Dungeons and Dragons

With the death of Dungeons and Dragon's creator Gary Gygax last week, there has been more acknowledgement of his importance than perhaps I would have expected. Now, I didn't know who he was, but I surely know what D&D is. Yes, I have played it, just a few times. But I have played lots of different role-playing games, and then, after the community of college was gone, play-by-mail games. I was never a hard-core nerd, but I was on the periphery.

The concept of role-playing games is, I suspect, a chance for the more anti-social among us to bond over creating an alternative persona that is much more agreeable than the one we inhabit. Gygax used the kind of fantasy realm that was very similar to J.J.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, and the characters were warriors and wizards. But who could have foreseen what grew out that? Certainly Zelda, Ultima, and all the way up to World of Warcraft and Second Life owe a debt to Gygax's creation, because as the technology progresses, people are still looking for a way to have adventures and be someone else.

To me, though, the best way to enjoy a role-playing game is in someone's basement or dorm room, with a bunch of guys who are into sci-fi (it was almost always guys--women seemed not to be as interested), with the various multi-sided dice, the character sheets, and arguing over things like, "How can a guy only get one hit point if he's just been shot point-blank in the head?" We would play deep into the night until dawn. I played D&D a few times, but the guys I hung with found D&D a bit pedestrian. Instead we played Call of Cthulu, which was based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, or Traveller, which concerned space travel, or Villains and Vigilantes, in which each player created their own unique superhero. Good times.

I wonder if kids still play games that way anymore, or whether it's all remote, with their computers. If so, then they're missing something that I think Gygax probably intended, and that is a kind of socialization that can only come from being face to face with someone.