| Subject: This makes me smile |
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Anj
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Date Posted: 11/22/04 4:09:45pm Mon
Op-ed by Peter Bebergal – Boston Globe – November 15, 2004
For a while, it seemed, I was part of a generation with no discernable qualities, no great contribution to American culture. Too young to be boomers, too old to be "Gen X," this generation was a product of the burned out excess of the seventies married to the surface glow of the
eighties. But here in 2004, I realize I belong to the luckiest generation, and not only that, I am part of the luckiest sub-culture within. Maybe we didn't give the world the Beatles or John Updike, but
we gave the world Dungeons and Dragons. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the beloved, much maligned, often misunderstood role playing game developed in 1974 by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. Without CGI graphics, surround sound, or flat screens, they invented an immense and complex gaming system that requires only pencils, graph paper, and some oddly configured dice. Arneson and Gygax paved the way, but let's
face it, my friends and I changed the world.
It started innocently enough. With a copy of "The Fellowship of the Ring" at my side and Styx on the record player, I was looking for something to help me rise above being bored, lonely, and unfulfilled. One day at school, a kid approached me. Having sensed in me an ally – the same urgent need to avoid getting beat up that day – he timidly
asked if I wanted to play "D&D" after school. From then on, I never had another forlorn afternoon. And to think, from that first fateful day when I decided I would be known as the half-elf wizard Vendel, I was joining a revolution. But what exactly were we transforming? To put it simply, Dungeons and Dragons reinvented the use of the imagination as a kid's best toy.T he cliche of parents waxing nostalgic for their wooden toys and things "they had to make themselves" has now become my own. Looking around at my toddler's room full of trucks, trains, and Transformers, I want to cry out, "I created worlds with nothing more than a twenty-sided die!" Dungeons and Dragons was a not a way out of the mainstream, as some parents feared and other kids suspected, but a way back into the realm
of story-telling. This was what my friends and I were doing: creating
narratives to make sense of feeling socially marginal. We were writing
stories, grand in scope, with heroes, villains, and the entire zoology
of mythical creatures. Even sports, the arch-nemesis of role-playing
games, is a splendid tale of adventure and glory. Though my friends and
I were not always athletically inclined, we found agility in the
characters we created. We fought, flew through the air, shot arrows out
of the park, and scored poin ts by slaying the dragon and disabling the
trap. Our influence is now everywhere. My generation of gamers – whose
youths were spent holed up in paneled wood basements crafting
identities, mythologies, and geographies with a few lead figurines –
are the filmmakers, computer programmers, writers, DJs, and musicians
of today. I think, for the producers, the movie version of "The Lord of
the Rings" was less about getting the trilogy off the page and onto the
screen than it was a vicarious thrill, a gift to the millions of us who
wished we could have dressed up as orcs and ventured into catacombs and
castle keeps ourselves. Only a generation of imaginations roused by
role playing could have made those movies possible.
Dungeons and Dragons is seeing an increase in popularity as a whole new
generation raised on video games begins to look for a way back to the
more personally and socially engaging pleasures of sitting ar ound with
a bunch of friends and making stuff up. Imagine, parents, that some of
your kids are actually turning the TV off to talk to each other, to
play something that they have to "make themselves." I am getting ready
to introduce the game to my son. In a little drawer I have an unopened
box of those funny-sided dice, not exactly a family relic, but a
tradition to pass on nonetheless. And let's not forget that even though
we are talking about a world of basilisks, knights, and talking trees,
Dungeons and Dragons can help us make new stories out of the very world
around us. Democrats, you better get yourselves a magic shield, because
in Congress, Bush has plus three to hit.
Peter Bebergal is a writer and teacher.
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