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In fact, people have been asked in online chatrooms: "Do you play Dungeons & Dragons?" to which one recorded response is, "Yes. I’ve been playing since Baldur’s Gate (the computer game, 1999) came out."

We’re going to clarify the origins of Dungeons & Dragons for you. It’s more than just the movie.

MORE THAN JUST A MOVIE

Humanity has been a story-telling culture for many more millennia than it has been a television culture (in years; roughly 4000:0 to be more accurate). Mankind long ago sat around the fire in a social gathering, broke bread together and told stories. Sometimes they even got up and participated in the stories: there were no scripts; there was just each individual’s participation. No one story had a beginning, or an end, just the participation of each member. It was an Oral Culture.

As time wound on, we moved to a more literate society, and life became much more linear as we wrote more and more of it down. Everything gained and beginning, middle and end. Stories started at the best point they could, they wound onwards, and then culminated in a climax at the end. They had to be exciting and interesting, because the reader was passive; non-participatory. They had to have a reason to read the story, otherwise they wouldn’t.

Literacy, liberating us by showing us there was more to the World, but it also defined our Worldview, confining it to the words on the page. It was a Literal Culture.

Then along came movies and television. The truly passive medium, where the participants became ultra famous, and we passive viewers watched them grew jealous of their fame, and their participation in such fascinating stories. We became obsessed with them, without realising that participation isn’t something you work hard for, it’s something you can do yourself. It was a Visual Culture.

There’s been a return to the roots of Oral Culture. It’s dressed in modern trappings, with all sorts of tools replacing feathered headdresses, drums and warming fires. It also borders upon the Literal culture, but doesn’t draw heavily upon them. It is like acting, yet there is no script. It is akin to directing a movie, yet you direct only yourself. It’s like a dream, only more real. You are the star, or you are one of many stars. The stories happen around you, but you also make them happen. It borders on the mythical, the dreamlike, and the ritualistic. It is participatory - for if you didn’t participate, you would get nothing out of it.

It is Role-playing.

ISN’T THAT FOR GEEKS?

The concept for Role-playing isn’t new; it’s several millennia old. Around the fires of the Oral Culture, each participant took the parts in their mythical stories and dance, and no two stories were the same. The same goes for role-playing.

Since its returning popularity in the Early 70s, Role-playing has been the realm of the geek, the person with no social life, those without a decent grip on reality. Which is exactly the reason they got into it.

Role-playing can be a release from the pressures of day-to-day life, a chance to get out of your head, into someone else’s and interact in an imaginary landscape with imaginary characters and in imaginary situations; and it can seem very real to the participants.

Role-playing in its modern incarnation, has taken the role of games - like monopoly, there’s a series of abstract rules and limitations there to represent the randomness and chances that happen in real life. Unlike monopoly, when the policeman says go to jail, do not pass go, etc, Role-playing allows you more options.

Role-playing has also had a bad stigma from various religious groups. Reactions ranging from "it’s an introduction into the dark arts of black magic" to "you mustn’t do that, you must concentrate on real things, the here and now." These have been undeserved; Role-playing has a bad stigma because it is generally misunderstood. Why would people want to sit around in a small table in a confined space, rolling dice and declaring their intentions for the dragon?

WHAT’S WITH THE DRAGON?

One of the most popular beasts of myth is the Dragon. Large, ferocious, capable of flight and deadly with it’s searing breath, it has been immortalised in any number of fictions. The East have their benevolent dragons, wingless and craving of milk. The Americas have the feathered serpent, and Aztec god figure, and the West has the scaly beast that fought Saint George over a virgin sacrifice.

These romantic ideals have been captured in the modern standards of Role-playing. What better than to be your very own Saint George and slay your very own scaly beast?

AND THE DUNGEONS?