Dungeons & Dragons – a Means of Education

By
Ken Wilson

Ms. Julia Ray
English 112 – 21H
March 26, 2012

Thesis Statement
Do to the large amount of reading, comprehension of rules, mathematical calculations, development of strategy, and use of imagination, creativity and teamwork, the game is also a means of education.
Keyword Outline I. Dungeons & Dragons A. Purpose 1. Rule books 2. Players B. Computer users II. Misconceptions C. Cause of suicide / murder 3. Research of Concern 4. Conclusion D. Relating propaganda III. Support of Thesis E. Educational benefits 5. College graduates 6. Personal experience F. Conclusion

Dungeons & Dragons – a Means of Education
Many people think that the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons is an evil game of devil worshipping, the cause of teenage suicide, or a distraction from education. I have found, through personal experience and research, that none of the above are true. In fact the game is designed around the premise of role-playing heroes. Do to the large amount of reading, comprehension of rules, mathematical calculations, development of strategy, and use of imagination, creativity and teamwork, the game is also a means of education. Dungeons & Dragons, created by Gary Gygax, was the first role playing game, and is what started the roleplaying industry. The game was introduced as a means of developing imagination and creativity. Schiesel shares this in remembrance of Gygax’s passing: "… when [Gary] Gygax, the intellectual and spiritual father of all modern role-playing games, died … it prompted a reconsideration of the power of the imagination he unleashed” (par. 3). He further adds - "… without Mr. Gygax … millions of people … would have never discovered the liberating strength of their own imagination. They would never have discovered that everyone has the ability to create an identity. In role-playing games, players realize they have the astounding power to refuse to allow the external world to define them" (Schiesel, par. 5). Using their imagination, players “create a character – a heroic adventurer [that] is part of a team that delves into dungeons, battles monsters, and explores the world’s dark wilderness” (Heinsoo, The Player's Handbook 8). This is what makes this type of game interesting: "Role-playing games differ from other forms of recreation through the act of co-creation. The role-player creates his own experience through personal feelings and emotions. He inhabits a character and feels the character's experiences in a way that a book or film cannot directly convey. In this way, players interact with a game through a uniquely tailored frame of reference" (Tresca 8).
Over the years, the Dungeons & Dragons game has gone through several revisions. It was in 2008 that they printed the fourth and current edition, which specifically addresses the original meaning of the game: "The Dungeons & Dragons game is a role-playing game …. a role-playing game such as D&D provides form and structure, with robust gameplay and endless possibilities” (Heinsoo, Player's Handbook 6). With the rules constantly evolving, it keeps the players reading in order to keep their character’s statistics up-to-date, and allow them to add newer options when available. To date there are many books available that allow the players to customize their character’s personality and beliefs and to design and customize the world the characters interact in. The Dungeon Master’s Guide discusses the books needed to play the game: "As DM, you need a copy of all the rulebooks you're going to use to play. At a minimum, that should be a copy of the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual. Your players each need the Player's Handbook, since every character's broad assortment of powers, feats, and items means the game runs more smoothly if all the players bring their own copies of the Player's Handbook to the table" (Heinsoo, Dungeon Master's Guide 7).
Before play begins, one of the players is selected as the dungeon master (DM). The DM is charged with creating the gaming world, the monsters and encounters within, and the NPCs (non-playing characters – characters run by the DM to facilitate interactions among towns, villages, or other scenarios) so as to have a role-playing experience for everyone. He or she is also charged with creating the heroes’ counterparts whom the characters meet occasionally and usually have a climactic battle with at the end of the encounter. The DM’s task is similar to programming: "In Dungeons & Dragons, the player appointed Dungeon Master designs an 'adventure' that is a kind of decision tree the other players must navigate" (Nugent 190). This is why most players of the game are usually linked to computer users as described Nugent’s childhood experience: "I was in the fourth grade when I first observed the people who liked D&D - people like me - tended to be the same ones who liked to play with computers. … It seemed to me what the two activities had in common is that they demand no physical prowess of any kind. Therefore the children like me who carried around the Dungeon Master's Guide… were distinguished by their intelligence" (189, 190).
The different approaches taken by the DMs and players, show they both enjoy this form of mental exercise or enjoyment. However, not all who play the game have the same sense of fun: "Different people have different ideas of what's fun about D&D. Remember that the 'right way' to play D&D is the way you and your players agree on and enjoy. If everyone comes to the table prepared to contribute to the game, everyone has fun" (Heinsoo, Dungeon Master's Guide 7). The game is also "… a cooperative game in which you and your friends work together to complete each adventure and have fun" (Heinsoo, Player's Handbook 6).
In the early years of the game, many parents and religious minded individuals were concerned with this new game. Carolyn Caywood, a librarian at Bayside Area Public Library, conducted research in response to a question asked by a concerned father. She quotes him asking "Why do you carry Dragon Magazine? Don't you know young people have committed murder and suicide over playing Dungeons and Dragons?" (par. 1). Her research was centered around the fact that "a parent's concern centers on the rumors that Dungeons and Dragons fosters madness, crime, or cult membership, it is possible to show that this is modern folklore on par with the tanning machine turned into a microwave oven" (Caywood, par. 5). She goes on to explain that "Other suicides and murders attributed by some to Dungeons and Dragons are cited in 'Kids: The Deadliest Game?' This article also suggests that Dungeons and Dragons is no more likely to trigger violence than Hansel and Gretel: 'But with the incidence of teenage suicide having tripled in the past 25 years, it is not surprising that parents are looking for something to blame'" (Caywood, par. 6). During her research she read a copy of Dragon Magazine and found that it "asserts that the game promotes positive values and causes. When I sampled recent game scenarios from the magazine, most involved fighting evil and rescuing the innocent, and of course, liberating the evil one's treasure. Many of the specific adventures advertised draw on fantasy novels where the theme is a quest to thwart evil" (Caywood, par. 9). She summed up her article with: "We carry all the Dungeons and Dragons publications in our library. The results of my research in response to this father's complaint convinces me, not that Dungeons and Dragons is innocuous, [but that there] is no way to predetermine the effect of a book or magazine on an individual. While parents are acknowledged to have the right to guide their children's reading, they are wise to remember that the lure of the forbidden is almost magical in adolescence" (Caywood, par. 10).
This wasn’t the only time Dungeons & Dragons received negative reviews. Michael J. Tresca describes such an instance: "The Dungeons & Dragons brand was tarnished with the disappearance in 1979 of James Dallas Egbert III, a Michigan State University student. A Dungeons & Dragons - like game was blamed for his disappearance. Jack Chick's tract Dark Dungeons and Pat Pulling of Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD) both spread propaganda that closely tied Dungeons & Dragons to cult activities that they believed were a threat to young people across America. Pulling went so far as to provide pamphlets and guides to police and appeared on talk shows to spread the word. In response, Mike Stackpole, an author and game designer, debunked her efforts in The Pulling Report. Stackpole determined that Pulling had misrepresented her credentials. After the report was published in 1990, she left BADD” (64).
The game Dungeons and Dragons requires and develops many educational skills, such as reading comprehension, creative writing, and mathematics. In fact there are many successful college graduates that play or have played the game. John Gravois went to the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan and along the way discovered something amazing. "In the weeks leading up to my trip, I had spoken to some youngish scholars who said they found their way to medieval studies via an adolescence spent playing D&D, the iconic role-playing game. I spoke to scholars at elite universities and scholars at sleepy institutions; to associate professors, adjuncts, and graduate students; to men and women. All of them had cast spells, slain goblins, and rolled the many-sided dice of Dungeons & Dragons" (par. 3). Nugent quotes Sherry Turkle when she observed an MIT Dungeon master devote “‘at least five hours of preparation for each hour of play,’ throwing himself into his adventures to such an extent that he created ‘a social world structured like a machine’” (190, 191). Quoting Chris Hare, Schiesel shows us another benefit from the game: "I grew up in Winchester, and it was cool to be rich. Obviously it was cool to be good-looking. But it was not cool to be too smart. Then Dungeons & Dragons came along, and it was a way to get out of there, to be yourself, to be someone else, to attempt the impossible and then gain the confidence in yourself to really do it" (par. 9). Nugent shows his agreement with: "D&D is a safe place for self-conscious teenagers to face up to their fantasies and anxieties in a group" (47). Even Wayne D. Blackmon describes the results of the game in therapy: “The game provided a vehicle for the safe emergence of feeling within the context of organizing rules” (628). I personally have played the game since its inception. I have been a player and a DM. In each case, I have either played a hero, or required my players to play the roles of heroes. What I didn’t learn, until several months after playing my first game, was the effect it would have on me personally. The first report card, after my involvement in the game, was a complete surprise to my parents. All of my grades had increased a full letter grade. My parents attributed the improvement to: reading of the rules; the structure of the game; the mandatory use of mathematics; the increased use of my creative skills and imagination; and finally, the understanding of how important teamwork is. Because of such, they encouraged me to continue to play the game. Since then, I have developed several worlds of adventure, created several hundred characters, and am currently writing a book about the latest world I have created and am running. I have also developed an intense desire to learn, and as a result, I have acquired multitude of trades, skills, and abilities of which I use for helping others.
So, when I hear skeptics or critics of the game, I give them my testimony on how it improved my capability to learn and how I use it to teach others. I also explain that it is my goal to show people, that there are heroes in all of us. Think about it. If everyone actually learned to play the game as it was intended, and apply the lessons learned within, society would be a much better place to live. Therefore, the role playing game of Dungeons & Dragons is not an evil means to worship Satan, a cause for teenage suicide, nor a distraction from learning. In fact the game is a teaching tool, in so many ways, and just as with many things in life - it is all in how you use it.
2241

Works Cited
Heinsoo, Rob., Collins, Andy., Wyatt, James. Dungeon Master's Guide. Fourth. Renton: Wizards of the Coast, 2008.
—. Player's Handbook. Fourth. Renton: Wizards of the Coast, 2008.
—. The Player's Handbook. Fourth. Renton: Wizards of the Coast, 2008.

Nugent, Benjamin. American Nerd. New York: Scribner, 2008. Print

Tresca, Michael J. The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2011. Print.

Schiesel, Seth. "Herald of a Global Imagination Revolution." New York Times 08 Mar. 2008: 7. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Feb. 2012.

Gravois, John. "Knights of the Faculty Lounge." Chronicle of Higher Education 53.44 (2007): A8-A10. Teacher Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb. 2012.

Caywood, Carolyn. "Rescuing the Innocent: The Lure of Dungeons and Dragons." School Library Journal 37 (1991): 138. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Feb. 2012.