Happy 40th anniversary, Dungeons & Dragons, from all your grateful geeks

It wasn’t a slow news day for those scouring the Web’s wooly fringes for the asinine and arcane. In the end, I had five topics to choose from: (1) Incredibly obvious scientific studies, (2) the highly creepy and cold-sweat-inducing news that Apple is patenting technology designed to target ads based not just on behavior but also on your mood, (3) the budding church of Kanye West, or (4) how (and why) the Pentagon is saving BlackBerry.

Then I happened upon choice number 5: the realization that it’s the 40th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons. That clinched it.

Seeing how my demographic tends to be geeks in varying stages of age or decay (and a surprisingly large contingent of incarcerated females with low standards and histories of violence against men and animals), I know D&D has figured significantly in many of our lives, especially the complete lack of nonplatonic dates until college — and that’s being generous. However, if you suggest this to an old-timey player, he’ll regale you with tales of high school flesh exploitation that would make Tiger Woods pale, even as the raconteur’s nasal dimensions quadruple and his pants spontaneously combust.

Yes, our group, like most, did have some girls playing, but we didn’t realize one of them was a woman until two years in, and the other set her own ground rules, including who could and couldn’t make eye contact with her. We happily complied.

If you’ve never played the game, here is my very brief description (you’re welcome, America): Picture a group of social outcasts in denial sitting at a pizza-box laden table pretending to be various medieval/Tolkienesque creatures in story lines invented by the Dungeon Master, also known as the Chief Virgin, but where the player’s fantasy characters have free will — or at least think they do.

Everyone attempts to play their character with attitude, and success is determined by an array of different-colored and different-sized die generally stored in blue Crown Royal bags, as well as weird voices from both players and the CV. A typical session can last up to 36 hours, during which time we all enthusiastically agree that this was way more fun than going to the prom and engaging in normal human interaction.

Hip to be square

The game has come back into vogue in recent years as many celebrities have come out of the dice bag and admitted that they, too, used to (or even still) roll the plastic polyhedrons: rock band Nine Inch Nails, Vin Diesel, Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Stephen Colbert, Tom Hanks, and supposedly Darryl Hannah, among quite a few others. The general consensus among these folks is that it’s a fantastic activity for creative types and pretty much taught them all they needed to know about life.

I agree, especially with the part where if you’re low on gold you just go out into the woods, hack up other creatures, and loot theirs. It’s highly possible that the concept of the home invasion was pioneered at a gaming table. Also, its reliance on fictional magic and its attempts to get players thinking about the nature of good and evil spawned a backlash from the right-wing Christian set that continues to this day but went largely ignored by people who were already abstaining from original sin even if it wasn’t voluntary.

From D&D to data centers

What happens to gamers after a high school career spent stuffed into lockers working up dungeon maps on reams of graph paper? Usually one of two paths, with the obvious exception of the road to entertainment celebrity and deviance: They either opt for a degree in engineering and turn into well-balanced adults, or (like me) they land a completely unmarketable creative liberal arts degree, like a major in comparative Russian short stories with a pot minor, and from there straight to debtor’s prison.

Sadly, the game has gone through multiple revisions since its inception in 1974 through a collaboration between two since-sainted geeks, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, reaching its generally accepted peak in the Advanced 2nd Edition somewhere in the ’80s. But in the opinion of many old-school fans, including this demented reporter, it declined from there into a game that minimizes imagination and instead promotes the sale of inscrutable playing cards and action figures with PC cross-over products.

Hasbro, which acquired current publisher Wizards of the Coast in 1999 — which had, in turn, taken over from the original D&D manufacturer, TSR, in 1997 — recently announced the impending fifth edition of the game that it says will be optimized for play on multiple electronic devices while still maintaining the original role-playing tabletop flavor. This claim is so ludicrous it might as well be telling midlife-crisis-leaning men that Civil War reenactments are a great way to meet women.

Despite not having played since 1991, I, like many previous players, still suffer from an inability to let go of my D&D Chief Virgin past and have all my locker-scrawled maps, my descriptions of non-existent people and places, and my collection of ubiquitously pneumatic female miniature action figures clad in chainmail bikinis. I’m also inexorably drawn to the mall, like Google to an overpriced acquisition, whenever a new edition comes out, and I spend another $75 and more on core rule books I’ll never use. I’ve stuffed all this into unmarked boxes tucked in a musty attic corner lest Pammy find them and think better of continuing our relationship.

Nevertheless, I credit the game with shaping many of my life choices over the years, which means I should probably burn Hasbro’s offices to the ground. But for those few that actually improved whatever situation I was currently wrestling, I’m thankful. Happy anniversary D&D, let’s hope you remain analog and Apple never makes an app out of you.