Home and hearth meet imagination
Human beings, throughout the ages, have adapted to the numerous challenges existence has thrown our way. We stumbled upon fire and figured out how to harness its life-preserving energy. Eventually, our ancestors developed walls to keep out the harsh wilderness and those who would seek to take our resources. Then, when our curiosities became insatiable, we derived the scientific method, unlocking new ways to understand the material world.
Despite the radical advancements we have made, one thing about humanity has remained resolute: we cannot escape our fundamental desire to explore the immaterial. Something that science, unfortunately, cannot give us. Even now, we in the 21st century with all its flash and futurism, are still sitting around the fire, spinning tales whether true or not, because it is our best connection to the deepest part of our ourselves.
The experiences and adventures we go on with characters touch us in deep and profound ways. They can unlock new windows through which we look at the world and new modes of being. Stories present you with people you would never otherwise meet and places you could never find yourself in. They introduce tragedies and comedies we couldn’t dream of being a part of. People and places we read about, or watch, can often feel more real than the world around us. Ask any Happy Potter fan about the Wizarding World if you don’t believe me. The wonderful thing about all this, is that we are living in the golden age of content.
Books are as popular as ever, rising further still thanks to platforms such as Audible targeting themselves to a new group of people who otherwise would not have the time or inclination to read a story. Movies have and will continue to capture the attention of many and are easier to access than ever with movies being released straight to television. Television itself still attracts millions of viewers with Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and the like.
The point being, stories are everywhere. They are in everything we consume whether consciously or not. We crave stories of real people, people who we can see ourselves in and aspire to be like. Heroes and anti-heroes, villains, and just everyday people. We want it all, because sometimes stories are the only way we can truly find out who we are.
With all these mediums, the stories tend to be told from one author’s point of view. Movies and TV shows can have multiple writers but ultimately one director, and so most stories have one author’s vision guiding the story. There is a beginning, middle, and end. There are themes and tone, morals and motifs. Essential ingredients to every cohesive story. But one method of storytelling has decided to go a radically different way.
Meet Dungeons and Dragons; the game where we sit around the modern hearth with our friends and family, telling each other stories. For some, it is performative art, e.g. Critical Role. For many, it is simply an escape; to be able to shunt away the world for a few hours and go on an adventure. But the beauty of this game is thus; you do not need to be a master writer or director to tell a fun and engaging story in this setting. All you need is a set of dice, a character sheet, and a few rules to play by.
Dungeons and Dragons is in many respects the original role-playing game. It was the first commercially available table-top role-playing game and was evolved from the little-known game called Chainmail released in 1971. Since then, role-playing games, or the RPG, have flourished in the video game sphere, and now have made a timely comeback to Tabletop.
An RPG is ultimately the player, or players, telling the story to themselves. DnD is the form with the most freedom to do so. Of course, Dungeons and Dragons can involve dungeons and dragons, but that isn’t where the fun stops. For instance, my group is currently playing a Cyberpunk inspired, sci-fi epoch, laser-gun-shooting-robot-slaying campaign, complete with hivemind Borg-like creatures, tentacle-haired space mermaids that wield four-foot-long axes, and a sentient, bi-pedal lizard with a plasma sniper rifle who doesn’t know how he got here or why he exists.
You can create anything.
But why would you want to?
Do you remember all those times when you would tie a blanket around your neck and jump off the couch pretending to be a superhero? Or when you would put on a tiara and wave a wand, bringing a magical kingdom to life? I imagine you don’t do that anymore, but part of you wishes you still did. Or, at least, you still could.
Do you daydream? Do you create scenarios in your head? Dialogue with different people in your life and work out solutions to your problems? Maybe you imagine yourself in a different country, talking with people that you’ve never spoken with before. Do you wish, just on your worst days, that your favorite fictional character would show up on your doorstep and ask you to go on an adventure?
Of course you do.
To want to escape this monotonous, mortal coil of ours is as natural as it gets. The desire to escape comes from the knowledge there is something better out there. Something in the immaterial. It isn’t obvious, but it is always there. It isn’t visible, but we know it when we see it. Storytelling helps us get there. Play, in general, helps us get there. Bring those two together and you have a shared storytelling experience, where each unique individual at the table brings a wealth of experiences to draw from, and together, all of you are making a rich, complex world in just a few hours.
Dungeons and Dragons is one of the most unique spaces we have available to us. It isn’t for everyone. It requires a certain etiquette and respect that many people aren’t expecting or willing to give. And its most grievous fault; it requires some math. However, when all the players are invested, the DM is well prepared, and the snacks are plentiful, it truly contains magic.
Life is difficult. All of us experience some measure of pain and suffering every day. It is our nature. So, we dream. We tell each other stories to work through our pain and suffering, to understand it better, so that we ourselves can be better for it. We all wish to escape, to be free of the veil of tears and all it possesses, but so that we ultimately can come back, and take others with us the next time.
To quote the great JRR Tolkien: “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? . . . If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
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