Imagine a choose-your-own-adventure book where you write your own endings. Throw in camaraderie, booze, and mythical beasts, and you have Dungeons and Dragons (D&D, booze not required but encouraged). D&D was often shown in popular culture as a bunch of nerdy teens sitting around a table getting excited at slaying a dragon. But, today, there has been a massive resurgence in interest, thanks in part to Stranger Things and the pandemic, no doubt.

The premise is simple: D&D is a role-playing game where one person, the all-mighty Dungeon Master (DM), builds a world for the humble Player Characters (PCs) to explore while accomplishing a major goal. The world built by the DM can come from well-known universes published in D&D books, or be entirely original. The game relies on the imagination of both the PCs and the DM to create an engaging experience. While the DM has plans for the party, the actual story (and pitfalls that befall players) are the result of the choices the PCs make and how the DM responds.

In this way, D&D is an art. It is an avenue of expressive creation, both for the DM spinning the tale, and for the PC in the group. It is similar to jazz. While there might be a specific tune the band is playing, improvisation and musical conversation between the instruments mean each time they play the experience is different. The sections might be the same, but the vocabulary, the specific notes, the harmonic progressions are loose, fluid, and emerge based on the interplay between the bass, the guitar, the saxophone, the piano. D&D is the same, where the DM has a general direction, but the story is created by the decisions and interactions of the PCs.

The DM

I don’t have any experience as a DM (I’m hoping to get my first campaign going soon!), so I do not have as deep an understanding of playing this role.

DMs practice more “traditional” storytelling in D&D. Before the game begins, the DM creates the world the players will interact with and move through. Various non-player characters (NPCs), locations, lore, natural features, etc. must be meticulously thought out. This can be accomplished with help from various books (mentioned earlier), or, they can create the world entirely themselves, taking as much or as little from books or other sources. A DM can also make the world more real through props such as maps. Drawing a real map and plotting the location of the group as they traverse the world or fight an Ogre creates deeper immersion.

The DM is also an actor in their world, and must respond to the actions of the players. A good DM will make their world feel real to the players during the game. The best DMs are practically voice actors (like Brennan Lee Mulligan or Matt Mercer), with a wide range of different voices to give the NPCs in the game, enriching the players’ experience. A DM must also be somewhat adept at improvisation, as players will never follow the “plan” that the DM draws out. Going with the flow and still creating a cohesive and fun experience take effort and creative thinking.

The PC

From the perspective of the player—an adventurer searching for dungeons to explore and dragons to slay—D&D is performative art and self-exploration.

As a PC, D&D gives me a character sheet to be filled with numbers (stats, buffs, levels, modifiers, etc.) and words (inventory, plot points, awards, etc.). These components provide fertile ground for creative character construction. While physical traits like strength, constitution, and dexterity are present, so too are intellectual and emotional ones: intelligence, charisma, and wisdom. Each character also has a race and a class (sometimes multiple classes!), and potential history pertinent to the world. Then there are guides, like the Player’s Handbook and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, that provide backstories, histories, and systems for the various races and classes present, allowing easy creation of unique and deep characters.

Why are these game mechanics important? Multiple reasons. First, grounding the game in numbers allows for battles to take place according to some logic, giving the game structure. Second, they provide suspense and chaos. Every D&D player knows the sweet success and bitter pain of being at the mercy of the fickle 20-sided dice gods.

A mission could be going well, with perfectly executed strategic moves, and one unlucky d20 roll could cause your attack to miss, or your character to overlook stumble into an ambush, resulting in an attack. This randomness causes D&D to be exciting and unpredictable, forcing the players to be interactive and alert, rather than passive and distracted.

Performance Art

Perhaps most importantly, the depth of character creation permits the player to assume the role of the character, like in acting. PCs very often anthropomorphize their character, giving them a voice, a manner of speaking, a particular temperament (on an alignment chart), and other human qualities. This is not a prerequisite for the game, but it is popular.

This creation is where the performative art arises. The character is a vessel for the player’s self-expression: doing a voice, miming the actions, truly “acting” as their character lets them get in a different headspace than their own. For example, if I am a “high elf” that comes from wealth and prosperity, I am more arrogant and bold in my statements. I rely on charisma, intelligence, and, depending on the location and other NPCs, simply my status as a high elf to solve problems and intimidate foes. However, if I am a paladin, I would value courage, heroism, and classical interpretations of strength and chivalry.

Self-Exploration

It is here that self-expression and the character provide a safe space for the player themselves to explore issues that may be more difficult to explore otherwise. I consider myself a creative person, but I have always been shy when it came to authentic expression among a group of people. D&D quickly provided a way for me to more easily act in accordance with my thoughts and values, without the added social pressure.

D&D becomes a playground for exploring various personality traits and group interactions. A simple example: a normally shy, perhaps more emotionally repressed person, could create a boisterous and aggressive fighter. Throughout the campaign, they would act, with less fear of real-world social repercussions, in a more outgoing and confrontational way. Their character is loud, so when faced with a problem, they might loudly complain or act out in anger.

Even though it is just acting in a game, these are responses that the human behind the character might never do in real-life. They might bottle up their anger, or constantly strive to be the rational one at the expense of their inner emotions. But in the campaign, they can feel a toned down facsimile of that anger, which may help them outside the game.

Interpersonal Skills

There is also value in working with the other PCs in your group. Working together provides an avenue to work on very real interpersonal skills in a low-stakes way, be it to overcome imaginary obstacles from the DM or the consequences of your own actions.

While the DM has a general sense of where they want the players to go in the game, it is possible for any player to act any way they want. Those who refuse to cooperate in-game cause the rate of play to slow down. Deciding where to go, and what to do can be difficult. In an open-world game, where literally anything can happen, there are conflicts of interest, and differing goals that can make the game more contentious. While playing with people of similar temperament in real-life can ward off game-stopping problems, sometimes there is even tension among friends, and the group must come to a harmonious agreement to advance.

These agreements are influenced by the different character alignments. During character creation, players choose an alignment. This is on an axis from good to neutral to evil, and lawful to neutral to chaotic. This influences the choices and personalities of the characters. An example is below

For example, a chaotic evil character is one who might act like The Joker, unpredictable and always deleterious to the efforts of the group (these alignments are sometimes banned, as they make the game less fun for everyone else). Once again, getting deep into acting as a character and playing out these alignments in various situations help in exploring one’s own personality, trying out different social “masks” without fear of retribution. Plus, it’s just plain fun.

The DM’s improvisation, plus the PC’s experimentation, combined with the random rolls of the d20, make D&D a uniquely impactful performative art experience. Other storytelling games exist, as do games of chance, but D&D is unique in its ability to combine the two into an interactive play through.

Amateurs Welcome

Perhaps the most important part of D&D is how chance and collaboration work to enable the accepted accessibility or “amateurishness” and of the game. D&D has become relatively simple compared to its origins (at least for 5e, don’t look up THAC0!). The game itself can get complex, but the barrier to entry for participation is low. It is highly encouraged to bring new people to the game, and the community does a good job at fighting against gatekeeping.

D&D can be as involved as you want. A group of friends can sit down one night with a twelve pack and a sheet of paper and head off into a mythical fairy-tale realm, and walk away at the end. Or a campaign can last decades, with 6-hour long sessions every week and complex spreadsheets tracking experience and loot.

One is no better than the other, and everyone is on the same team. There is no hierarchy, no judgment. Just like-minded people getting together to slay some monsters (rarely dragons, ironically). In a world, that so often pushes for perfectionism in everything, having a fun game where mistakes don’t matter and no one is trying to show the other up is refreshing.

A Shared Hallucination

Have you ever thought about how reading is simply staring at shapes on a page and hallucinating?

D&D is an example of creating a shared hallucination. With the DM’s spoken word, and the quick roll of the dice, a fantasy world takes shape in different people’s heads. Add in the visual components of miniature figurines representing characters, alcohol (or substance of choice), and the feeling of being in a tribe, and it’s not hard to see why D&D is so appealing to many.

D&D is valuable as an art “exhibit” in that it is entirely performative, leading to shared social values, personal growth, and lasting friendships. As mentioned, in the popular Netflix original Stranger Things, the group of boys plays D&D regularly. In turn, D&D influences the strangeness that ends up consuming the town. One of the demonic creatures that terrorizes their town is a “Demogorgon,” which originates from D&D.

The world built by humans is a series of stories. We explore our world, inside and out, as stories we tell ourselves. D&D is a reflection of the human condition as much as painting, composition, or other “traditional” art forms. More akin to acting than any other activity, D&D is unique in its accepted amateurishness. While good voice acting can make the world believable, it is not essential. Sometimes a laughably bad campaign can be the most important, fun, and connecting experience a group of friends can have.

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This post is a part of the #100DaysToOffloadchallenge. I really went for it on this one, and I am proud of what I have written. Could it have been better? Yes, and maybe I will edit it in the future. But for me, right now, finishing posts and “good enough” is more important.