Dungeons & Dragons isn’t a spectator sport: What we lose when the game comes out of the basement and onto the … – Salon

These podcasts and web series don’t use the D&D brand the way “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” uses a familiar part of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter world to tell a new story. Rather, these programs are all about try to capture the improvisational nature playing the game. The die-rolling. The witty repartee as you slug Mountain Dew. The experience of watching these is much like Twitch, a channel members tune into to watch live video games.

But presenting D&D as passive entertainment — something to be watched — risks turning what has always been a participatory game experience into the next binge-worthy program.

These shows makes it seem that only famous actors and veteran players can have all the fun; that the game is a medium being funny. We watch and we laugh, but is it really D&D?

To my mind, D&D and other fantasy role-playing games have always been about the imagination. D&D may be a medium for goofing off, but it’s not just fodder for Hollywood comedians whose game is to out-quip each other.

Maybe I’m a grumpy old D&D player. I grew up playing in the 1970s and ’80s, the era that “Stranger Things” is set in. I feel passionate for how D&D works, and how it activates the gray matter between the ears and inside the mind’s eye. I can appreciate what is lost when you turn the game into something you watch, instead of a tool for entertaining yourself and learning things about yourself. Something unique happens when you play. The sparseness of D&D’s crude tools — maps, sketches, dice, books, silly little figurines — make you fill in the gaps. You bring your imagination to the table to complete the picture. D&D and similar games take some of the storytelling power we’ve ceded to Netflix and Hollywood, and they return it to us.

D&D isn’t only an outlet for creative expression and storytelling. As I argued in a recent TEDx talk, the game schools you in character-building, risk-taking, and problem-solving — after all, life is also a dangerous dungeon. Be prepared. Your team of elves, dwarves, humans, wizards, you all work together. And collaboration means recognizing the power of teamwork and diversity. You can’t go it alone, and neither can your culture, even in a fantasy world. The experience of playing, not watching, improves empathy, tolerance, and collaboration. In Donald Trump’s America, we need this.

Yes, these spectator versions of D&D aren’t going to kill the game. The primitive game of pencils and maps and plastic figurines will still exist. And extra exposure of the D&D brand, in these celebrity-endorsed ways, will certainly bring more potential players to the gaming table. “Harmonquest,” in its crude way, celebrates the imagination.

But the experience of watching these shows doesn’t engage the imagination the same way as playing D&D does. Making a role-playing-game adhere to the spectator sport cliché of American sports or leisure culture — that is, you sit down with guacamole dip and beer and watch football or baseball or the Olympics or Netflix — automatically makes that active experience passive. These hip, funny, clever D&D shows distract us from some of the game’s original mojo.

Humans crave face-to-face interaction. The creep of the screen in our lives makes that all the more hard to do. For decades, games like D&D (or really, any board game) help incubate spaces for casual give and take, improvisational joking and mock-competitive interaction. D&D in particular helps also cultivate and nurture a you-can-be-the-storyteller experience.

We shouldn’t forget this as each and every activity, it seems, becomes a televised event to entertain. Go ahead and watch “Harmonquest” or “Titansgrave.” Listen to “Drunks and Dragons” on your morning commute. But then shut off the iPad, roll the dice and kill some monsters.

See what happens when you take back the power of storytelling, if you dare.