Dungeons & Dragons

I know several people who play the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. They're doctors, lawyers, programmers, bankers, in short - adults. Known as D&D to its fans and players, it isn't about maladjusted angst-ridden teen boys running around in dark caves pretending to kill one another and sometimes succeeding (That was the plot of a real movie I saw once - Tom Hanks was even in it).

Instead, D&D is old-school game play. There is no sleek console required, no computer, no wires, no chips (other than the potato kind maybe). It requires imagination, communication skills, some grasp of math (probably the reason I never got into it), some graph paper, a pencil and a motley assortment of odd multi-sided dice. It also requires that each player create an identity and the process of creating a character (referred to as "rolling a character") is all about coming up with something original and that feels like a person you'd want to embody while still respecting the rules of the game. Goffman would have loved it.

Another thing the game most often requires is time. While many newer gamers play weekly 2-3 hour sessions, many of the more hardcore players prefer games that last an entire weekend or even an entire week. These game groups become very dedicated to each other, creating their own small very loyal communities, occasionally travelling long distances to play with a specific group they've become a part of over time.

D&D is in its 30th year, and while it was touch and go for a while through the late 80s and into 90s as Pong gave way to Donkey Kong which lead to Halo, it's enjoying a resurgence despite our digitized world.

Wizards of the Coast, the owners of the license and copyright for D&D, could be credited with this resurgence. In a brilliant move that coincided with the 21st century ongoing clash around copyright versus freedom of information, WoC released in 2000 its new D20 way of playing version 3.0 of the game and announced that the new D20 game system underlying the play would be open source. So long as their well-laid out rules on using the system were respected, publishers were free to based other games on the system.

This has paved the way for other companies to use the game system to deliver games that use other themes not related to wizards and elves and orcs. A few such game are Star Wars and Spycraft.

This is significant because it allows players to built a base of knowledge in a single system that can be played across multiple environments, leveraging their investments in the game books, diversifying their world possibilities and giving WoC a dedicated and increasingly sophisticated pool of players to whom to market add-ons and magazines and such.

It also enabled a thriving online community of dedicated players who regularly contribute public goods to the gaming community, such as player character generators, world scenarios and maps and various kinds of arcana. With hundreds of websites, mailing lists, webrings and a still-thriving Usenet newsgroups centred around the game, D&D is very much a part of the net. One of the more popular gamer-run online communities, EN World, recently raised a respectable amount of money in a very short time to keep their community going, all based on a simple request for donations by the communities caretakers.

D&D play groups are among the more popular groups on Meetup.com.

The book players need to know the rules, the Player's Handbook, has a very respectable Amazon.com sales ranking of 1,031 out of all books on Amazon (it sells better than the Bible). There is even a Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies coming out in April 2005.

Hundreds from around the world flock annually to a gaming convention called Gen Con to learn more about what will be new and to reconnect with other avid players. There is even a decent book out that traces the roots of the current digital RPG and MMORPG to D&D.

Just goes to show that technology hasn't completely supplanted face-to-face game-centred group sociability. It also shows that community at all scales, small scale micro and massively networked, is alive and well as centred around D&D.