I’ve sometimes found it difficult to explain exactly what D&D means to me to quote-unquote “normal” people, but I decided recently that I want to try to find the words. Many people don’t really understand what it is, or how people can form such strong attachments to their characters. Even my parents, who are open and understanding people by nearly any standard, had trouble understanding just what it meant to us.
I vividly remember losing my first ever character when I was in my late teens. I came home looking despondent and distant, and my mother asked what was wrong. When I told her my character had died, she smiled and responded that “it’s just a game, you can always play again.” I just shook my head at the time, knowing that she didn’t get it. Couldn’t get it. But I’m going to make an attempt to help the rest of you get it now.
With the recent shift in modern television towards more dark and gritty content, I think I am in a better position to make the attempt. Do you remember when your favourite character died in Game of Thrones, or The Walking Dead, or some other television or novel series? That sinking feeling you get when you watch a character you’ve grown attached to and spent a dozen hours of your life watching leave you forever? Multiply that feeling by ten. That’s what it feels like to lose a D&D character, and for good reason. A D&D character isn’t just a fictional character that you become attached to. A D&D character is your character; a character you have guided, controlled, spoken for and cultivated relationships with for a hundred hours of your life or more. Your own tremendous effort, ingenuity, strategy and luck saw that character through innumerable trials and tribulations. That alone would be enough to make them more meaningful than most fictional characters for an individual player, but there’s more to it than that, too. These characters, when they’re done right, when they’re created a certain way, are a reflection of the player who created them. It’s not “them” exactly, but it could be a part of them. It could be the embodiment of their passions or convictions. It could be an exploration of their own morality, or a moral view that troubles them and bears study. It could be a part of themselves they struggle to express, but long to. We speak for them, we decide what they do, and how they feel. For all intents and purposes, they are us. In short, a character in D&D, or in any role-playing game for that matter, can have deep, personal significance to a player.
The relationships cultivated with friends in D&D are unlike anything I have ever experienced, before or since. How many times in your life have you risked yourself to save a friend? How many times have you stood with them against impossible odds, knowing that death is practically assured, because you refused to leave them behind? These sorts of things don’t often happen in our day-to-day lives, but they do in D&D. I know some people might scoff at that; it is just a game after all. Nobody is really losing anything. That’s where you’re very wrong. The average D&D session for us was about 6 hours in length, and we tried to meet every weekend. In high school, we met even more frequently for play sessions, and for longer periods of time. I have probably spent more time with my first D&D character than you have with any fictional character, ever (that campaign ran for over four years). Since characters can have such deeply personal roots and such a long history with us, their sacrifices are genuinely painful for us too. Characters very dear to me have stood between friends and certain death. I knew that I might be trading my character for theirs, and the thought of losing my character hurt profoundly, but it was worth it because theirs meant just as much to them. I had touching arguments with players out-of-game, telling them they had to go, that my own character was a lost cause and there was no point losing everyone, only to have them adamantly refuse.
“I‘m not leaving you behind.”
It’s amazing how much those five words can solidify and strengthen a friendship, even in this context. We refer to characters in those terms: I, you, we, us. Those moments, fictional or not, are meaningful. I knew my friend wasn’t just saying he wouldn’t leave my character behind, he was saying he wouldn’t leave me behind. He was saying he had my back, even when it would be easier for him not to have it, here or in the every-day world.
Of course, not everyone plays for that sort of emotional experience. Some people prefer to keep things light, and engage in some cooperative monster slaying, loot some bodies, and call it a day. There’s nothing wrong with that. My own home group has been moving more in that direction lately, possibly because we have a couple of new people who aren’t entirely comfortable with role-playing yet. That does sadden me, a little bit. But I can, without shame or reservation, say that playing D&D with my best friends in high school helped shape who I am and the relationships I cultivated, and helped me find my confidence. My friends and I stood together against insurmountable odds, carried each other, stuck together through thick and thin. We were more than friends; we were a team.
We should all be so lucky as to be D&D nerds growing up.
– Wes Rowley
Renaissance Gamer 