[MUSIC PLAYING]
I think people play
tabletop games in order
to experiment with roles
and situations that
are just very different
from their everyday lives.
It feels like a cool way to
kind of hack together ideas
that I'm thinking
about anyway and, oh, I
want to go have fun
with my friends.
What all RPG games
have in common
is this collaborative
storytelling process.
The idea that you
would participate
in this open-ended
storytelling experience
was completely groundbreaking.
I trace tabletop games back
mostly to chess, to war games,
and then to role-playing
games, and there's
a fascinating
continuum that goes
through all of those practices.
The earliest things we
know about chess going back
to the Indian subcontinent,
the people who
played it understood
that it taught
some virtues and strategy, to,
say, young officers who wanted
to be able to understand
better how to command troops
in the field.
And when chess came to
Europe and became popular
in the 16th and 17th
centuries, people
continued to adhere
to this belief
that it could help you to learn
how to be a better commander.
The problem was
that by this point,
chess little resembled the
battlefields of the day,
so there was an effort to
try to modernize chess.
People added maps with
detailed skills to them
and artillery ranges
and statistics
of how weapons behaved.
And from there, those were
copied by American sources
late in the 19th century.
There's a particular
game called Strategos
and one of the authors of
Dungeons & Dragons, Dave
Arneson, was part of
the group of gamers
who found Strategos
and kind of adapted it
to their circumstances
at the time.
It's really about exploring
characters and stories.
You have this opportunity
to kind of negotiate
between the players how
the story's going to go,
and that was a radical,
disruptive innovation
at the time that RPGs
came onto the scene.
We would say 1974 when
Dungeons & Dragons came out
was the beginning of RPGs.
Moving stories out of something
you passively experience
and into something
that's interactive
is one of the things that
makes Dungeons & Dragons very
distinct.
You actually get to be the
person making these decisions.
The beauty of
role-playing games
is that you can play
anything you want to play.
You can be anything
you want to be.
You can step outside of
yourself and all the players
at the table are creating
a story together.
And sometimes the Dungeon
Master can create the campaign.
Sometimes the whole party
can create the campaign
as you're adventuring.
He used the necromantic
magic contained within
to call for the army of Red
Warriors from the Netherworld.
And then the
Dungeon Master will
decide the goals of the game
and what you are actually
going to do session
by session every time
you meet-- where
you're going to go,
what's going to happen
to you, things like that.
I focus just on the story.
I don't worry about
the mechanics.
I don't worry about the
monsters, stats, or anything
like that.
At first, I just want
to tell a good story.
So basically what happens
is the DM, the storyteller,
is going to say, all right,
so you walk into this cave.
It's dimly lit.
What do you do?
The goal is to
progress the story
as far as we can
through exploration,
asking questions, feeling
out our surroundings,
getting a sense of what
does it smell like?
Is it damp?
Is it misty?
When I hold my torch,
do I see something
moving in the distance?
Is it low light?
It's dark.
You're underground,
so it's low light.
It's dark.
So basically you're going to
try to continue the story along
as far as you can go until
that Dungeon Master says, "Roll
for it," because as soon
as the Dungeon Master asks
you to roll the
dice, that's when you
have a possibility of failure.
If you roll a natural one
on the saving throw, you die.
With the tabletop
RPG, there's no limits
to what you can do aside
from your dice, really.
You're just limited in
how well you succeed.
And how well you succeed always
makes for a better story,
always adds a new element
that can be build off
to something unexpected or
a change in the scenario
that then everybody
just jumps on
and can go from there, which
makes it very much about what's
happening right
now, in the moment,
together sitting
down at this game.
I'm interested in
world-building and hanging out
with my friends, so
for me tabletop games
are a personal experience.
They're about collectively
telling a story,
coming up with
really cool ideas,
and seeing how different ideas
kind of fit together and change
over time in an unexpected way.
So every two years,
I'd love to force
myself to sit down and say,
what are the things I'm
interested in really
abstractly in terms of theory,
and then how can I bring
those things into a fun game
experience?
So for example,
a couple of years
ago, we all had
agreed that we liked
the more sci-fi elements
in D&D and we didn't
like the magic stuff as much.
So I said, OK, there's
not going to be any magic
and there is going
to be basically
a third lobe to the
brain that allows
for some sort of weird
piezoelectric psychic stuff--
so mind reading-- because
the rules are very flexible
and because it's a very personal
experience with your friends.
The game has become about the
future of a humanity that's
been genetically engineered.
RPGs are a great way
to talk about big ideas
precisely because they're
fun and they're not
your subjective consciousness.
They're a group consciousness.
You guys come in.
I'll raise the game for you.
FEMALE (OFF-SCREEN): Thank you.
Run!
I really love that
sort of exchange
and the idea of collectivity
that I'm setting out
some big framing conventions,
but my players are filling it
in and they can kind of add
to the framework, the world
that I've invested in.
You're always letting
them make choices
and you're always bringing in
crazy new thematic punches out
of left field.
And the more you play
with people, the more
that they surprise
you with their ideas.
It's an imaginary game, and it's
only happening in your heads,
so it's fun.
I think the culture's been
influenced in an incredibly
positive way by D&D.
D&D paved the way
or blazed the trail for the
acceptance of geek culture
and maybe helped later
generations feel like it's
OK to do what they do now.
I would argue, we wouldn't
have the popularity of Lord
of the Rings or Harry
Potter or World of Warcraft
had it not been for D&D making
the world a little safer
for geekdom.
All that stuff that we
see in modern video games
are really entirely
based on what
was pioneered in the game of
Dungeons & Dragons-- things
like choosing a character
and equipping it
with different
things or choosing
the race or the class of the
character or going up a level
or having this sort
of numeric equivalence
to sort of measure how well
your avatar doing in the game.
The fact that these kinds
of games are experiencing
a resurgence has a lot to do
with the pervasive way in which
the internet and all kinds
of non-face-to-face social
activities have completely
invaded our lives.
And I think there's a real
longing in the culture for just
an opportunity to sit around on
a Friday night and play a game.
The biggest thing that
D&D has done, I feel,
has really reconnected us
to our storytelling past,
and there's something
really wonderful
that we still are
able to tell stories
to each other around the table.
I think there's definitely
a resurgence of interest
in tabletop RPGs today.
People are looking
for something to do
and a way to meet people
and play face-to-face again.
I don't know if
it's always going
to be this way, especially in
the era of video games becoming
more socially
acceptable, but there's
a lot of variety within
the world of RPGs.
What I love about D&D
and other RPGs is it
allows us to
entertain ourselves.
It's always going
to appeal to people
who want that experience that
they can't get any other way.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
