Me, the New York Times and D&D
I wrote this feature story for the New York Times Books section "In a Chaotic World, Dungeons & Dragons Is Resurgent: The role-playing game has made a surprising return to mainstream culture." (published online Nov. 13, 2019; on print Nov. 15).
Quiz: Trump Administration Dismissal/Resignation or Monster Defeated in My Last D&D Campaign
1. Kirstjen Nielsen
2. Demogorgon
3. Manafort
4. Manticore
5. Shulkin
6. Reince Priebus
7. Gibbering Mouther
8. Gorka
9. Owlbear
10. Omaroso
11. Zinke
12. Mimic
13. Mattis
14. Githyanki
15. Scaramucci
16. Tarrasque
17. Slaad
18. Fleitz
19. Rex Tillerson
20. Displacer Beast
[Answers: Trump Dismissal/Resignation: 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18, 19; D&D Monster: 2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20]
© Ethan Gilsdorf
The '80s, 'D&D' And Pre-Tech Nostalgia Return In 'Stranger Things'
I gave a TedX talk "Why Dungeons & Dragons is Good for You (In Real Life)"
I gave a TedX talk entitled "Why Dungeons & Dragons is Good for You (In Real Life)."
I'm pretty happy with how it came out and I think the positive message about D&D is important to spread. So I'd truly love your help in getting the word out. The more views it gets, and social media likes/retweets/shares it gets, the better chance it has of being featured on the Ted site, which would help prove to the world the game's amazing impact on people's lives. Thanks for watching and helping to spread the word.
How Dungeons & Dragons and Fantasy Prepare You for Law & Life
How is a lawyer like a wizard? How does a courtroom resemble an epic battle? How is a casebook like the Dungeon Master's Guide?
In case you missed it, here's the archived video my Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet & Society talk with Jonathan Zittrain "How Dungeons & Dragons and Fantasy Prepare You for Law & Life."
http://www.minds.com/blog/view/291277647059619840/ethan-gilsdorf-and-jonathan-zittrain-on-how-dungeons-and-dragons-and-fantasy-prepare-you-for-law-and-life
D&D Celebration at Pax East
I am very excited to present the panel "Why D&D Is Still Awesome: A 40th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons Tribute" at Pax East in Boston with David Ewalt and Jon Peterson on Sat April 12.I am very excited to present the panel "Why D&D Is Still Awesome: A 40th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons Tribute" at Pax East in Boston with David Ewalt and Jon Peterson on Sat April 12.
Here's the official description:
Why D&D Is Still Awesome: A 40th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons Tribute
D&D on the BBC
My D&D world tour continues in the UK. I was fortunate to be interviewed by the BBC's Radio 5 "Up All Night" host Adam Rosser with authors Mark Barrowcliffe (The Elfish Gene) and Jim Swallow (author of numerous Star Trek, Doctor Who books). Included in this retrospective about D&D and its 40th birthday, there's also a segment with Ian Livingstone (co-founder of Games Workshop). You can listen to the archived Feb 5 show here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03szml0. Click the big arrow and bump the episode up to around the 02:13:15 mark, which is where the D&D segment begins. (I think this link will be up for a little while. Let me know if the link is dead and I'll try to find the archived show elsewhere.)
Five Amazing TV Moments from D&D History
A look back at Five Amazing TV Moments from D&D History.From Gary Gygax defending D&D on 60 Minutes, to Tom Hanks in the TV movie Mazes and Monsters, to the famous Freaks and Geeks “Discos and Dragons” episode featuring James Franco as the bad-boy who plays D&D with the A/V nerds ... here's a look back at Five Amazing TV Moments from D&D History. In these clips, we see the how the famous game has been portrayed, from being ridiculed and used as a scapegoat to being celebrated. You can read the rest of my post on GeekDad.
At 40 Years Old, Dungeons & Dragons Still Matters
Tired of all this press about D&D? I hope not.Tired of all this press about D&D? I hope not. The hits just keep coming as I milk this anniversary for all it's worth. Here's another piece I did tying into the big 4-0 -- for BoingBoing, called "At 40 Years Old, Dungeons & Dragons Still Matters." Enjoy!
D&D 40th anniversary: Media doubleshot!
D&D 40th anniversary media week continues! I appeared on WGBH twice this week to talk about the importance and impact of Dungeons & Dragons. Once on radio, once on TV.
D&D 40th anniversary media week continues! I appeared on WGBH this week for a segment titled "At 40, What D&D Has Really Created" --- in which I geek out with Emily Rooney on WGBH WGBH News Greater Boston.
Also, I taught WGBH Boston Public Radio hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan how to play D&D, among other things.
D&D Essay hits 18K Likes, a top read on Salon
I'm not one to blown my own horn *too* loudly, but I'm pretty excited that my essay "All I needed to know about life I learned from “Dungeons & Dragons" that appeared on Salon.com last week, has now topped 18,000 likes on Facebook.
I'm not one to blow my own horn *too* loudly, but I'm pretty excited that my essay "All I needed to know about life I learned from “Dungeons & Dragons" that appeared on Salon.com last week, has now topped 18,000 likes on Facebook, as well as making the "Top Reads" section of Salon. I'm really pleased for all the support it's gotten, and for all the kind referrals and favoriting and retweeting it's received in its short life. D&D "officially' turns 40 on Jan 26, so consider this a swell b-day gift for D&D.
All I needed to know about life I learned from “Dungeons & Dragons”
I was lucky enough to publish this piece on Salon.com, using the occasion of D&D's 40th anniversary this month to wax poetical about all the life lessons the game taught me.I was lucky enough to publish this piece on Salon.com, using the occasion of D&D's 40th anniversary this month to wax poetical about all the life lessons the game taught me.
Here's an excerpt:
I played a lot of D&D back in the 1970s and 1980s. After conquering me, D&D went on to transform geek culture. Not only had D&D invented a new genre of entertainment — the role-playing game — but it practically gave birth to interactive fiction and set the foundation for the modern video game industry. Into “Halo” or “Call of Duty”? You’re playing an incredibly sophisticated version of a D&D dungeon crawl.
After a long hiatus, I play the game again now, as a 47-year-old, mostly grown-up person. Today, with my +5 Goggles of Hindsight, I can see how D&D was subtly helping me come of age. Yes, it’s a fantasy game, and the whole enterprise is remarkably analog, powered by face-to-face banter, storytelling and copious Twizzlers and Doritos. But like any pursuit taken with seriousness (and the right dose of humor), Dungeons & Dragons is more than a mere game. Lessons can be applied to the human experience. In fact, all I really need to know about life I learned by playing D&D.
On WPR discussing D&D
I appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Central Time" Monday 1/20/14 at 4:45PM CST (5:45 ET) on a program about the 40th anniversary of D&D.The D&D display at the Strong Museum, Rochester, NY (Image: Ethan Gilsdorf)
I appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Central Time" Monday 1/20/14 at 4:45PM CST (5:45 ET) on a program about the 40th anniversary of D&D (and Wisconsin native Gary Gygax) in a segment called "The Influence And Wisconsin Origins Of Dungeons and Dragons." The other guest was Dork Tower creator John Kovalic.
The Original D&D Gets a New Deluxe Edition
by Ethan Gilsdorf
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) may be approaching its 40th birthday next year, and rapidly losing younger players to the irresistible eye-candy of digital gaming. But in one particular sector, the role-playing game business is still booming: Older gamers like me.
I grew up playing D&D, religiously, back in the Reagan Administration. My original "Monster Manual," "Dungeon Master Guide" and sack of polyhedral dice are still precious to me. Lucky for me, I hung onto my trove of rule books that were still covered with a layer of Cheetos dust. Other old-school games weren't so lucky. ("Thanks, Mom, for giving my stuff to Goodwill when I went off to college!") Now all grown up, and sometimes with children of their own, these gamers miss that place that face-to-face dice-rolling and storytelling experience played in their lives.
But fear not, old-school roleplaying games (RPGs) are back, one reissue at a time.
Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the company that owns the D&D brand, has embarked on a new campaign in the past year to recapture older gamers whose magic-users and paladins slayed many an orc and beholder and pillaged many a graph-paper-charted land. All year longWotC has been reprinting new editions of ancient tomes from the heyday of tabletop role-playing games. On November 19, the granddaddy of them all arrives: a deluxe edition of The White Box, the original D&D set (aka OD&D) first published by Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR, Inc, back in 1974. (In a Wired.com exclusive, a new photo of the final product prototype is pictured here.)
The White Box "was the very first roleplaying game, introducing concepts that have persisted throughout later editions," said Liz Schuh, director of publishing and licensing for D&D. "Many of our players have strong emotional connections to our classic products."
They better. This new White Box retails for $149.99.
All this nostalgia comes as D&D hits "middle age." In 2014, D&D, the first-ever commercially-available role-playing game, turns 40. Next year also brings (barring any delays) the release of the game's next iteration, D&D Next.
Is all this product retread a crass commercial move on the part of WotC, or a genuine desire to re-connect gamers in their forties, fifties and even sixties to their beloved dungeon-crawls pasts?
Whatever the interpretation, this is some powerful Spell of Nostalgia that WotC is casting. Go ahead, resist. Roll a saving throw versus
The campaign began last year, with new limited-editions of the 1st Edition rulebooks: the beloved AD&D "Monster Manual" (1977), "Player's Handbook" (1978), and "Dungeon Master’s Guide" (1979). Then, in January, WotC launched dndclassics.com, a site allowing oldbies to download in PDF format hundreds of forgotten and out-of-print gaming products, from the legendary 1978 module D3: Vault of the Drow to a 1981 edition of the D&D Basic Rulebook. Also released earlier this year: two volumes of compilations of classic adventures including one called "Dungeons of Dread" that features favorites like "Tomb of Horrors" and "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks." Second edition core rulebook "Premium" reprints came out in in May. Of course, official D&D merch --- from T-shirts, belts and iPhone cases --- is also being hawked. All of these products are replicated down to the last "to hit" chart and goofy drawing of kobolds, and gelatinous cubes (just testing you: gelatinous cubes are invisible).
That "White Box" facsimile set includes the original three OD&D booklets (Men & Magic; Monsters & Treasure; Underworld & Wilderness Adventures) plus the four supplements (Greyhawk; Blackmoor; Eldritch Wizardry; Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes); a packet of "reference sheets"; and 10 funky-looking (but not historically accurate) dice. In a nod to the OD&D's original brown wood-grain cardboard box, it's all housed in a fancy engraved wooden case. The booklets' interior art looks the same, but the box's cover modern fantasy art (see photo) might annoy purists.
Original "white box" sets are rare, and can sell for $500 or more on eBay. With the reprints, anyone can own a piece of D&D history. Sort of.
Game designer James M. Ward, a veteran TSR employee who wrote the games Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha, and co-authored the core rulebook Deities & Demigods, took a more skeptical view towards WotC's decision to release items from the game's golden age. "Just think of the profit for releasing something they didn’t have to pay for or edit," Ward said. "It’s a move to make lots of money considering consumers are really liking the idea of old style material."
From the tabletop resurgence that’s been happening over the past few years, it’s clear that older gamers miss the dice-rolling and face-to-face interaction of an analog dungeon crawl. Even the the original TSR brand had been rebooted (not by Gygax's heirs or Wotc) and has released a publication, aptly named Gygax Magazine, in the spirit of the old Dragon and White Dwarf magazines. GenCon, Pax and Pax East prove there's an audience for non-digital entertainment. Older school-style RPGs such Pathfinder, from rival company Paizo Publishing, routinely outsells the last version of the D&D, the much-maligned 4th edition, released in 2008.
This "Old School Renaissance" is a welcome resurgence for people like Tim Kask, the first employee TSR ever hired and former editor of "Dragon" magazine. Kask and other older gamers maintain that newer iterations of D&D stripped out all the fun. "The game got so tabulated and charted that people forgot to ask questions," he said. "I think what has been ruled to death is that sense of wonderment, of not exactly knowing what is around the next corner."
So it makes sense that WotC also hopes some of the gamer will find their way back to a purer form of D*&D -- namely, the storytelling and mystery. "When you lose that, roleplaying," Kask said, D&D "becomes just killing at the zoo.”
If Wizards of the Coast wants to take old gamers like me on a journey down memory lane -- or back into memory's dungeon -- I can't complain. Maybe I'll never play that fancy White Box edition. In fact. I'm pretty wedded to my AD&D rule set from the 1980. But just to hold these new/old tomes, and flip through them, and roll the dice again ... Ahhh. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, D&D's co-creators, may be dead, but their legacy of Doritos-eating, dice-rolling and bantering around some basement table lives on. Hopefully, with these D&D reissues, enough younger players will also find their way to that experience.
So even if your original DM's Guide got tossed back in the Reagan Administration, you can game again, and play whatever version of D&D you like.
"From my way of thinking," James M. Ward said, "nothing was lost."
How D&D changed my life and the life of Brian "Clerks" O'Halloran
I had a great time at the Boston Festival of Indie Games, geeking out and waxing nostalgic with Brian "Clerks" O'Halloran about how D&D changed (and warped) our lives and saved our asses.
Our slide-lecture / unreheased stand-up comedy talk was officially called:
"Back in the Dungeon – A conversation with Brian O’Halloran and Ethan Gilsdorf on how D&D changed their lives"
Digital gaming all began with graph paper dungeons, a handful of dice and the Monster Manual. Join actor Brian O’Halloran (“Dante Hicks” in Clerks) and writer and critic Ethan Gilsdorf (author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks) as they geek out about the importance and impact of Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs and tabletop games on the gaming industry, and how these old-school games changed their lives for good, not evil (mostly). There’ll also be giveaways of Ethan’s book and other goodies We’ll end with a Q&A, book signing, and autograph session immediately following the event.
Thanks Brian and thanks BostonFIG.
I'm on PBS's "Off Book" to discuss D&D
Dungeons & Dragons Is Evil Again
Yes! D&D is Evil Again! Pat Robertson scares us like it's 1982
Save vs. disbelief.
Pat Robertson, former Southern Baptist minister, Chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network and erstwhile presidential candidate, had this to say last week about the latest blight on America: Dungeons & Dragons.
Wait — Dungeons & Dragons? Yes, D&D is back. And it’s more evil than before.
This would be amusing, if it wasn’t so scary.
Once again, from the front lines or bowels of pop culture, we find another freak out by those who are clueless. No, it’s not violent video games that are poisoning the minds (or loins) of America’s youth. Nor is it the Internet, or texting, or sexting, or Facebook or Twitter. Nor is it rap, or hip hop, or raves, or Oxycontin, or punk, or comic books, or Pixie Stix, or Pop Rocks.
Worse: D&D. That old-fashioned game of dice and graph paper and demonic possession.
It’s as if Robertson was encased in carbonite back in 1980, only to be thawed out by a benevolent Boba Fett three decades later. As if Roberston’s never even heard of Call of Duty, let alone Harry Potter or Pac-Man. And magically, still dripping wet from the dry ice and experiencing the brain freeze of a lifetime, he keeps jabbering away on his show The 700 Club, about magic and evil and the occult, and D&D which, in his words, “it was, like, demonic.” (Yes, he actually, like, said, “like.”) “Stay away from it,” is his advice, in 2013.
Read the rest of my post on GeekDad.
Jack Chick’s infamous 1984 anti-D&D comic book, “Dark Dungeons.” Ooh. Scary. (Image: Chick Publications)
Exploring the origins of D&D for Wisconsin Public Radio
Dungeons and Dragons is the single most famous roleplaying game in the world. Writer Ethan Gilsdorf didn’t grow up in Wisconsin, but his love of D&D led him to fantasize about visiting the game’s hometown: Lake Geneva, hometown to Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax. In this cool radio piece, Ethan explores the origins of D&D for Wisconsin Public Radio.
Or you can listen to the mp3 here.
Mitt Romney as a D&D Character?
Now that Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is wailing on his opponents Newt, Rick, and Paul, perhaps it's time for his deeds to be enshrined as a D&D character.
Artist Casey Jex Smith has been working on a series of works that depict people as D&D characters. Here, Mitt Romney, although unnamed, is shown as Lord Spelldyal, a 21st level warlord with 152 hit points, Boots of Speed and a Helmet of Authority.
The drawing was one of the works in the Dungeons and Dragons On & Ever Onward art show at the Soho Gallery of Digital Art in New York City. The show, which closed Jan 11, 2012, was curated by Timothy Hutchings, and featured works by Casey Jex Smith, Ryan Browning, Sean McCarthy, Rebecca Schiffman, Josh Jordan, Jeffrey Brown, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, Chris Bors, Owen Rundquist, Andrew Guenther Jason Phillips, Ketta Ioannidou, Fiona MacNeill, Kitty Clark, Erol Otus, Steve Zeiser, Matt Brinkman, Chris Coy, and others.
And it featured historical selections from the Play-Generated Maps and Documents Archive.
More from Casey Jex Smith's D&D characters series here.
Image courtesy Allegra LaViola Gallery
[a version of this post originally appeared on wired.com's GeekDad]