Post by addisona on Jun 4, 2022 8:28:16 GMT
Who’s Playing Dungeons & Dragons These Days? The Usual Fans, and Then Some.
Everyone’s been playing Dungeons & Dragons without you: your co-workers, Anderson Cooper, Tiffany Haddish. More than 50 million people worldwide have “interacted” with D&D since it was created in the mid-1970s, according to its publisher, and while that number also includes movies, video games, books, television and livestreams, it doesn’t factor in the number of people reached over TikTok.
The infamous tabletop role-playing game became a household name when “satanic panic” — a general fear of satanic ritual abuse that caught fire nationwide in the 1980s — began to take root in the suburbs. Anything with even a remote whiff of the occult, from astrology to heavy metal, was suspect. Since casting spells during a game could label you a devil worshiper, a nerd or something in between, Dungeons & Dragons was banished to the underground.
As a universe of dedicated players expanded steadily in the shadows, the game popped up intermittently in the pop cultural consciousness: D&D was either alluded to or mentioned by name in TV shows including “That ’70s Show,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Community” and in the series finales of both “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Freaks and Geeks.” Rivers Cuomo sings about the solace he found among his Dungeon Master’s Guide and 12-sided die in the Weezer song “In the Garage.” In “The Simpsons,” Homer tells his family that he played Dungeons & Dragons for three hours with a new group of friends — until he was slain by an elf.
But regardless of its pop culture appearances, the general public’s impression of the game had more or less remained the same: Dungeons & Dragons was for outcasts.
www.nytimes.com/2022/05/21/style/dungeons-and-dragons.html
Everyone’s been playing Dungeons & Dragons without you: your co-workers, Anderson Cooper, Tiffany Haddish. More than 50 million people worldwide have “interacted” with D&D since it was created in the mid-1970s, according to its publisher, and while that number also includes movies, video games, books, television and livestreams, it doesn’t factor in the number of people reached over TikTok.
The infamous tabletop role-playing game became a household name when “satanic panic” — a general fear of satanic ritual abuse that caught fire nationwide in the 1980s — began to take root in the suburbs. Anything with even a remote whiff of the occult, from astrology to heavy metal, was suspect. Since casting spells during a game could label you a devil worshiper, a nerd or something in between, Dungeons & Dragons was banished to the underground.
As a universe of dedicated players expanded steadily in the shadows, the game popped up intermittently in the pop cultural consciousness: D&D was either alluded to or mentioned by name in TV shows including “That ’70s Show,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Community” and in the series finales of both “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Freaks and Geeks.” Rivers Cuomo sings about the solace he found among his Dungeon Master’s Guide and 12-sided die in the Weezer song “In the Garage.” In “The Simpsons,” Homer tells his family that he played Dungeons & Dragons for three hours with a new group of friends — until he was slain by an elf.
But regardless of its pop culture appearances, the general public’s impression of the game had more or less remained the same: Dungeons & Dragons was for outcasts.
www.nytimes.com/2022/05/21/style/dungeons-and-dragons.html