Dungeons and Dragons: The Importance of Story and Culture

For the last three decades, small groups of people have gathered around collections of unusual dice, cardboard screens, grid maps, miniature barbarians and stacks upon stacks of rulebooks to particiapte in a unique cultural activity. In 1975, a company called TSR was formed to market not just a product, but almost a completely new way to communicate. The product was "Dungeons and Dragons," a game which virtually invented the modern concept of collaborative storytelling.

Traditional literary culture had for centuries relied on an individual author or storyteller to craft worlds and characters to inahbit them. Even in ancient times, prior to the advent of a literate society, the tradition of storytelling was a vital basis for communicating values, but it still required the inspired contribution of an individual to put ink to paper.

This is not ot say that collaborative storytelling did not exist prior to Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D. Collaboration most certainly took place, usually with one author expanding on, or adapting the work of another. The Arthurian legends are a fine example of such storytelling, and the collaboration on those characters and themes has continued for centuries. In addition to expanding works, some authors chose to simply create new adventures for existing characters, or to create new characters in worlds already written by other authors.

But the concept of collaboration on an original story in real time was quite a unique idea, and it is this concept that forms the cultural value of the role-playing game, whether pen-and-paper or computer-based. Millions of pages of adventure, heroism, virtue, valor and spectacular worlds have been written into the experience of the players of these games. They have created characters as meaningful to them as their favorite characters in books or movies: More meaningful, in fact, because players of games like D&D are personally invested in them.

Then there are the Dungeons Masters, or DMs. Not only are they able to create an individual character to adventure within games run by others, but they can create entire worlds of characters and monsters, each one of which can be just as meaningful and just as important to the story as the main characters created by the players.

The worlds can take on personalities as well. Every fan of Star Wars, for example, is aware of the significance of the Sarlacc, or the trash compactor in the Death Star. Every fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark recalls the map room, or the chamber where Indiana Jones found the golden idol. Dungeon Masters have the same ability to create fantastic places that can become just as famous within their own worlds. In fact, they can decide whether those places become legends or not by placing important events in those settings, events which are enhanced by the setting and by the player's investment and creative contribution as well.

But there is more to the phenomenon of the role-playing game than just collaborative storytelling. Role-playing games give people the opportunity to not just experience another world, but to become another person, and the games are not limited to just medieval fantasy adventures, but could just as easily be futuristic worlds, or stories of 16th century pirates, or completely alien environments. The games are only limited by the imaginations of the players and the Dungeon Masters, or Game Masters for game which take place somewhere other than a medieval-themed dungeon.

This gives the people who play these games the opportunity to explore the personality and motivation for their characters in much the same way a professional actor might. Not every character must be an heroic sword-wielding champion battling an evil dragon. Some characters might be cowardly thieves, lurking in the shadows of a sleepy village and absconding with the coinpurses of honest merchants.

The players of these games might ask themselves a number of questions as they develop their craven rogue character. Why does she steal? How did she learn the skills of thievery, and from whom? If she were to meet the virtuous swordsman played by another player, how might she react? Would she be cynical and dismissive, or inspired to better herself and her place in the imaginary society these characters inhabit? Or might she just steal his sword when he isn't looking?

Within these decisions are elements of the dramatic that have precisely the same cultural significance as any other creative work of literature. The difference is players of these games are participants in the creation of this cultural contribution. The characters they create can symbolize any number of things, from the values to which players might aspire, to the destructive or the malevolent, things which players might ultimately seek to defeat.

The players can also decide how their character is going to develop. Might the cowardly thief one day decide to forsake the dishonest path? Might the heroic warrior despair in the face of the seemingly endless fight against evil? How would they change if they did so? How differently might they behave?

The creation and examination of these questions are extraordinarily important because they give people a window to the nature of humanity. There are few more profound ways to consider these questions than to build and develop an alternate personality, become that personality and live another life for even a brief time. It gives people the ability to experience choices instead of simply observing the choices a character must make.

What Dungeons and Dragons adds is the ability for player to give their character fantastic abilities beyond what would ever be available in the real world. This amplifies the process of collaborative storytelling becuase it makes their decisions far more profound. How would a character's personality change if they actually had these fantastic powers? Would they become belligerent and use their power to force other to cooperate with them? Or, might they rather become the benefactor of their society, using their superior power and influence to help others?

The benefits of creativity are undeniable, and through role-playing games, millions of people have experienced creativity in ways they might not otherwise. Many of the people who played Dungeons and Dragons while in college, for example, went on to careers in creative businesses like marketing, television and movies.

There can be little doubt that the experience uniquely encouraged by role-playing games continues to generate enormous insipiration for all creative pursuits, the benefits of which are just not beginning to find their way into the larger culture through the immense number of popular characters, stories and works available on the web. Many of these projects are commercial in nature, but a large portion are just for fun, just for the simple joy of being creative and sharing that creativity with others.

But even in the entertainment business there are examples of originality that have taken culture in new directions. Many of these works were very likely inspired by journeys through fantastic worlds collaboratively brought to life around a dinner table covered with rulebooks and fast food boxes. These events were nothing less than small engines that manufactured the raw materials these professionals could later craft into works all of society could enjoy and experience. For this reason alone, the phenomenon of Dungeons and Dragons is a valuable part of our shared culture.