“I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else.” — Gary Gygax, 1938-2008

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson—may they rest in peace in a land where skimpy chainmail really does protect better than full body armor on big-breasted women—created D&D and published its first book in 1974.

It was different from tabletop wargames in many ways, allowing for each player to essentially create and become a single character of their design to embark upon adventures in a fantasy setting. This was all guided by the Dungeons Master or DM.

Besides telling the story the players’ characters live through, the DM’s job is to try and kill the characters off. Hopefully, your DM wants you to succeed, but if they’re not throwing challenging monsters and puzzles your way that could potentially kill your character at every turn then they are not doing their job.

Why don’t I let the official site give its explanation for the game.

“Players create heroic fantasy characters — mighty warriors, stealthy rogues, or powerful wizards — which they guide through an ongoing series of adventures, working together to defeat monsters and other challenges and growing in power, glory, and achievement. The game offers endless possibilities and a multitude of choices . . . more choices than even the most sophisticated computer game, because you can do whatever you can imagine!” –Official D&D Site at Wizards.com

Using dice to decide successes and failures of chosen actions, the specifics form themselves as the players play and the DM tells the story. There are many dice that are used, most commonly the 20-sided die.

For example, if while battling kobolds I roll a 20-sided die to see if my attack is successful and my roll comes up as a natural “20” that is a critical hit. I can imagine my character taking a great swinging blow with her sword and chopping the kobold’s head clean off. However, if I had rolled a “1” then that is an automatic fail, so I might imagine my character tripping and stabbing themselves in the leg instead of hitting the kobold.

Imagination is key for the DM and all players when playing D&D.

D&D players come in two forms, those who play more for the strategy of moving tactically across a board, fighting monsters, and those who care more about the role playing aspects and the story. Both types can coexist together quite well and can actually balance each other out in a campaign.

Many active players in recent days might be most familiar with the 3.0 and 3.5 versions of D&D that came about in 2000 and 2003 respectively, or the newest edition 4.0. The game has been around for over 30 years; it was bound to have amendments, improving upon itself for the most entertaining experience possible while still always allowing for a return to original rules if desired.

One of the older details of D&D that I have always found entertaining and that may surprise some people is that originally being an elf was a class (like being a warrior or a sorcerer) instead of a race.

The roots of D&D, however, are centered in tabletop wargames, and there are many examples of how D&D has gone back to those roots over the years, including the use of miniatures to represent players’ characters on a board or created map to better keep track of where characters are in relationship to monsters during battle.

Gary Gygax admitted to many inspirations, but always maintained being very minimally influenced by Lord of the Rings, despite similarities, having created Halflings (like Hobbits) and other additions to the game over time to draw in on that particular fanbase.

What I enjoy most about the newer editions like 3.0 and 3.5 is the extra race and class options. 4.0 has also introduced a number of new possibilities. To date the official races of D&D are as follows: Dwarves, Dragonborn, Elves, Eladrin, Halflings, Half-elves, Humans, Tieflings, as well as Gnomes, Devas, Goliaths, Half Orcs and Shifters.

Basic classes include: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard. Of course there are also prestige classes, fan created races and classes, and pretty much anything your imagination can come up with that your DM allows.

My DM, years ago, created a race before the Eladrin’s existence that he called Nymph-Kissed so that I could have a particularly charismatic character to aide my party.

Some complaints of 4.0 have been that it is too similar to World of Warcraft, basically just WoW on paper, allowing for heath to come back more easily, making combat simpler in some ways, changing the amount of “checks” like a SPOT check when someone is looking around a room, etc. But while I was skeptical at first the new system really is a great way to introduce new players to the game.

Some naysayers have also said that 4.0 was created to be like WoW to make it more of a competitor for WoW and get back some of that 1970s and 1980s popularity that D&D had before the internet and gaming systems took off with such fantastical possibilities.

Whatever the case, D&D today is 4.0 and all that existed before that. Some people forget that regardless of how things change, since this is a tabletop game, you can still do whatever you want.
 

BEYOND THE BOARD

D&D has been successful beyond just its gaming idea. There are more books than anyone could possibly own as supplements to the game—though some people do own them all—going into every monster, dungeon, and every other possibility of what you might want to know while playing.

There was also a cartoon television show in the 80s that was both popular while it aired and controversial for its violent themes. There have been two films, the first in 2000 and the sequel in 2005. Like the popular Dragonlance books and many others, D&D has a large library of fiction books as well like the Forgotten Realms series that use elements from the game in the various plots.

In recent years D&D has moved to join games like World of Warcraft with Dungeons & Dragons Online. As I mentioned in my “The On-Again/Off-Again Love Affair with WoW” blog, DDO does not really compete with WoW but it is a fun MMORPG that plays and levels characters just like how it would happen when playing the role playing game tabletop.

Personally, I have gotten a lot of enjoyment over the years seeing odes to D&D showing up throughout popular culture. My favorite episode of the amazing animated adult show Futurama was about the Professor’s What-If Machine. In one instance, the character Fry asks what would have happened if he had never been frozen to have then woken up in the future, which is the basis for the entire show. The answer, of course, was that it would unmake time and space, and crusaders to prevent that came to put things right.

Those crusaders included, and were all voices by themselves, Al Gore, Nichelle Nichols, Stephen Hawking, this giant robot thing, and Gary Gygax.

D&D is also nodded to in the Futurama movie “Bender’s Game” where Bender not only plays D&D but sucks the other characters into a world where D&D is reality.

One mockumentary, “Gamers”, and a great independent film “The Gamers: Dorkness Rising” came out in 2006 and 2008, honoring the great geek culture of D&D and its players. I recommend them both.

As the world of tabletop gaming continues to evolve along with other mediums, one addition by the D&D people caught my attention recently.

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Surfacescapes on Vimeo.

Now, maybe all of this isn’t your cup of tea, so let me explain how D&D worked for me and my friends during college. We tried to get together once a week, if we could. There were too many of us senior year for our campaign at first, but who was actually serious about playing became obvious fairly quickly.

Here is the story we played out in games terms. We decided as players which paths we wanted to take in searching a cave, each choosing what our created character would do in each situation. When we were attacked along the road, we rolled dice to see who hit and for how much damage until the bad guys were dead and we could divvy-up the loot. If there were traps, hopefully someone detected it when they did a SPOT or SEARCH check and were able to warn us beforehand. Our characters nearly lost all of their HP (hit points) fighting the last boss, which was a black dragon, but we whittled down its HP first and won.

How does that translate into an entertaining story?

A Monk, a Wizard, a Fighter, a Samurai, a Cleric, and a Pirate met up at an orc cave with varying goals, fighting their way past archers into a hellish maze of carved rooms until finally stumbling upon the true evil of the back dragon that lived beneath the caves and defeated it in the name of the king for reward and glory.

Slightly different interpretations if you have the right imagination, right?

We had a great time. Maybe one day I will write it all down as a fantasy book, since there were some pretty funny things that happened, like our Fighter failing his LISTEN check while the rest of our characters slept, to which we were then ambushed and had to tease him mercilessly as the dim-witted fighter who must have been sitting there with a rubix cube going “I like being on watch, watch, watch…”

The point is that regardless of the advances in rules and additions of classes and races, D&D is always still D&D. Just because 4.0 comes out doesn’t mean you have to follow all of those new rules. You can pick and choose what works for you.

The fact that D&D has lasted in some form for so many years, and has spawned many offshoots, such as its own MMO and many movies, proves that it is a lasting form of entertainment and social gathering that will never truly lose its momentum in geek culture.

Yeah, 4.0 is a little too much like WoW on paper, but it is still D&D. New inventions and ways of playing will continue to come out as the years pass, I am certain more editions will come about, and there will always be plenty of books and miniatures to buy.

If you are still skeptical of trying D&D for yourself, at least give it a shot if you pride yourself as a person with an active imagination, and can translate the roll of a die into an action taken.

D&D will always be D&D for those who want to play it, because rule number one in any role playing game is that there are no rules but what you and your DM set up beforehand.

Thank you Gary and Dave, and all those who have contributed over the years to the universe that is Dungeons & Dragons. We’re still playing.

~G³

Next week I will be paying a small ode to Sci Fi NOT SyFy with “The Good Ol’ Days of the Sci Fi Channel”. You remember Sliders, right? Please check it out.

And remember, the blog is weekly now so Mondays only. Hope you will all still be reading. Thanks for tuning in.

 

Images taken from:
http://www.devicedaily.com/misc/co-creator-of-dungeons-dragons-passes-on.html
http://tw.zooomr.com/photos/johnshao/4265797/
http://sow.wikidot.com/guides
http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/game_wallpapers/world_of_warcraft/human_mage
http://www.ddo.com/ddomedia
http://www.fpsmagazine.com/feature/dandd.php
http://www.grottadimerlino.com/dungeons/archivio_news/2008_03_01_archivio.html
http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article95a.htm
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/20090828
http://threetreesstudios.com/andscifi/2009/03/31/three-science-fiction-ideas-that-need-a-tv-series/

7 Responses to “Dungeons & Dragons Today”