The game that launched a thousand imaginations
Sometimes a hobby is more than just a hobby.
A fantasy baseball player might become so invested in managing their meticulously-crafted team that they crunch more numbers than a professional statistician. Annual basement draft parties become time-honoured traditions.
Someone’s love of gardening might blossom to the point that their perfectly manicured backyard wins them awards.
Some activities step beyond the realm of hobby and become something far more communal.
I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was a teenager, and I’ve been the Dungeon Master (the player who writes the overarching story and acts as a referee for the other players) of the same shared story in the same shared world for over 20 years. Some of the players at my table are the very same friends who sat down to my first game in the spring of 2000.
For us, the game is a cultural hub that informs and highlights other aspects of our lives. Dungeons & Dragons is popular precisely because it’s a shared narrative experience. It allows communities to build a fantasy world all their own and tell a story together.
In fact, the original creator of the game, Gary Gygax, published several D&D novels in the 1980s — including by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, a novel that lays out in book form the trials and triumphs of the authors’ actual D&D group.
Since it hit the shelves in 1974, D&D was a game that flew under the radar, but in the last 10 years, the game has experienced a massive renaissance, inspiring an entire cottage industry of content, from hit shows to incredible and around the world.
The Pen is Mightier than the Sword
For many viewers, the hit HBO series Game of Thrones was their gateway to epic fantasy. This show was their first taste of sorcery, dragons and prophecy.
But for the show’s creators and for George R.R. Martin, the author of the original series that inspired the show, their gateway to fantasy was D&D.
The show’s creators met playing the game and were to TV because of how closely the storytelling in the books mirrored the types of fantasy stories often encountered at gaming tables.
, the first title in the audiobook series, gives us fantasy tropes you’d expect to find in any classic D&D adventure. In one of the story’s main protagonists Jon Snow, we have the exiled scion destined to retake his seat of power in Westeros; in Tyrion Lannister, we have a black sheep who refuses to be sidelined, short on stature but long on cunning; in the White Walkers we have the great and terrible force of darkness descending upon humanity.
These story beats played out at gaming tables long before they were published as novels.
