Flagons and dragons

Our speaker this time was Aidan Rothnie, talking to us about the birth of Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy role-playing game that’s still going strong after more than 50 years. Those who know about it won’t be surprised that quite a high proportion of the people in the room (especially men) had been players themselves, and in some cases still were. Those who don’t know about it will probably be mystified as to what it’s all about. Aidan took us through the very early days of wargaming—games that mimic actual warfare, traditionally played using small model soldiers. Typically each player plays a general in charge of an army and the models represent their troops. There are rules governing what the troops can and can’t do and their chances of success in any engagement, taking into account all kinds of factors, such as the range at which they are firing, the nature of the terrain, who has the high ground, and the condition of the troops themselves. There is always an element of chance, represented by rolling dice, but the rules attempt to mimic what would be likely to happen in real life. Many famous people have been closet wargamers, including H.G. Wells and Peter Cushing, and enthusiasts will spend as much time collecting and painting the models—historically accurately, of course—as they do actually playing. 

The evolution towards games like Dungeons & Dragons came firstly with the introduction of Lord-of-the-Rings-style fantasy elements into medieval warfare (i.e. rules for something for which there is no real life to imitate, much to the horror of traditionalists) and secondly with the shift from players representing armies to representing individual characters. At the beginning of a game dice are used to establish the nature of the character you are playing—their physical and mental attributes, particular skills and even their personal values and philosophy. The other big shift is in the role of the referee: in tabletop wargaming the referee is there to apply the rules and resolve disputes, but in role-playing games the referee has much more of a free reign: he is essentially a storyteller, presenting the players with a scenario in which their characters find themselves. The players decide how their characters will act, and the referee (or “Dungeon Master”, as he is known in D&D) tells them what happens as a result. There are rules, of course (whole books of them) but the referee can ultimately do whatever he or she pleases. A successful referee is one who creates a narrative that that the players find engaging, in which they feel they have agency and a reasonable chance of success if they play well. In that sense “playing” Dungeons & Dragons is less like a game than like workshopping a theatrical production.

Aidan introduced us to the inventors of the game, Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, and their struggles to produce the rulebooks as a commercial enterprise, plus their inevitable falling out and Gygax’s eventual loss of the company to new majority shareholders. (I’ve just discovered that in the mid-1980s the company, TSR, employed 6% of the population of Gary’s home town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.) Nevertheless, the game (now owned by an outfit called Wizards of the Coast) is today more commercially successful than ever, with more people playing it globally than ever before. I’m not sure how the Wizards have done it, but apparently 39% of players are now female, whereas Aidan mentioned that back in the day there were so few girls playing D&D that the makers introduced special rules to help male players to play female characters. (These rules were laughable even by the standards of the 1970s, and can’t have done much to help teenaged gamers understand the workings of the female mind…) 

Many thanks to Aidan for a talk that prompted a lot of heated discussion and reminiscence—so much so that Matthew Howard (who clearly didn’t get D&D at all) felt the need to pull the plug on the debate so we could get on with the drinking. You can see more photos from the evening at www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720328672092 and a video of the talk at youtu.be/Fz6ns_lR8GA.