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Dungeons & Dragons in popular culture

Aspect of culture From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a fantasy role-playing game first published in 1974. As the popularity of the game grew throughout the late-1970s and 1980s, it became referenced in popular culture more frequently. The complement of games, films and cultural references based on Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasies, characters, and adventures became ubiquitous after the end of the 1970s.

Dungeons & Dragons, and tabletop role-playing games in general, have exerted a deep and persistent impact on the development of all types of video games, from "first-person shooters to real-time strategy games and massively multiplayer online games",[1] which in turn play a significant and ongoing role in modern popular culture.[2]

In online culture, the term dungeon has since come to mean a virtual location where people can meet and collaborate. Hence, multi-user dungeons emerged throughout the 1970s and 1980s as a form of social networks or a social virtual reality.[3] By creating a means for players to assemble and explore an imaginary world, the Dungeons & Dragons rules provided a transition from fantasy literary settings, such as those of author J. R. R. Tolkien, to fully virtual worlds.[4]

Public figures who play or have played Dungeons & Dragons include comedians Stephen Colbert and Chris Hardwick, musician Moby, and actors Vin Diesel, Matthew Lillard, Joe Manganiello, Mike Myers, Patton Oswalt, Wil Wheaton, and Robin Williams.[5][6][7][8][9]

Literature

Books

See also: Dungeons & Dragons (novels)

Independent fiction derived from the Dungeons & Dragons game appeared with the Endless Quest series of books, published by TSR, Inc between 1982 and 1987. The Endless Quest books provided a form of interactive fiction in the style of the Choose Your Own Adventure series.[10] The continuing success of Dungeons & Dragons then sparked an even more extensive series of novels, also published by TSR, Inc. The first of these were based upon the Dragonlance campaign setting, and were released in 1984.[11] There proved to be a lucrative market for these works, and by the 2000s a significant portion of all fantasy paperbacks were being published by Wizards of the Coast, the American game company that acquired TSR, Inc in 1997.[12]

The impact of Dungeons & Dragons on players and culture has inspired reflective non-fiction works:

  • The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange (2007), by novelist Mark Barrowcliffe; a memoir of playing Dungeons & Dragons and other role playing games in the 1970s.[13]
  • American Nerd: The Story of My People (2008) is Time magazine writer Benjamin Nugent's study of the history and culture of people labeled nerds. It includes insights into why people play and enjoy Dungeons & Dragons.[14]
  • Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms (2010), by journalist and gamer Ethan Gilsdorf; a travel memoir about Dungeons & Dragons, role-playing games, and other fantasy and gaming subcultures.[15]
  • Designers & Dragons (2011), by historian Shannon Appelcline, is a book series about the history of the tabletop role-playing games. The first edition was published in 2011 by Mongoose Publishing.[16] Appelcline later wrote an expanded four-volume version, Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry. It was published in 2014 by Evil Hat Productions, with one volume dedicated to each decade from the 1970s to the 2000s.[17] The first edition won a Judges' Spotlight award at the 2012 ENnie Awards;[18] the second edition won the Gold Ennie for Best RPG Related Product in 2015[19] and was a finalist for the Diana Jones Award.[20] Appelcline's next Evil Hat Productions series, titled Designers & Dragons: Origins, will be "a product-by-product chronicle of every item released by TSR for Original D&D, Basic D&D, and Advanced D&D 1st edition".[21] In 2025, this series was funded through a crowdfunding campaign.[22][21][23]
  • Author Shelly Mazzanoble wrote a humorous self-help guide called Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons: One Woman's Quest to Trade Self-help for Elf-help (2011).[24] This followed her guide book, Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game (2007).[25]
  • Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It (2013), by journalist David M. Ewalt; a best-selling history of the game's development and cultural impact.[26]

Several characters created for playing Dungeons & Dragons, or games derived from Dungeons & Dragons, have later spawned popular fantasy series.[27]

Comics

Begun in 1986, the comic books The Adventurers and Redfox were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons.[28] Several commercial comic strips are based entirely upon the game or make reference to the game in specific panels.

  • Knights of the Dinner Table is a comic-sized magazine featuring comic strips with a variety of characters who play "HackMaster," a parody of Dungeons & Dragons. (HackMaster would later go on to become an actual role-playing game.) Early strips appeared in the official Dungeons & Dragons magazine Dragon.
  • The Order of the Stick is a satirical webcomic that features a cast of characters in a world that loosely operates by the rules of Dungeons & Dragons.[29]
  • Penny Arcade, a longstanding webcomic, created by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, references and even depicts humorous instances of bizarre campaigns, and other Dungeons & Dragons subject matter; implementing dice-rolling humor and other game dynamics.

Plays

Dungeons & Dragons has been used as a central motif in plays,[30] including:

Film and television

Film

Main article: Dungeons & Dragons (film series)

There have been multiple feature films released that were based upon the game: Dungeons & Dragons (2000), Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (2005), and Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012). A new film based on the game, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, was released in March 2023; it was directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.[33][34][35]

Several films include instances of characters playing the game of Dungeons & Dragons or make other references to the game:

  • In scene 2 of Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the character Elliott, his older brother, and his friends are shown playing Dungeons & Dragons.[36][37] Prior to the production of the film, Spielberg ran a Dungeons & Dragons session with the young cast members.[38]
  • The Futurama film Bender's Game includes Dungeons & Dragons as a crucial plot device, in which the main characters end up in a fantasy realm after the game is played. The film was already in production upon Gygax's death and debuted later that year, so it was dedicated in his honor. The film included parodies of Dungeons & Dragons-influenced films.[39]
  • The films The Gamers[40] and The Gamers: Dorkness Rising[41] by the Dead Gentlemen are parodies of Dungeons & Dragons.
  • The 2020 animated film Onward by Pixar used Dungeons & Dragons monsters, particularly the Gelatinous Cube and the Beholder.[42]

Television

The CBS network ran a Saturday morning cartoon series called Dungeons & Dragons, in which a group of teenagers visiting a Dungeons and Dragons-themed theme park dark ride are magically transported into the fantasy world of Dungeons and Dragons. The show included the voice talents of Willie Aames of Eight is Enough, and ran from 1983 to 1985.[43]

Dungeons & Dragons is also referenced in a variety of television programs:

Other performance

Actual play

Actual play is a genre of podcast or web show in which people play tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, for an audience.[61] Academic Emily Friedman, writing for Los Angeles Review of Books, commented that the largest "actual plays have viewer numbers that are the envy of some television networks [...] all while often being owned by the players on-screen".[62] Dungeons & Dragons is played in these shows:

Music

Dungeons & Dragons is referenced in popular music:

Computer and video games

Dungeons & Dragons is referenced in popular video games:

Players

Stephen Colbert developed an intense interest in the game during his youth, which he later credited for his talent at character creation.[108] Ethan Gilsdorf credited the game for bestowing upon him "gifts of creativity and self-actualization".[109] Actor Vin Diesel, in his introduction to the book Thirty Years of Adventure, wrote that he was "attracted to the artistic outlet the game provided" and that the game was "a training ground for our imagination and an opportunity to explore our own identities".[110] Vin Diesel, Mike Myers, and Robin Williams also participated in the 2006 Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day, demonstrating that the game was then still a lively and active hobby.[111]

Director Chris Weitz pointed out that there "are a lot of people who played and are horribly embarrassed about it and won't admit it, because it's part of their lives they put behind". He developed a fervent interest in the game, even greater than in making movies, and said the experience "had such an influence on his life".[112] Director Jon Favreau was drawn into the game by the fantasy elements and the sense of story, saying "it gave me a really strong background in imagination, storytelling, understanding how to create tone and a sense of balance".[113]

Political reporter John J. Miller said that Dungeons & Dragons was a big part of his life during his school years, and argued that, "there's a lot to admire about D&D and what it can do for kids by encouraging them to read, do math, and think creatively".[114] Fantasy author China Miéville said that playing Dungeons & Dragons as a youth was one of the most enduring influences on his writing. The two things that particularly influenced him were "the mania for cataloging the fantastic" and "the weird fetish for systematization", in that everything is reduced to "game stats".[115] In contrast, author Mark Barrowcliffe considers his years playing Dungeons & Dragons to be a wasted youth and all of the players to be nerds. He has tried to put the experience behind him.[116]

List of notable D&D players

The following public figures have stated that they play, or have played, Dungeons & Dragons, indicating the game's broad appeal to a diverse range of talented individuals.[2]

References

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