• revised January 2025
Contrary to assorted modern folklore, Dungeons & Dragons – also referred to as D&D or AD&D (the A stood for “Advanced”, a modifier dropped from newer editions of the rules) – is not a recruiting tool for demon-worshippers or an insidious method of mind control. It and other fantasy role-playing games (RPGs) are, in essence, advanced forms of the “cowboys and Indians” or “cops and robbers” play common to American childhood prior to the television era. What our parents accomplished solely by means of imagination, D&D players achieve with imagination, pen (or keyboard) and paper, and large bags of funny-looking dice.
A quick aside here to note two things that D&D and its siblings are not. They are not Live Action Role-Playing (LARP), although some of LARP’s roots can be traced to tabletop RPGs (particularly Vampire: the Masquerade and its spinoffs). Nor are they MMORPGs (“massively multiplayer online RPGs”), as exemplified by World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and a host of others which are played wholly in simulated video universes over one’s smartphone or desktop computer.
Rather, Dungeons & Dragons is and always has been a tabletop game, characterized even this far into the computer age by its reliance on person-to-person interaction and mechanics designed for a group small enough to fit into an average living room or around a reasonably-sized table. The D&D rules, originally published in the mid-1970s, were the first successful attempt to codify “cowboys and Indians” play into a formal system built around pencil-and-paper maps, pre-planned adventures, and personalities represented in game terms by numerical ability scores for such characteristics as Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom. The choice of genre – heroic fantasy – came about because the designers were spinning the system off from rules built for boxed war games featuring cardboard counters or toy soldiers, and the variant from which D&D sprung was a medieval-warfare simulation.
To its designers’ surprise, D&D was a significant commercial success, and its publishers went on to become the founding fathers of a good-sized cottage industry. A number of game companies rose and fell over the next decade or two, publishing rules systems for worlds inspired by superhero comics, vast interstellar SF sagas, the old West, the post-nuclear future, gangland Chicago, and James Bond’s brand of spycraft. Meanwhile, TSR, publishers of the original D&D rules, expanded its product lines both into other sorts of games and into spinoff product lines offering stories set in the company’s “house universes”. This last included several lengthy series of novels, a fondly remembered animated Saturday morning TV series, and a less memorable big-screen motion picture. Eventually, the company was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, publishers of Magic: the Gathering, which was itself subsequently absorbed into toy giant Hasbro.
The advent of Magic and other card-based games effectively pushed role-playing games out of the spotlight for a generation of gamers . . . but in recent years, RPGs have made a significant comeback. It’s tempting to credit COVID-19 as a primary catalyst for the revival. While software programs have long allowed for playing card and board games over the ‘Net, the level of personal interaction in most such apps is limited to brief text-based chat. That changed when business video-conferencing apps – most notably Zoom – abruptly acquired legions of recreational users housebound by COVID…among them D&D gamers who quickly realized that such tools were ideal for taking their role-playing sessions online.
At the same time, though, it’s important to look at broader shifts in the pop-culture landscape. D&D was born in an era when SF and fantasy were treated as minor-league genres by the entertainment industry. Nowadays, these genres are among the most dominant in Hollywood – and the success of franchises ranging from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Star Wars to Tolkien’s Middle-Earth to Alien and Game of Thrones arises in non-trivial part from people who grew up playing D&D getting jobs in Hollywood – on both sides of the screen. Key figures in this context include Felicia Day (popular genre actor, founder of streaming media company Geek & Sundry, arguably the inventor of televised D&D sessions), Wil Wheaton (Star Trek‘s Wesley Crusher, host and producer of Tabletop, featuring celebrity guests playing new and classic board games), and no less than Wayne Brady (host of Let’s Make A Deal, veteran of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and an avid D&D player).
Today’s Dungeons & Dragons has evolved a great deal from its original roots (a new, exhaustively revised set of core rulebooks appeared late in 2024), and there are as always variants and competitors. Much to the surprise of many, the recent feature film Honor Among Thieves was a resounding success – not only among longtime players, but also both at the box office and according to many critics. A free 24/7 D&D channel showed up recently on my TV’s streaming listings. Fantasy role-playing isn’t going away anytime soon – and it’s alive and well not just online, but in living rooms and game shops and public libraries as near as next door and as far away as your imagination’s limits.
Here, then, are a set of resources for further exploration:
Dungeons & Dragons
(the official site for the pencil-&-paper game)
White Wolf Publishing
(publishers of Vampire: the Masquerade and related materials)
Critical Role
(one of the longest-lived streaming D&D campaign shows)