Dungeons and Dragons

more like Wizards of the MOST

...

D&D is fun

Dungeons and Dragons is every bit as nerdy and fun as you imagine it to be. That hardly seems like a loaded sentence; maybe you'll understand better in a moment:

Dungeons and Dragons, as advertised, is a game wherin the characters you and your friends generate (or have generated for you) are limited only by your character sheets' numeric allegiances (5 Strength, 2 Dexterity, etc. with flowchart correlations to lower functions like skills and abilities that the player adds to dice rolls when determining action viability) and your collective imagination.

The keen player will immediately infer that it is their own fault if the grandiosity of the adventure doesn't stack up with their expectations, and that all limitations beyond that which have been imposed by the game proper (via character sheets and what can only be ultimately barebones story arcs) are those imposed by the party at hand.

At its best, it's a game about solving complex problems with a group of people you care about.

At its worst, it's everything we hate about ourselves and our friends. So just weigh that out real quick.

There is a Correct story arc presented, and your party can stray from that arc, provided your Game Master is prepared to deal with that and your party will forgive Her any missteps.

See that clever little lateral move implied, there? That shift of onus?

The business model is to defer as much of the Burden of Entertainment onto the player as possible while infinitely granulating the process through which violence is conducted, every iteration and revamp of this process (we're up to version 5 now?) seeming dedicated to re-edifying the inevitable need for combat, confrontation, the taking of Space from The Other. Every year more and more rules are laid down concerning what is and is not allowed during these confrontations, precious little gives us a solid framework or layout of what the world at large looks like or how we might contribute to it overall.

Do our characters exist in a dictatorship? A federation, or direct democracy? Are we a republic or monarchy? Can we work to change that? Do we have families? Where are they? Is this a Pangaea world like Earth in Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings, or have the continents drifted and left oceans between landmasses that contact betwixt which may be as yet unknown? What do they eat here? Am I beautiful?

Just the kind of thing you'd be punched in the arm for asking. Who cares?

Well, everything is related, and if everything is whatever we say it is, then where does that logic conclude? What isn't possible? Why don't these threads match up? That the game universe, as all others, is a roiling sea of nihilistic chaos and destruction, feels unsatisfactory in a framework governed by spreadsheets.

D&D is not necessarily guilty of any of these charges or any malocclusion it produces really at all. It eludes conviction on all fronts. It sacrifices itself on the alter of player creativity. It crawls to us, desperate: "Please." It wheezes."I am only what you make of me."

Well who the fuck has time for that? Boardgames have rules, big-people no-fuck-around rules, and when I'm playing a good game it's obvious who's turn it is and what I'm supposed to be doing. There is not shortage of rules in the D&D universe, but that's a problem too.

Ahh! Are you lost? So am I, and I've been sifting through manuals for days.

It is whatever comes out of you when sitting down to play, and we betray our Disney-esque programming in our obvious longing for hideous sub-species who are necessarily malevolent to do battle with and squash heroically.

Fuck Goblins. They're ugly and a lower life form and always bad. We attack!

At all turns the question of scope rears its hideous, slavering maw:

If you want something that can be anything, you can't tell it what... not to be?

Can someone check my pulse?

I'm overwhelmed with curiosity. If every game can be whatever I want it to be, then the only limitation is me, and I failed if I didn't make it awesome enough for me. Also, that means that the game itself represents a potentially infinite repository of fun that I may or may not be accurately tapping into at any given time. So any time I alot for D&D is a good investment, because it is (via the possibility, for all intents and purposes) Maximum Fun, and also any moment it is not Maximum Fun is wasted. If one in ten times I spend playing D&D is Maximum Fun then all the rest of it was worth it, because the meta game is vying always to learn how to recreate the Maximum Fun for a Maximum Period, which is limited always by player scheduling and snack/beverage reliability.

So if x represents the minimum possible amount expended,

MFxMP
----------
xEffort                 = An ideal Dungeons and Dragons game

It all looks perfect on paper, I know, but perfect it is not. Playing D&D is fun because playing make-believe is fun. It's the first game anyone learns and for a few it's the last. If you get invited, go to a D&D party, anyone can do it. This really is one of those situations where latching on to people who are more skilled than you, doing little and contributing where you think you can while minimizing mistakes can truly generate a positive yield reliably.

If, however, like me you find team sports repulsive, you might find the challenge of coexisting with whoever would agree to such an unclean ritual a challenging social puzzle that offered minimal personal risk and real potential for human connection, if in brief spurts.

Play D&D