The human need for stories, aka why we all should play D&D
I love playing D&D. I look forward to upcoming games so much that it’s a little embarrassing (and maybe slightly concerning?) I can’t think why I’ve never actually played before.
A quick introduction to Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and its related terminology:
D&D is one of many existing table-top role-playing games (TTRPG).
A TTRPG is a game in which people come together in person, or online, to pretend to be characters whom these players have created.
There is a Dungeon Master (DM), or Game Master (GM), who functions as the facilitator and “leads” the game by planning a scenario or even multiple missions for the players. During actual gameplay, the GM facilitates by doing things like describing the setting and the other characters who populate this imaginary world (non-player characters, or NPCs).
Once the players have this information, we can decide what our characters wish to do or say. We express this to the GM, and they decide whether that action just happens, or if we need to “roll to determine” if the action succeeds.
The success of many actions in this game depends on rolling dice. There are a whole bunch of dice, from four-sided ones (called D4s) to twenty-sided ones (D20). (And I half suspect it’s the possibility of collecting these pretty sets of dice which is also a draw for the magpie in me…)
The die we use the most often is the D20. Loosely speaking, the number you roll decides whether or not, or how well, your action succeeds.
An example. The GM describes a busy tavern scene, and hints that the barkeep seems to be receiving a message from a sinister-looking NPC which our characters have been tracking all day. I tell the GM, “I’d like to sidle up to the bar without being seen, in order to overhear the conversation.” The GM will then say, “Ok, roll me a D20.” I roll, and get a measly 5. Based on that number, the GM might then say, “You try to sidle up to the bar. Unfortunately, on the way there you trip on a table leg. Now eyes are turning to you. What does everyone do?”
I’ve watched people play various TTRPGs for a long time. I tune in to Critical Role religiously, for instance. I’ve always known that D&D is a fantastic way of:
Flexing the creative and imaginative muscles.
Expressing one’s ideas and beliefs.
Exploring alien/new ideas and beliefs.
Figuring out how to collaborate (or not) with others.
Experiencing camaraderie (yes, despite the horror stories of awful players ruining games).
Training yourself to improvise and think quickly on your feet (dismayingly, this is the one I’m realising I’m awful at).
But the single, biggest, most crucial factor which draws me to D&D, has got to be, hands down: the way it fulfils my absolute bottomless pit hunger for stories.
Not just mine, come to think of it. I think everyone has a hunger for stories. I think to be human, is to be ravenous for stories.
Stories for the telling. Stories for the hearing. Stories for the tasting. Stories for the experiencing.
If you’ve ever felt your flesh creep from reading that spooky story, or jumped in your seat thanks to whatever just happened on screen—you’ve felt it. The ability of a story, “just” words, or “mere” moving images, to actually, physically, have an impact on you.
If you’ve ever had something good, or terrible, happen to you and immediately texted your good friend to narrate the circumstances, and how you felt, and when it happened, and so on, you’re activating the power of storytelling to process real life.
If you’ve scrolled endlessly through your social media, consuming clip after clip, you were probably starving for stories.
I doubt a ten-second clip of a penguin knocking another penguin into the water is going to be that deeply fulfilling in the long run, though. No, truly, I’m not knocking social media and the world of the quick clip. I’m simply saying, we need to recognise that those clips do not just represent “entertainment”—or rather, perhaps we need to reconsider what “mere entertainment” might actually mean. Remember when, in Gladiator, Russell Crowe’s character Maximus asks the audience at the gladiatorial fight, “Are you not entertained?” What did he mean?
Maximus meant the question as an accusation of the crowd’s lack of compassion. But that’s what gladiatorial combat is, isn’t it? A damn dramatic story. The problem was that the Romans, living as they did in the wrong era, one in which Netflix didn’t exist, took things quite literally and actually made people fight to the death. No, alright, I’m being facetious, but consider: why would otherwise decent folks want to watch two human beings hack at each other? Or watch humans slaughter a bunch of animals—or vice versa?
Yes, there’s the Freudian argument, that there’s something dark and unspeakable in human nature that delights in gore and pain and suffering.
But then, consider that gladiatorial combat is also, quite literally and dismayingly, a way to access stories. The audience gets to access, via the two unfortunate fighters, a narrative, a new world, of excitement, and life-and-death conflict.
By the way, eagle-eyed Reader, have you noticed, I didn’t define “story”?
This term is tricky. We have many, many options:
An account or retelling of events, whether real or fictional (which casts the net real wide!)
A narrative (i.e. a structured account with a beginning, middle, and end) with characters
A means of transferring information, experience, attitude, or point of view (this definition is from The Wrap, and I strongly recommend reading the article.)
An account of imaginary or real people told for entertainment (this is the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition)
If we consider once more, the actual real-world event of two people fighting one another in the arena, or people fighting wild beasts in the arena, I think we can see: to the people watching the “show,” the show itself, which may be real life to the actual combatants, is a story to the watcher.
We’ve always yearned for stories as a species, perhaps. Perhaps story is how we experience the world. We will always, in some inevitable way, be watchers of one another’s lives, won’t we?
I think this is why games like D&D can be so powerful. Because in the space of those three or four hours (yes, games run looong!) we’re not only feeding that deep urge to experience stories, and feeding it collaboratively to boot, we’re also seeing beneath the veil, cracking the hood of the car and really seeing the engine, realising what makes us tick. We’re not just watching a story from afar—we’re crafting one, and doing it (more or less) together. We’re aware of our capacity and desire to tell and experience stories, even as we create one.
It is a powerful high, truly.
And of course, I think it helps that playing D&D, and other TTRPGs, lets me scratch the itch to create characters. Then there’s the element of chance (so, yes, really, I’m talking about the high one gets from gambling) which makes the rolling so exciting. And we haven’t even begun to think about the roleplay component of the game, either.
Just the fabric of the game, that element of story, is compelling enough on its own.
Sometimes, if I really imagine trying to explain D&D to an unsympathetic ear, I see how absurd the whole thing could appear: yes, I sit down with random people in a room once a week for four hours, and during that time we pretend to be imaginary people—yes, with magic and skills which bend all the rules of physics—and we do pretend quests for pretend rewards. To put it super bluntly, it’s scheduled mass hallucination (with snacks).
But what a wonderful hallucination it is. I’m not going to make that tired old claim that D&D brings people together, etc. etc. I’m certainly not going to claim that D&D makes us better people.
I’m going to be even more bold than that. I’m going to claim that D&D makes us people. Or rather, playing such games makes us realise what makes us people.
Try a TTRPG for yourself, Dear Reader. I’d love to have more people to play with! 😊
