Writer Monya Relles is correct that Dungeons and Dragons has long been a tool for building and maintaining community for many people, and the other collaborative storytelling games they describe are also valuable for those purposes. (Earth Matters, “Games need not re-create conquest, oppression,” July 23)
They premise that D&D is “mechanically designed to enact violence on the indigenous peoples of a space” and requires “change” to tell “different stories” is, however, a sweeping mischaracterization. D&D is not “mechanically designed” for a specific narrative, nor does it require some kind of “change” to tell a particular kind of story. That, in fact, is precisely its appeal.
D&D is a system of rules for collaboratively role-playing a story of any type. There are no doubt “home brewed” D&D games that incorporate the imperialist narratives Relles describes, but that is a function of the people running those games, not of D&D itself. Blaming D&D for those individuals is like blaming painting because some painters use it to paint morally reprehensible images or blaming film because some filmmakers use it to promote hideous ideological agendas.
None of the official materials from Wizards of the Coast — the company that publishes official D&D content — includes adventures or narratives that conform to the narratological paradigm Relles describes. Indeed, most official quests involve liberation, recovery, and resistance; they center on helping communities, not dismantling or expropriating them.
Relles’s characterization of D&D aligns with a long-standing generalization of the game that, since the 1970s, presupposes it inculcates violence, asocial behavior, and deviance in young people. The truth is quite different: D&D, like many other role-playing games, encourages players to express themselves freed from the constraints of the norms of our society that otherwise inhibit their sense of self, including gendered, ableist, classist, and cultural norms. It can empower the disempowered.
The stories it can tell — including most official adventures — are the very stories Relles desires: stories that disrupt power structures and center and celebrate local and Indigenous knowledge, and imagine a world where we live in a positive reciprocal relationship with the Earth and all its inhabitants. Through these games, players can cultivate empathy and inclusivity, hone their understanding of the impact their choices have on the world and other people, develop problem-solving skills, exercise their creativity, imagine a better world, and enhance their sense of belonging in the world.
It is misguided to condemn such a richly useful tool out of fear that some people might use it in harmful ways. Instead, we should seek to identify and remedy the actual reasons those people think and feel the way that they do about their fellow humans and our world.
Matteo Pangallo lives in Shutesbury.