Dungeons and Dragons Saved My Life | Hacker News Reader

Dungeons and Dragons Saved My Life

newyorker.com

88 pointssizzle31 comments

A forthcoming documentary about the game characterizes D. & D.’s origins as akin to Facebook’s: “A cautionary tale of an empire built by friends and lost through betrayal, enmity, poor management, hubris and litigation

I have to object to a statement like this. While it seems about everything that America invents winds-up in the legal system, the idea that D&D could have been an "empire" is just wrong-headed. D&D expanded regardless of TSR's smooth moves or missteps because it has always been a very player-driven game, the ultimate user-generated-content-game really. Just as much and for the same reasons, D&D never had that much potential to become that much larger than it did become. Only a certain type of person would play the game and not very much would stop them from playing. Some company might make more or less money from this culture but the size of the culture pretty strictly limits the profits involved.

It's worth noting that D&D 3.5 was released with an "open gaming license" and thus the game was forked by the Paizo company who maintain their Pathfinder system closer the original game than the present D&D 4.0 released by now-Hasbro-owned Wizards Of The Coast, which just reinforces that no single company is likely to create or destroy D&D-like role-playing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_Roleplaying_Game

D&D 4e was suffocated inside the company by a cultural backlash against the Open Game License. Certain factions within Hasbro were apparently convinced that third parties like Paizo were raking in the fat buxx from supplementary D&D content that they rightfully deserved.

So 4e was released initially without any third-party licensing at all; when it eventually came about, it was unacceptably restrictive. By that point most of Hasbro's third parties had done what they were asked and gotten the fuck out of the business of D&D licensed content anyway.

Hasbro ended up doing a pretty shitty job providing content for 4e in the long term. They released two semi-compatible reboots of the system within a couple of years, neither of which actually fixed any meaningful issues (they tried to make character creation simpler, while 4e's biggest issue was the lack of rules for quickly resolving minor combats). Very little supplemental content was released in 4e's lifetime, including for most of the first-party settings (Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, etc.) that D&D fans were looking forward to.

...

They even managed to fuck up Forgotten Realms!

(signed, a genuine and disappointed fan of 4th edition)

To further on your observations: it really didn't take all that much to play anyway. An imaginative and descriptive DM, a few enthusiastic players, some dice, general character info sheets, and some basic play rules. Granted the rulebooks are what the publishers made money on. But me and my group of friends really had our own rules anyway.

I participated in a multi-year campaign, sometimes for dozens of hours a week, almost always by phone. The DM would just render everything via speech, occasionally pausing to roll some dice. I still vividly remember some of the adventures. We'd read the AD&D texts, but mainly for ideas and the monstrous illustrations.

Wow. Wouldn't talking on the phone for hours in the pre-skype days become extremely expensive?

It was a local call, or cheap enough my parents never made a fuss about it. Outside of major cities, the US is so terribly spread-out that transit for kids is not very accessible.

At least here in Germany we had affordable phone flatrates over ISDN way before Skype.

> D&D never had that much potential to become that much larger than it did become.

See, for contrast, Games Workshop which is a pretty big deal in the UK with shops on many highstreets.

It's still roughly the same social niche though. And the Warhammer miniatures wargame may be semi-mainstream, but its RPG manifestation is much less popular and so only fitfully supported by GW.

That's kind of the point: the same social niche had the power to create a company with shops on many high streets playing tabletop games with little figures and lots of dice.

So for parent comment to suggest that it's obvious for D&D to have stayed so small is a bit odd. It had potential to be much bigger than it was.

I'm not sure if the not-great animation series helped or hindered D&D uptake.

My point isn't that D&D stayed small. The entire US roll playing milieu is fairly large. My point is that the size of this milieu wasn't very likely to effected by how well the owners of D&D managed a supposed budding empire (the original quote compared the Games' growth to Facebook's, remember).

Just as much, you're exaggerating a bit the size of Games Workshop. It's just a game store that also publishes some games [1]. It's got the size of both things but that's about it - it's hard the ups and downs appropriate to those two uncertain businesses. Everyone in the table top game business faces the challenge that once they successful sell a package, their customers can play for years and never pay another penny. This makes game-selling a labor of love rather than empire building, as anyone in business should be able to sell you.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_Workshop

> Just as much, you're exaggerating a bit the size of Games Workshop.

From the Wikipedia link you provide:

> The group reported revenues of £123.1 million in 2011.[28] This is a reduction in revenue of £3.4 million on 2010 but still translated to an operating profit of £15.3 million. In 2011 the company averaged 1,901 staff across all activities.

Not too shabby, especially when they didn't have the Pokemon juggernaut to help them out for years.

as an aside, the new edition of D&D is more role-play focused and designed less like a MMORPG

"more role-play focused" is an odd way to describe it. 4e had well-designed, precise, and rich tactical combat rules. It was also as role-playing friendly as any previous edition of D&D (which unfortunately isn't saying much). I had much better role-playing experiences with 4e than I ever did with 3.5 or earlier.

The basic rules they recently published for D&D 5 read a lot like the 3.x rules, to the point that I was referring back to the 3.5 Player's Handbook to see the differences in some areas.

This wasn't really the focus of the article, but I'm annoyed by how so many articles feel the need to "defend" D&D. The 80's and the height of D&D hysteria was over 25 years ago.

If there's anyone who seriously thinks D&D is harmful in some way, they are fringe elements. Even the designation of D&D players as losers is losing ground. A lot of people that I would never think of as the type to play a table-top game have joined my campaigns.

I don't even hear very much about censoring violent video games anymore. It's time to let go of the persecution complex.

I played RPG tabletop games mostly in the 90s, and in Spain it wasn't really a "persecution complex".

One man was murdered by two young guys while playing a "role playing game" one of them had invented. That spawned a massive media offensive against RPGs and uneducated people consuming trash TV basically believed all the crap they were told (also some movies were filmed "based" in the incident).

I remember my neighbours were really concerned because we played "that kind of games" and asked my mom if it was "safe". I think we had just started playing Vampire back then (after years of LOTR and Rune Quest, I never played D&D myself), and my mother was really amused with that kind of question (she said to one of them "vampires don't exist, you know that, don't you?"). I guess we were tagged as "weirdos".

I'm not sure my parents really understood what was all about, but I remember my dad saying "that must be good" because we could spend 4 hours reading books, tables, and filling forms just to make a character. I guess he saw himself doing his tax return and our game looked pretty much like that ;).

I think you're right; I also think that is a common attitude of those of us who were gaming at the time of hysteria (as the author was). Maybe this article is for the author, a reclaiming of how awesome gaming was for some of us, and discarding the the rubbish notions of that time.

Or maybe that's just me projecting my feelings about the article ;-)

My mom still believes that D&D is some kind of dangerous anti-religious thing. Not that it disproves your point. And the "nerd" stereotype definitely still exists.

I remember tentatively asking my mom if I could go play D&D with some friends in the late 90s. I was aware of what happened in the 80s, and my parents were quite religious and strict.

She laughed and said "Of course? Why would I mind?" Apparently, my uncles had played, and she somehow wasn't even aware there was some kind of controversy.

Definitely. I used to play RPGs as a teenager, but now when I see 20 or 30-somethings playing RPGs (or announcing it on FB), I think "OMG nerd".

When I want to relax I read or play casual games, but other than that I'm just too busy with, y'know, life.

You seem fairly busy with signaling to others how cool you are. That's sort of an ironic turn of events if you were willing to play RPGs in high school.

Huh? If you think I'm a bragging idiot/hipster/wannabe cool guy, you obviously don't know me at all. And wow, did I hit a nerve there, with all the people downvoting me. Insecure much?

I'm just saying, I prefer (or choose) not to play RPGs any more, because I have my priorities elsewhere. If you like RPGs, then good for you. It's just the kind of people I see announcing RPGs, well, they certainly seem very nerdish, and this is me, Mr Nerd, speaking, so go figure what other, "normal"/"average" people think.

I was mostly seconding Houshalter's commend about "the "nerd" stereotype definitely still exists." Yes, it does. Very much so.

I don't know anything about you, I'm just telling you how your comment came off. Personally I have no skin in the game because I've never played an RPG, so you should put your defensive accusations of insecurity on hold for a second and consider whether there really was something about your comment that made it come off the way I interpreted it. Hint: it wasn't simply agreeing that table top gamers tend to be nerdy.

Fair enough. I was only sharing my thoughts and impressions, thus the phrasing "I think" and similar words.

My preference doesn't in any way imply I think less of others that like playing games. I generally like playing games/watching movies/reading books, it's just my priorities that often direct me otherwise.

Yes, maybe the OMG Nerd sounds offensive to some, but then that's just life. It's how others see you if you happen to be a nerd. I am also a bit nerdy, so I also have to accept that reality sometimes.

The 80's and the height of D&D hysteria was over 25 years ago.

This may not have been "D&D hysteria", but when I was at CTY in the mid-'90s, role-playing games were banned. Hence, the infamous role-playing-game-with-playing-cards, "Scum: the Masquerade".

That may have been there for practical reasons, though. As it was explained to me, the fear was that people would have a less social experience if holed up playing games all weekend.

If you are interested in the history of D&D, war gaming, and other role-playing games, I highly recommend Jon Peterson's encyclopedic Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures:

https://amzn.com/0615642047

Good article. My own experiences with the game are a near mirror to the author.

My first thought was "Was this article written by Fat Neil???"

I'll get deservedly downvoted for an off topic joke, but this time I don't care :)

Apparently even HN can't downvote a Community reference!

Please. The people who played D&D at my high school were really tortured outcasts, and I don't think they had a good time. I doubt D&D was that great for anyone.

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