Since we’ve had so many new subscribers this past week I thought a word of welcome might be in order! Welcome!
For the most part, Lutheran Confessions as a blog stays rather close to topics around social justice and theology, church and religious life. I’ve always leaned into the double entendre in the name, publishing the “confessions” of a “Lutheran” pastor, although strictly speaking I neither confess in any strictly “confessional” manner here and I am—proudly—as much a progressive as I am a Lutheran at this point.
This blog is really old. I started it back in 2002 on Blogger, moved for a time to Patheos, and now here we are at Substack.
But blogs are blogs, providing space to publish… anything you want.
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and you only read this blog if you want to read it (it’s not on any syllabus I’m aware of) so I can digress from the topic and write about whatever I want. And what I’ve been thinking about lately is Dungeons & Dragons.
What follows are a couple of auto-biographical meditations on D&D during it’s 50th anniversary. Mileage may vary. Enjoy if you’d like. I’ve provided some bonus links for the curious.
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It's the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), so I may take a few opportunities over the course of this year to write some notes down. I'm hoping these D&D "shorts" might shed a little light on the hobby for those who have never played a role-playing game (RPG).
When I first became interested in D&D (some time in 3rd grade) I lived in rural Iowa. Almost no one around me played D&D, and I can't remember how else I first came upon the game other than the few modules and a boxed set available in the local mall Waldenbooks.
At the time, the only way I could "play" was to create characters on my own. I'd meticulously draw up character sheets copied from the book, then fill them in with the details of my character. I would spend hours agonizing over whether to spend the small amount of starting coin the character had on an armor upgrade vs. a larger weapon, and also wrestled mightily with which spells would go in the spellbook of wizards I created. I never actually played the game with others, although one good friend graciously let me info-dump sometimes on the playground.
Fast forward to the present, my elementary-age self would never have imagined the opportunities for role-play available to everyone these days. My oldest son plays in a high school club that plans to continue into college since most of them are moving to the local university; I am the dungeon master for a weekly game with my 7th grader and some of his friends (we just finished the Planescape module); there are at least three game stores in Fayetteville that host weekly games; and we have the Northwest Arkansas Board Gamers that hosts organized play month, rotating locations, and last week when they were here at the church I hosted a one-off for eight adult players in the Numenera setting (Cypher system).
Role-playing confounds those new to the game because they don't quite understand how it works, but in reality it's quite simple. The game master (that's often me) selects a starting scenario in which the players will imagine themselves. In the case of my 7th grade group, we are using a module from the publishers of D&D called Planescape. It contains a story line that has engaged our group for over three months in a long-form story-line. In the case of the Numenera setting, it’s a far future world in which so many advanced societies have come and gone the detritus of those prior worlds is just lying around, often indistinguishable from magic, and the players are surviving in this late age of the universe’s life.
Players arrive at the table having created a character they will play. In many systems creating the characters is about half the fun of the game itself. My own kids spend hours and hours at home creating them, many of which they may never bring to table. It’s the only reason they intentionally still own folders and file things on them that isn’t school related. They just like paging through the manuals, making choices between different classes (fighter, cleric, rogue, warlock, ranger, bard, druid, paladin, artificer, etc) and other decision trees that develop the skills and attributes of the characters.
In RPGs you roll dice to decide certain outcomes, typically for success or failure on a task. The player says what they want their character to do, the game master decides how hard that task is, and then they role. So as in life, a certain amount of chance enters the equation. Sometimes you’re just lucky. Sometimes, even if you are highly skilled and experienced, luck isn’t on your side. Roll the dice.
D&D itself has diversified over the years. The classic game is now in its 5th edition, with an update on the way this year for the 50th anniversary called One D&D. But there are other rule sets, some of them created by writers who first cut their teeth writing previous editions of D&D. For example, I love the Cypher system and Numenera, and these were created by Monte Cook, who previously worked for Wizards of the Coast and was instrumental in writing earlier editions of D&D before spinning off to found his own gaming company.
There are rule systems for many different types of role play, from science fiction to fantasy to eldritch horror to historical re-enactment. Those of us who are geeks in gaming collect and read through rule systems like they were bibles or classics of literature.
This summer I’m excited to see the release of the new D&D rules and books as they role out. I’m secretly hoping I’ll get at least one for my birthday. Our junior high group is now going to shift from Planescape to Spelljammers, another adventure published by Wizards of the Coast that is about fantasy space travel (as opposed to inter-dimensional travel). I’m also hoping to keep gathering people for games in my favorite setting, Numenera, and if I’m lucky, I might sit down at table for some sessions in some of the other settings I’m intrigued by or have come to love, top of the list right now being Avatar, Cyberpunk: Red, and The Expanse. And the One Ring.
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Although I never succeeded at playing DnD when I was a kid (only reading the books) I was a highly engaged and knowledgeable philatelist. Not only did I receive an almost weekly supply of stamps from my grandma to soak off and mount, we also went through the papers my my great aunts who had kept all correspondence in the household dating back into the middle of the 19th century. I still have a collection that spans from the earliest stamps right until about 1991 when I went off to college.
My favorite stamps were the whole sheets, ones that would feature the presidents or states or the Olympics or birds. I learned a lot of American history through those stamps and weekly and monthly poured over magazines from the philatelic society, also ordering many stamps from around the world and collecting used stamps from the international mail my other grandmother collected from their travels.
I haven’t continued collecting, but I do always pay attention to new stamps and what they highlight. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think the one hobby I fantasized about as a child but never played would gain such tremendous stature that it would become a set of postage stamps. Yet here we are, at the 50th anniversary of D&D, with a first day of issue ceremony August 1st in Indianapolis during Gen Con, the world’s biggest gaming convention started by the founder of D&D, Gary Gygax.
It’s all coming together. I just had to wait until middle age for it all to happen. It’s a great game, and builds amazingly supportive community. I’m glad we all get to share it.
In spite of D&D’s growing popularity (thanks Stranger Things and Critical Roll), the game and RPGs more generally are still inscrutable for many, so feel free to post questions or comments, and maybe I’ll drop soem more notes here on the blog on another holiday weekend.
My late son first played Dungeons and Dragons in Fayetteville in 1975 or 1976, when he was 11 or 12. An art supply store in the shopping center on the corner of Dickson Street and Gregg Street kindly welcomed kids who wanted to play, keeping them well-supervised. But it was the game that lured them back, week after week. When he died of a heart attack in 2019, we found a collection of the multiple-sided "dice" used in the game still among his treasured possessions.
thx Clint. i haven't ever D&D'd, but i ve hung around geeks who do a lot. You are def top drawer. Maybe a Bible based D&D? theres some stuff in there, both Gk and Heb, that could set up lotsa turns and twists.