About D&D
Contrary to assorted modern folklore, Dungeons & Dragons
-- also referred to as D&D (or AD&D, for
"Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" during a long interval when its
publishers maintained two parallel sets of game rules) -- is not a
recruiting tool for demon-worshippers or an insidious method of mind
control. It and other fantasy role-playing games (RPGs) are,
in essence, advanced forms of the "cowboys and Indians" or "cops and
robbers" play common to American childhood prior to the television
era. What our parents accomplished solely by means of
imagination, AD&D players accomplish with imagination,
pencil and paper, and a large bag of funny-looking dice.
Some of the modern variations do tend to the exotic, notably the
Vampire: the Masquerade variants that involve live-action
role playing (LARP). Note, though, that even the LARP games
are just that. You may have seen tabloid-TV reports about
so-called "vampire subculture", which is something else again.
It's easy to confuse people who play vampire RPGs with people who
think they're vampires (yes, there are a few of these, and I
consider them Very Weird People), but the two groups seem to
intersect very little. Both groups also overlap to a degree
with the Goth subculture -- the fashion senses are similar, tending
strongly to black clothing and stark facial makeup. But like
the LARP gamers, Goths (not to be confused with the historical
ethnic group) are basically harmless if left to their own devices.
Drama & Mathematics
But we digress. The Dungeons & Dragons rules,
originally published in the mid-1970s, were the first successful
attempt to codify "cowboys and Indians" play into a formal system
built around pencil-and-paper maps, preplanned adventures, and
personalities represented in game terms by a series of numerical
ability scores for such characteristics as Strength, Dexterity, and
Wisdom. The choice of genre -- heroic fantasy -- came about
because the designers were spinning the system off from rules built
for boxed wargames featuring cardboard counters or toy soldiers, and
the variant from which D&D sprung was a medieval-warfare
simulation.
Rather to the designers' surprise, D&D was a significant
commercial success, and its publishers went on to become the
founding fathers of a good-sized cottage industry. A number of
RPG companies rose and fell over the next decade or two, publishing
games set in worlds inspired by superhero comics, vast interstellar
SF sagas, the old West, the post-nuclear future, gangland Chicago,
and James Bond's brand of spycraft. None, though, quite caught
the imagination or enjoyed the success of the original invention --
until someone thought to design an RPG in which the players took the
roles of vampires. Vampire: the Masquerade caught the
imaginations of Anne Rice fans and independent-minded teenagers
alike, emphasizing role-playing and character development over
"hack-and-slash" dungeon crawls. Though originally a
living-room game like D&D, the character-driven system
eventually spawned variant rules designed to facilitate live-action
play, and LARP groups began to spring up in earnest.
The foregoing is, of course, highly condensed. For more
information about the games, start with the following sites:
Dungeons & Dragons (Wizards of the Coast)
the publisher's official D&D site
Paizo
Publishing
longtime publishers of Dragon® Magazine
& other game products
White
Wolf
publishers of Vampire: the Masquerade