They Came to Slay (eBook)

Chapter 2: The contemporary realms of D&D

Throughout its lifetime, Dungeons & Dragons has been transmogrified, adjusted, and altered. While it’s retained its core concept of being something in which players and DMs can become magical and mighty (and so much more) in mystical lands, the way you actually play the game has progressively changed. To boot, the world IRL has changed, too – most notably, there have been huge technical advances, like the internet as we know it, that may have seemed to somebody in 1974 like something from a sci-fi film. But it’s thanks to these various changes that D&D has clinched immense popularity in the contemporary world, and has once again secured its spot as a go-to game for fantasy nerds. Luckily, for us to explore what’s changed in more detail, we don’t need to travel all the way back to 1974 – but we do need to teleport to 2014.

In 2014, the 5th edition/5e rules system for Dungeons & Dragons was released to much anticipation. With its release, 5e became the de facto rules for playing and governing Dungeons & Dragons sessions – from deciphering how easily members of a party swim across a tumultuous river, to how successful or unsuccessful they are when facing monsters hell-bent on slaying them. The ethos behind bringing out new editions is to keep things fresh, while also simplifying previously cumbersome rules and mechanics, and replacing outdated material. For instance, in the 1978 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons’ Players Handbook, women of any race once upon a time couldn’t be as physically strong as men, simply because they were women.1 Yes, as say Kae-ra the fighter you would’ve been a dab hand with all manner of weapons and able to wear any armour type but, as a woman, you still would’ve been naturally weaker, just because.

It’s arguably 5e, though, that’s made the game its most simple and accessible. Let’s take bending bars as an example – a deed done perhaps to break in or out of some place for whatever purpose, be it heinous, heroic, or somewhere in between. Here, I’ll be drawing from 1st edition – aka Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. 1st edition isn’t viewed as particularly complex when compared with say 3rd and 4th editions, but referencing it here still serves as a good way to see D&D’s mechanical evolution.

Here, a character’s capacity to bend iron bars depended on their Strength ability score – the higher their ability score, the better percentile chance they had of bending bars. A character with a Strength ability score of 3 had a 0% chance of bending bars, while a character with 16 Strength had a 10% chance. The player of the 16 Strength character would have then rolled two percentile dice – both of which are 10-sided – to see if their character would’ve succeeded, with a cumulative roll between 1 and 10 meaning their attempt was a success. However, if they had rolled anything above 10, they would have failed. What also complicated matters was that, when a character of fighter class reached 18 Strength, they would’ve gained ‘exceptional strength’ – which increased their ability to complete feats such as bending bars more easily.2 The player would’ve needed to roll percentile dice to determine how much stronger their character became, adding more numbers and percentages to the mix. The fluctuating, wide range of numbers and percentiles unnecessarily convoluted matters. From this perhaps hard to follow example alone, you may have an inkling of what things used to be like. Personally, if I were to play a Strength-based character in a 1e campaign, I would need to keep the rule book with me at all times and constantly refer back to it.

In 5e, however, the DM would simply ask for a Strength check after hearing that a player would like their character to bend bars. A Strength check is where a DM sets a Difficulty Class (DC) number for the task at hand, and the player just has to beat it. A DC of 5 would suggest the task is rather easy to accomplish, but a DC of 20 would mean it’s significantly tougher. The player rolls a 20-sided die and adds or subtracts their character-specific modifiers. If they beat the DC – 5, in this example – they succeed; if they don’t, they fail. Similarly, the previously complicated tasks of things like lockpicking, opening doors, and moving silently can now all be solved with easy ability and skill checks at the roll of one die. Ultimately, with 5e, there’s no wrangling with percentiles or a vast range of numbers; it’s almost entirely down to your rolls.

While there’s unending debate about which edition is best or easiest – everyone has their favourite, and the edition they start with may always be the easiest to them – it’s clear that 5e has lessened many of the nit-picky elements of the game, carved out space for more spontaneity for both the DM and the players, and made the process of learning and playing the game smoother than it had previously been. For Gwendolyn Marshall, a long-time D&D player, the 5e system is a particularly welcome development.

Marshall is a philosophy professor, game designer, co-owner of the incredible Arcanist Press which publishes supplementary content for 5e, and a trans woman. She got into D&D as an 8-year-old, when D&D had its first pop culture moment in the ‘80s – but, from 2002 onwards, as the responsibilities of work and family grew, she largely stopped playing, apart from browsing the latest books and attending a few game sessions here and there. In 2014, though, she invited her old group to play D&D again with her as the DM, this time using the new 5e system. She told me that 5e was not only an immediate hit with her as somebody with hands-on experience of D&D’s previous systems, but also for the rest of her group. ‘We all love it,’ Marshall said, citing 5e’s accessibility. ‘Time is my most precious resource right now in my life. I work a lot, I have kids – I don’t want to spend a 4-hour game session doing one round of combat. I want to tell a story, have fun, and engage in a narrative that’s imaginative and is kind of an escape. The mechanics need to facilitate that experience,’ she added. ‘That’s why 5e is my favourite.’3

At the same time as 5e’s release, watching people game on platforms like Twitch and YouTube had become all the more common. Actual plays – web shows or podcasts in which people play tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), such as Dungeons & Dragons – were rising in popularity as well. And there’s one acclaimed actual play that has had a profound impact on me personally and for the general landscape of D&D: Critical Role.

‘I would like to welcome you to Marquet,’ said Matt Mercer, Critical Role’s Dungeon Master, as the group began their third campaign in 2021.4 ‘The year is 843 P.D., or Post Divergence. A landmass once marred by a vengeful god during the Calamity, the staggeringly twisted mountain ranges created in its wake divided the regions that have now developed into a varied and beautiful continent…’ On he continues. With his vivid descriptions, he wasn’t only setting the scene for the eight players at his table – it was also for the millions of viewers at home.

The show has humble roots; pre-streaming, the friend group – which consists of famous voice actors like Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, and Taliesin Jaffe (who is bisexual) – played D&D together in the comfort of their homes. But, when they were approached by multimedia company Geek & Sundry to stream their adventures online, they agreed, enabling fans of their acting work and D&D enthusiasts alike to tag along for the ride.

The troupe’s first campaign – which ran from 2015-2017 and consisted of one hundred and fifteen roughly 4-hour episodes – has since had parts of its storyline turned into a cartoon show on Prime Video. At the time of writing, the cartoon, The Legend of Vox Machina, has garnered a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s been very well-received to say the least – just as their actual play content has been.

Critical Role became a worldwide success in a relatively short space of time. But watching them now, despite the massive increase in production values – they’re filming at a dedicated L.A. studio, intentionally designed to look like a medieval tavern rather than a West Coast production space – and after leaving Geek & Sundry and founding Critical Role Productions, it’s still an intimate affair, emanating a feeling of watching your own friends playing D&D. And seeing as each homebrewed, entirely-created-from-scratch campaign contains engaging storytelling, intricate storylines, comedic hijinks, emotional rollercoasters, and dynamic combat sequences – a long, geeky soap opera, if you will – it’s no wonder that Critical Role has had such an impact on contemporary D&D. In online nerd spaces, it’s hard not to stumble across associated fan content. Twitter and Reddit, in particular, are strewn with fan art penned by professional artists; cosplayers take photos of themselves adorned in outfits resembling those of their favourite CR heroes; avid fans write enthusiastic threads about the latest shenanigans, deliberating what could happen next.

While Critical Role is an actual play sitting at the forefront of contemporary D&D, it’s still but one (albeit important) part of a plethora of new media that engages people worldwide with adventure, drama, and a good dose of tomfoolery. When it comes to other actual plays, for example, there’s Dimension 20 – an anthology actual play...