Dungeons and Dragons paper

[Ultimaninja]

Ok this will be a LONG paper...and is partially the reason Rage of the Fentel has not been worked on recently...and my teacher is going to have a heart attack after seeing my ENTIRE paper as reported as plagerized...since I just posted it right now.

Roll Me Some Twenties
   America is associated with some of the most influential advances towards life and entertainment throughout the world. Famous video games, movies, and literature have had some of their best breakthroughs in America. But often times, people forget that all this started from a simple pen, paper, and dice game known as Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons led, as a foundation, to many of America’s cultural advances seen in entertainment at nearly every level.

   The first obstacle was the game surviving the damnation and false accusations created by both the Christian church and the media, while simultaneously providing itself more open and available for everyone. While the media’s classic use of misinformation caused wide gaps in the number of players through school shootings, suicides, and even the possible use for satanic rituals. All these accusations were disproved while further strengthening the backbone of the game. With this blame-game a failure newscasters went back to blaming music, drugs, and just about everything they could as to the decline of teenager morals. Christians could accept magic if it was in Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings even though it went against official church ideals, however they were completely against D&D. This caused many internal conflicts with Christians as many were avid D&D gamers torn between faith and the love of the game. Still to this day, many Christian protesters still stand outside convention centers for D&D, though with the recent addition of sparring matches with foam weapons inside the conventions their numbers have drastically fallen. War-game producers finally got wind that many people beyond their current buyers were interested in creating characters that could grow and change through years of experience. After time, Dungeons and Dragons was moved onto major bookstores and sold as response to its continued popularity and sales record. With all this hype, it was later bought out by Wizards of the Coast who soon began customizing it by getting rid of the more confusing rules, and marketing miniatures and battle maps for a more visual style of play.

   Unfortunately with the rise of so many solo games and anti-social teens Dungeons and Dragons continues to stand as one of the few means to get people out of their basements and outside. Only if to get to their friends basement (fragment). But no matter how anti-social or emo we claim to be if someone goes out and spend hours upon hours with people on a weekly to monthly basis they’re being social. With the kids who used to play this game only with their friends now in their thirties and forties they now play alongside their children and wives in this game as well. And to be honest that’s how my dad and mom met, through a game my dad was running for my uncle. The original purpose of Dungeons and Dragons moved from being a simple game to being a story to be told amongst friends and used as bragging rights to each other. After all I can account some of the most embarrassing things I’ve done that I am still mocked for and even developed a new play style for it by my friends. New rules are thrown in occasionally for these home games to make it flow better for the magical aspect such as spell misfire and magical beasts. As people get more comfortable with their characters, they are able to open up more and work out real life problems through the game. “It is used in psychotherapeutic treatments to identify with individuals with fewer risks like guided affective imagery” (Perschon 6). Makes sense because it is a lot easier to role play someone in a game than sitting at a therapists office and forcing yourself to act like someone your not. Even video games have yet to beat this juggernaut as many people are willing to put down their 360 and ps3 controllers for a round of Dungeons and Dragons. “4 million people currently play D&D regularly as stated by wizards of the coast” (Suciu 17). And it has the lowest disconnection record compared to any other video game, unless you count the pizza runs.

   Obviously the video game craze, starting with pong, later moving onto more advanced systems in the arcade, and finally moved to home console owes a lot of similarities to Dungeons and Dragons character sheets and rulebooks. While this craze did sink a hole into the Dungeons and Dragons franchise, it never truly defeated it and simply grew alongside its predecessor. Videogame developers were introduced to their jobs mostly through a shared love of Dungeons and Dragons, and used many of the mechanics for their games like Gauntlet and Dragon’s Lair. But going even further the famous game company Bioware dedicated the games Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, and Baldur’s Gate to Dungeons and Dragons. “Bioware itself would have continued without the influence of D&D, but the success it has sustained would not be as dominant as it currently stands” (Muzyka 14). World of Warcraft is another excellent example of the changes D&D has brought, as many of their programmers are current players to the game and the references from the game are quite obvious. Even the D&D style version of World of Warcraft is a reference to the original game, but that should have been kind of obvious from the start. I actually played the hard back version expecting the spells and abilities to be based off the game, but only the classes held to the game. All spells, reagents, and effects were almost a complete copy of their D&D counterpart.

   Not only video games were affected as major novels, movies, and actors have been influenced into their styles due to D&D. Lord of the Rings may have come out before D&D, but every time Lord of the Rings hit a spike in popularity Dungeons and Dragons was riding right next to it and gaining more followers. Not to mention that many of the older fans of Harry Potter were also avid players to Dungeons and Dragons and tried to point out similarities. I myself tried to compare Voldermort to a classic Lich and found many striking resemblances. Surprisingly many movie stars, actually famous stars, play Dungeons and Dragons as well. Vin Diesel was quoted for playing a Drizzt rip-off, Robin Williams frequently was seen browsing his local hobby shops for game merchandise, and same goes for Wil Wheaton. “Playing D&D is like writing your own movie at a table…your imagination must fill in the blanks” (Stark 1). If people were unable to find or afford the miniatures, it gave opportunity to become an artist as people were excited to see their characters come to life outside a character sheet. “It was the first medium of expression to turn anyone who played into a storyteller, into an author, into a creator” (Spector 14) Three movies directly based off the game that I know of exist just outside the popularity of the more famous films. Dungeons and Dragons the first movie was considered the black sheep and fans refused to acknowledge its existence, but this lead to a second called Wrath of the Dragon God to be made that far out shown the previous. But that was not to hard to do with the complaints at the first movie, even though the second movie never made it to the theatre.

   Although with all this hype and publicity, it came as a complete shock when March, 2008 rolled in and took Gary Gygax with it, and unleashing a gigantic stream of sad jokes and memories of the game for everyone. At first it seemed like a joke and many passed off a necromancy joke here and there, while others talked about Gygax failing his ‘saving throw’. But as the truth sunk in, people everywhere began to reflect on how their lives had been changed by D&D. Wizards of the Coast for the month set up reminders of him over their entire site upon entrance. Blizzard set up a personal thanks to him, and dedicated their latest patch in World of Warcraft to him. Many famous internet cartoonists like Penny Arcade set out thanks for all he’s done. I think it was best done by Stephen Colbert and his joke about Gygax. “We’ll roll a 20 missing Gygax. Wait a minute. Let’s see â€" between us, we’ve got a human fighter, a mage, a ranger, and a Dungeon Master…Gentlemen, I’ll bring the dice, and Carl, make sure Sir Martin brings that talking sword” (Colbert 9).

   I could ramble on about obscure internet references, songs, and events that Dungeons and Dragons has created, but in the end it would just all run back to the previously mentioned areas. Even so, Dungeons and Dragons continues to spike up whenever a major shift in cultural affairs arrives and I doubt that it will ever see a point where that doesn’t happen.

[Spade777]

Dnd rocks :p

[Smokey]

serious necro posting here:D
But at least it's a response, after a year...

I don't know about D&D, a couple of friends are developing and playing a new text-based RPG, wich sounds cool...

[Chocofreak13]

D&D!! yay! <D

now if only someone knew about WoD as well....