"Race" in D&D

As a social scientist who studies male-dominated subcultures, I have done research that put me in spaces where I delved into reactions to issues of race in gaming. A key question is this: Given how charged the term race has been, why would games use it to discuss differences that have nothing to do with the way we traditionally use the word? Dungeons & Dragons is not the only game to use the term in this way; so have many other digital and analog fantasy offerings. But the celebrated game...

 What is a Spell?

A spell is a discrete magical effect, a single shaping of the magical energies that suffuse the multiverse into a specific, limited expression. In casting a spell, a character carefully plucks at the invisible strands of raw magic suffusing the world, pins them in place in a particular pattern, sets them vibrating in a specific way, and then releases them to unleash the desired effect-in most cases, all in the span of seconds.

 Race in D&D

Racial bioessentialism is a core design crutch for Dungeons & Dragons. Across fifty years of tabletop roleplaying games, multiple novels, supplements, and additional tie-ins, D&D has continually established monolithic culture building as part of its lore. The alignment charts that Gary Gygax (and many designers) focused on as a method of easy-to-understand character building did not help matters; entire races were designated as Evil using this alignment chart, and Gygax himself can be...

 Types of Do

Japanese term, written in Kanji (Chinese character) Do (ppronounced as Doo) is translated semantically as the Way, the Path, the Truth, the Art, Tao and many scholars had implied the diverse epistemological meanings with reference to one's interpretive subjectivism of Do concepts associated with human pursuits. We strive to achieve highest human potentials physically, mentally and spiritually through artistic endeavors, and through its process we find deep meaning of self-worth, reason for ex...

 The Magic Circle

The term magic circle is appropriate because there is in fact something genuinely magical that happens when a game begins. A fancy Backgammon set sitting all alone might be a pretty decoration on the coffee table. If this is the function that the game is serving-decoration-it doesn't really matter how the game pieces are arranged, if some of them are out of place, or even missing. However, once you sit down with a friend to play a game of Backgammon, the arrangement of the pieces suddenly bec...

 The Magic Circle of Gameplay

In the play-state you experience a protective frame which stands between you and the "real" world and its problems, creating an enchanted zone in which, in the end, you are confident that no harm can come. Although this frame is psychological, interestingly it often has a perceptible physical representation: the proscenium arch of the theater, the railings around the park, the boundary line on the cricket pitch, and so on. But such a frame may also be abstract, such as the rules governing the...

 Human Myth-Making is Crucial to Modern Society

It’s relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven. But why is it important? After all,

 The Wonder of a Child Learning Their Native Language

Imagine you are faced with the following challenge: You must discover the underlying structure of an immense system that contains tens of thousands of pieces, all generated by combining a small set of elements in various ways. These pieces, in turn, can be combined in an infinite number of ways, although only a subset of these combinations is actually correct. However, the subset that is correct is itself infinite. Somehow you must rapidly figure out the structure of this system so that you c...

 The Magic Circle

Game rules, therefore, create a kind of artificial reality in which those rules exclude other equally valid or defensible rules. In other words, there is no place for a chess piece in backgammon, baseball isn’t played with a hockey puck, a player can’t die in Candy Land, and there are no sugarplum fairies (to date) in World of Warcraft. The way each game’s rules and equipment combine to define the unique experience of playing that particular game is referred to by theorists as the magic...

 Number Scrabble: Numerical Tic-Tac-Toe

In psychological research on problem-solving, sometimes the game of Tic-Tac-Toe is employed, which, though very simple to learn and play, still offers sufficient problems to the investigator in that it is not at all clear what heuristics are used by the subjects, except avoiding the winning move of the opponent. The same is apparently true for the isomorphic game of Number Scrabble, which is based on the fact that there exists a 3 X 3 magic square, of which rows, columns, and main diagonals a...