I asked for article requests the other day, and one of the responders said that he’d never been into D&D, but that he liked Axis and Allies and a few other strategy games, and did I think he’d like D&D?
Short Answer: I don’t know. Dungeons & Dragons isn’t so much a strategy game as it is a storytelling game with elements of strategy and statistics mixed in. It is therefore a game that tends to attract engineers and math geeks, a population that is often male, detail-oriented, and interested in science fiction, comic books, and all kinds of other “nerdy” stuff. There are lots of other role-playing games besides D&D, of course, but D&D is the most popular, probably because the folks who tend to enjoy the math and strategy embedded in the game also tend to imprint on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien orRobert E. Howard. But it could also be because D&D was the first mover in the Role Playing Game (RPG) market way back in the day. In any event, if basic math and cooperative storytelling sound like interesting game elements to you, then you’ll probably like D&D. On the other hand, if you hate math, never cared whether Batman could beat up Spider-Man, or wouldn’t want your friends to hear your were playing Dungeons and Dragons under any circumstances, then chances are that D&D won’t be your thing. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Still, as Huey Lewis said, “It’s hip to be square.” And that must be true because the fucking Green Lantern led at the box office this weekend with $54 million, and there is nothing cool at all about Green Lantern. GL is as square as it comes. So if Green Lantern can go mainstream—and the fucking Return of the King can win Best Picture!—then it is for damned sure that Dungeons and Dragons can at least gain market share. The only thing that really works against that, I think as far as the major populace goes, is the game’s basic complexity. Played over a table top, D&D takes quite a bit of skull sweat.
Back in the 1970s, insurance adjuster Gary Gygax used insurance actuarial tables to come up with a simple but revolutionary concept for gaming: if I attack you with a weapon, then there’s a certain probability that I’ll hit you with it, and if I hit you, I’ll do some amount of damage based on how hard I hit and what kind of weapon I used. I can model the probability of hitting with the weapon and the amount of damage dealt with dice rolls, and I can improve the accuracy of my results if I use numeric modifiers. So, for example, if I’m a barbarian chief with a magic sword, I might need modifiers for my basic strength and skill with weapons, my proficiency with a sword (as opposed to an axe or a magic wand), the level of enchantment that my magic sword is carrying, and anything else that might apply like advantageous position on the battlefield or the fact that an evil wizard just cast a Blindness spell on me. All of that’s going to give me a basic calculation:
d20 roll + Strength + Level modifier + Enchantment + Proficiency + etc… = Attack Roll
So I roll a 20-sided die, add in all the modifiers, and if the result is higher than the Armor Class of the thing that I’m attacking, I hit it. After that, I roll to see how much damage I did.
That same basic mechanic underlies all of D&D. I have some basic skill at something—hiding in shadows, picking pockets, reading an ancient magical text, bonking people over the head, whatever—and that skill is represented by a set of mathematical modifiers. The influence of random chance is represented by the rolling of dice. Add those two things up, and if I beat whatever score I needed to beat, then I succeed with whatever it was that I was trying to do. If I fail, then I don’t. Either way, as a Player I have to then decide how my Character will react and deal with the resulting situation. When the game is running well, it turns on the actions and reactions of the Player-Characters rather than on the repeated rolling of dice, but the dice are still a decided part of the game.
Which is kind of the point. Gygax used probability and insurance theory as a way to model combat for gaming. But what you do with the ruleset he created is a thing he left more or less entirely up to the folks who bought his game. In D&D, you have a referee, called a Dungeon Master (DM), who sets up situations for the Players and who controls the monsters and the environment. Against this, the Players build Characters (called Player-Characters or PCs) that they then walk through the adventure that the DM has created. The situations are sometimes represented using a map, but the action really takes place in the players’ minds, and it’s important to understand that and buy into it if you’re going to play the game. You have to imagine yourself in the game and act it out. When everybody at the table does it, that’s when it works. If you think this whole conversation sounds ridiculous, then D&D probably isn’t your game. It’s not for everybody.
To me, playing D&D is a lot like writing a comic book. As a DM, I’m basically scripting the adventure. But the writer of a comic is NOT the guy who makes that comic come to life. Just as a comic writer needs lots of help to make a comic, so too a DM needs lots of help to make an adventure. I might have an idea for my Players, but it’s their Characters who star in the story.
Still not sure? I recommend the Critical Hit podcast from MajorSpoilers.com. Listen to a few episodes, and if you like what you hear, give D&D a try. Otherwise, well, there’s lots of other stuff you can do with your time besides playing D&D.
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