Metro Pulse/Gamut/Dungeons and Dragons

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Role Playing games grab geeky adults as well as teens

by Scott McNutt

We're in the living room of a house in the Fourth & Gill neighborhood. In an easy chair behind a card table littered with rule books, maps, dice, manila folders, and tablets of note-scrawled paper sits the dungeonmaster (or "DM"). Opposite the DM, the player perches on the edge of the sofa, spreading his own books, folders and dice on the coffee table. A Dungeons & Dragons adventure is in progress:

DM: "...You and your companions duck into Scimitar Alley...and pass through to the Makara Inn...without being seen, as far as you can tell."

Player: "We'll look inside, trying to be casual..."

DM: "The Commons Room is dimly lit, smoky, and crowded. Your contact might be there, but you can't tell from the doorway."

Player: "Okay, we'll go in, but I'll tell everybody to stay together, behind me. And tell Turol [the player's trusty dwarf sidekick] to stay away from the barmaids! We don't want trouble."

DM: "Your eyes adjust to the dimness after you enter, but you don't see your man. You do, however, notice a group of guardsmen sitting at a table. Not 10 feet away from you."

Player: "Crap!"

DM: [rolling dice] "They seem very...excited to see you. One of them stands up and draws his sword...Turol's already got his mace out..."

Player: "CRAP!! I'm telling Turol not to attack!"

DM: [rolling dice] "Too late..."

The strain takes a toll on the player's nerves. To calm his anxieties, he gulps down a slug of beer and—Waitaminute!? Beer?

Yes, beer. The DM is me, Metro Pulse's cynical, sarcastic, snarling curmudgeon-on-call. The player (we'll call him "Steve," because, well, because that's his name) and I are old enough to buy beer. Waaaaaaay old enough. We started playing D&D with some other teen-age friends back in the '70s. We're still playing, 20-odd years later. For many readers, this revelation may be the equivalent of confessing, "Steve and I are founding members of 'Geeks 'R' Us.'" If that's your reaction, maybe this article will prompt you to reconsider.

It's a D&D World

For many enthusiasts, D&D is a pleasant diversion from the real world. And to them, it's no geekier than any other imagination-fueled recreation. Says Steve, "When we started playing, you had three TV stations and...no videogames...so you used your mind, you read books, you were creative...It [D&D] is still like that...it's relaxing, it gives me a chance to think creatively..." But what is Dungeons & Dragons?

In baldest terms, D&D is a fantasy role-playing game wherein the players' object is to defeat monsters, gain treasure, and thereby advance in their professions. The DM creates a "world" in which the game is conducted, developing descriptions and maps of the geography and populations of people and other creatures. Players adopt the guise of one of a variety of beings, such as humans, elves, and dwarves, who can be fighters, magic-users, clerics, thieves, or other professions. Most of the game takes place in the participants' minds: The DM describes what players "see" in the world, and the players tell the DM what they want to "do." Dice are rolled and rule books consulted to determine the success or failure of various activities in the game.

Essentially, Steve and I are creating an ongoing story when we play D&D. For almost eight years, Steve has played the same character, a half-elven wanderer named Dagar Sihn (hey, Steve came up with that name, not me). Shunned by human and elvish culture alike, Dagar is searching for his father, an infamous, semi-legendary fighter called Rolin Wrong-hand, from whom Dagar intends to claim his inheritance: an enchanted sword.

The adventures Steve's character has had could fill several novels. During his quest, the half-elf has outwitted mad wizards, defied secret cults, battled goblins, werewolves, giants and the like, deciphered clues to hidden treasures, and maybe saved the world from being overrun by hordes of zombies. In the process, Dagar Sihn has become embroiled in political intrigues, personal vendettas, centuries-old feuds; in short, the character is caught up in the fate of this fantasy world we've evolved.

"Why?" is probably the most frequent comment I get from new acquaintances when I mention that I play D&D. ("Huh?" is a close second.) The clear implication is that there is something odd about an adult playing this sort of game. But "Why not?" is the only real response to that. Why do people play golf? Why do they watch movies? Why do people partake of any recreation? Obviously, they derive pleasure from it. The pleasure Steve and I get from D&D is sharing a creative storytelling process.

The appeal of spinning fantastic yarns using one's own material is probably obvious to anyone who has read fantasy literature like The Lord of the Rings or swashbuckling, sword-and-sorcery pulp fiction like Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. For that matter, anyone enthralled by Star Wars or the Indiana Jones movies should understand the appeal, too. As L. Sprague de Camp, editor of the Conan stories, wrote of the heroic fiction genre: "When well done, it is the purest fun of fiction of any kind. It is escape fiction wherein one escapes clear out of the real world..." Steve comments, "D&D's really just an extension of that [fantasy literature]."

According to the online gaming magazine, Skirmisher, D&D is the most popular role-playing game in the world. It is played by people of all ages (predominantly teens and twenty-somethings) in countries around the globe. An article in the Winter 1994 issue of Skeptical Inquirer reported that an average of 7.5 million people were playing role games weekly at that time.

D&D may not be as popular now as in the past (due in part to competition from the host of video clones and rival games it inspired, such as Magic, which sold two billion units between 1993 and 1997). But, with a third update of its main rule books due out this fall and a big-budget movie in the talking stages, D&D appears poised to regain the cache it held in its heyday. And in mainstream society, the term most readily identified with role-playing games is still Dungeons & Dragons.

Who You Callin' Geek?

Such recognition has its drawbacks. Whatever the game's popularity, those who don't play D&D seem likely to have a low opinion of it, shaped by inaccuracies disseminated from widely divergent sources: D&D has been distorted by both the conservative religious movement and the supposedly liberal entertainment industry.

In the '80s, religious groups attacked D&D and other role-playing games as primers for occult practices. Tipper Gore gave negative views wider exposure when she cautioned against role-playing in her 1988 book, Raising PG Kids in an X-rated Society. Though the furor has dwindled, religious condemnations of the game can still be amusingly comprehensive, blaming D&D for "...demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape...suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, Satan-worship...jungian [sic] psychology...cannibalism, sadism...demon summoning... and many more teachings, brought to you in living color direct from the pit of hell." (Attributed to a report by "Christian Life Ministries" on The Baptist Pillar.) But titillating as such charges are, they have been thoroughly refuted. (See the article "Psychological Studies of the Effects of Role-Playing" for a lengthy bibliography on the subject.)

The more insidious aspersion, the one I'm likely to encounter in casual conversations, is the seemingly pervasive stereotype of adult D&Ders as socially maladjusted ninnies unable to cope with reality. This is the image perpetuated by the entertainment industry (such as on TV shows like Jesse and The X-Files). When the TV regularly reinforces such perceptions, can a middle-aged gamer avoid being tagged as a geeky loser from hell?

To find out, I ask some associates their thoughts on the geek quotient of my hobby, starting with my significant other. She replies obliquely, "I know boys have to play." Remember, this woman loves me.

A psychologist friend says, "'Geek' might not be the term...strange, outcast, social misfit, but not necessarily geek..." With friends like this, who needs a Jungian psychologist?

When I ask my mother, she smiles broadly and says, "I think you're an individual." Pressed, she declines further comment. At least she didn't accuse me of voodoo. Or Jungian psychology. I wonder if I'm adopted.

Despite these comments, Steve and I are pretty normal. Steve's a quality control manager for a food processing plant in Middle Tennessee, is married, and has just become the proud father of his first child. I work for a local engineering consulting firm and live with my significant other and our three cats. Mundanely middle-class, that's Steve and me.

So we're average joes. As Steve says, "If we were a couple of guys who had bowled in the same league for 40 years, no one would care." But our recreation isn't as mainstream as bowling or poker or golf. Ah, golf. Golf epitomizes "mainstream" recreation. Let's compare: Is golf more "reality-based" than D&D? Is D&D geekier than golf?

Consider this: Steve and I will get together on a Friday or Saturday night. We'll lounge in the comfort of my living room, drink some beer, and chat about our lives. Then we'll step outside those humdrum lives and into the Zarzen Wastes, where Steve's character will search for a lost fortune, while I adjudicate the proceedings. And we'll have a ball.

Compare that to some middle-age "duffers" who get together in "foursomes" for 7:30 a.m. Saturday "tee times" to "stroke" their "drivers" on a "backside" while hoping not to "choke" on a "banana ball." No doubt they'll have a ball (of sorts) too. But how "realistic" is waving phallic "clubs" at tiny white spheroids? In reality, isn't golf pointless? So isn't someone who "plays" golf silly? Even geeky?

It's a moot point, of course. D&Ders, not "duffers," will suffer the geek stigma. For fear of that label, people who might enjoy D&D will never try it. That's unfortunate, because all recreation is really just adult playtime. And since we all have our recreations, isn't there a little geek in each of us?

Geeks or not, Steve and I will keep playing D&D. Why? To exercise our imagination. To indulge a shared enthusiasm. To hang out together. To knock back some beers. To do something we ENJOY. Because it's FUN. In other words—why not?