there was a set by Ballentine books (at 95 cents each, vs the Ace 75 cents) as the 'authorized edition'; shortly thereafter, Ace announced they had made royalty arrangements. Then Houghton-Mifflin re-printed the hardbacks. Lancer started issuing paperbacks of the Conan stories and Lord Dunsany's fantasy stories. New fantasy stories started to appear - and Gygax and Arneson came up with D&D.
Look at all the LOTR and D&D spin-offs in books, movies, other FRP games - and most would probably never have come about if the copyrights to LOTR had not been allowed to lapse.
im not sure but the summary sure makes it seem as if there was not D&D then there would be a world full of serial killers. Hyperbole much??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Quick! Hide behind the mound of dead bards!
false idea that all kids that played DnD only played DnD and didn't do anything else.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I was raised on Choose your Own adventure books bought at a thrift store. Then I got the Red Box when I was 12. I got all the boxes then. Later I got original AD&D from a friend.
Dungeons and Dragons got some things right, but I argue against some parts of their system such as armor. Their armor means you dodge more, but if you get hit, it is full damage. A better system makes armor reduce damage, and agility+dodge skill avoid attacks. There's no ways to overstate D&D's affects on modern games.
God spoke to me
Hahaha!
I don't think I was unique in spending my early teen years (in the late '70s) convinced that nobody had problems like mine or could possibly understand my problems, and that everybody else fit in and I was the only loner in the whole school. I'm pretty sure the only ways you get over things like that is to talk about them or to realize that they're just not true, and both of those require social interaction. For me that came at a gaming table. Suddenly I understood that there were a lot of people just like me with problems like mine (or different, but we all had something) and that there *was* a group for me, too. One day before gaming, sitting at that table while we were chatting about the teenage horror du jour, I had an epiphany: Probably everybody in school felt just the same as I did at that age, regardless of who they were. The same conversation we were having in the local library's basement was also taking place in frilly pink bedrooms, garages, football locker rooms, the art labs and the data processing room. None of us were really different at all, which meant that none of us were really alone. That thought is what helped me get through being a teenager without ending up in juvie or worse.
In that high falsetto voice of Jon Stewart: "Nailed it!"
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I remember that piece of junk. A second rate book based on a tragic incident that was blown out of proportion by the media and latched onto by a fringe of religious conservatives in order to attack the new hobby. The only reason it got picked up for a movie was that with the controversy it was sure to garner ratings. The individual at the center of the drama in both the book/movie and the real incident it was based on had serious emotional issues prior to participating in roleplaying games.
The only good it did was to make people within the hobby who lead games pay closer attention to the activities of their players away from the table. I myself asked a few players who were letting other parts of their lives slip to take a step back and remember that no game was worth letting studies or relationships slip..
I began gaming in 1978 and after entering the Navy started a group of players at each location I was stationed. While I was stationed at NAS Memphis the group I started was actually appreciated by the barracks master-at-arms because instead of getting drunk and getting in trouble the only trouble he ever had with us was mediating an arrangement with the ping-pong players over use of the table. (we had a rather large group of players)
I was stationed at a base in the Florida panhandle when the anti-RPG movement got into high gear and we got it with both barrels due to the fact our base was in an area full of highly reactionary conservative churches (most with names that included the word independent in them) that outnumbered almost every other type of organization. In fact in the 5 mile trip from base to town you could count 25-30 churches or signs for churches. (this in a town with a non-military population of less than 200,000) During my time there I was both privately and publicly accused of everything from being a Satanist to being a practicing warlock along with anyone else that did not make a secret of their participation in roleplaying games. The highlight(?) of this campaign of hate was the publication of a pamphlet that was circulated in the area supposedly identifying a cabal of warlocks intent on destroying the community. Twelve names were on that list and the only thing any of the people on it had in common was their hobby. Most of us didn't even know the others existed. It got enough circulation that on one occasion I was asked to leave a restaurant in the middle of a meal because the owner was made aware of my identity and told me he did not want "my kind" in his establishment. The only amusing part of this story was the fact that a few of the names on the "list" turned out to be naval officers with no sense of humor. A civil charge of slander and defamation of character was made against the individuals who were identified as authoring the pamphlet. Since both of the individuals involved could not substantiate their claims (in fact neither author had any first hand knowledge of the contents of Dungeons & Dragons or even realized that several people on their list didn't even play D&D) the justice hearing the case found against them and assessed damages.
Given the amount of ignorant nonsense spread around at the time and incidents like my encounter with the restaurant owner I have a low tolerance for people trying to resurrect the propaganda of that period. (for anything other than ridicule) I have had the pleasure of gaming with many good and honest people over the 35+ years I have followed my hobby and I am honored to count most of them as my friends.
Okay, I am done with my soapbox. Thank you for your patience with my rant.
at 2am for complaints by the neighbors about loud arguing.
We were apparently loudly with the DM's interpretation that a polymorphed ogre into a flower was "as tough as an ogre" -- as in it could still inflict 1d10 damage to us while polymorphed into a flower instead of merely still having 20 hit points.
Ah... good times.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I work for a video game company, D&D definitely made me successful.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
They are really making a movie based on that tract.
It has one of the actresses from game of thrones and it's being done serious or so serious it's camp. Chic was contacted and approved of the film. It's out this fall.
I think the trailer is on youtube now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Notice how it premieres at GenCon Indy in August. I'm guessing it's camp. "R P G! R P G!"
BTW, I'm heading off to church soon. RPG later.
Switched to HackMaster.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
This variant of the rules is discussed in Unearthed Arcana (pages 111-112) as an option with extensive tables detailing the necessary modifications the base rules and a sidebar noting the effects. Basically, with armor as damage reduction attacks hit more often and do less damage. At lower levels this tends to make combat less dangerous, especially for armored characters. However, at higher levels the advantage shifts back in favor of monsters that deal large amounts of damage per hit. For example, when facing a huge earth elemental in full plate armor a fighter will be hit about 20% more often, due to a 4 point reduction in AC, to compensate for the fact that the base AC bonus values from armor assume the base rules, not the modified armor as damage reduction rules. However, the 4 points of damage reduction now only reduces his opponents average damage by less than 17 percent: advantage, elemental. It gets still worse when encountering monsters with yet higher strength bonuses to damage or added on damage from poisons, acid, disease etc or multiple attacks per round. Basically combat is easier at lower levels but increasingly deadly as characters advance much past about level 12 or so. It also tends to make the game more mundane and less heroic since characters enjoy early success at the expense of heroic high level fights which they are now less likely to survive. On the other hand, this variant also reduces somewhat the advantage that magic users have over fighting characters at high levels since they too are exposed to the more deadly combat and still without benefit of armor. This can make playing a fighting class more attractive in a high level campaign that might otherwise be dominated by spell casters.
Thank you for that:
I made my own RPG influenced off D&D. Intergalactic Bounty Hunter (needs a webpage)
I had a dodge and an armor. Damage reduction is 1/2 your armor plus a roll of 1d(That 1/2 your armor number). Armor stops low damaging things for the most part only takes the edge off harder hitting stuff.
My weapons would be sorted between lots of rapid hitting small damage, or "armor piercing" high damage hits
Sometimes a lot of rapid damage deals a total higher damage than an armor piercer if someone isn't wearing armor.
It modeled pretty well until I did bad approximations for spraying an AK47 full clip at a tank... if the tank rolled low, and the AK47 rolled a high damage, and a high % of bullets hit, the tank style robot would take massive damage. The over all system was really good and the atmosphere was kinda like Futurama before its time... The game was heavily influenced by Spaceballs: What if warp drive did get really cheap all of a sudden and could be strapped onto any vehicle? You'd have stuff like airtight Winnebegos flying around space. Actually I've been thinking of my next step for my game design/programming career... maybe fine tuning this system and releasing it to the public might be good.
God spoke to me
Table top gaming made its way early into the Internet and computing. Things like MUD, and NetHack (Mines of Moria, etc), Dwarf Fortress. In fact I remember some of my first video games being Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Pools of Radiance, which were both officially licenced AD&D products. Later things like Neverwinter nights, etc... even Skyrim.
Not to mention all the writing (some good, others no so much), such as Forgotten Realms, etc... Much of it had an birth with D&D.
Hell I was at a pub last week and was able to answer a crazy trivia question about an evil fiery demons in Islamic mythology being called Djinn because I remember them from the Monsters Compendium.