Here be Dragons…
AND THEY’RE FRIENDLY Writer TYLER HELLARD reflects on how Dungeons & Dragons — a game he learned to love as an adult — has become more popular than ever as a force for good in a chaotic world Illustrations by Sarah L. Shaneman
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O THE UNINITIATED, it might feel like Dungeons & Dragons is having a resurgence. And it is. The game has been around since 1974, but was mostly played by teenagers. About a decade ago, D&D released its Fifth Edition, streamlining the rules and giving the whole thing a fresh coat of paint. It got pop culture bumps from shows like The Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things, and then its own blockbuster tie-in film, 2023's Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, starring Chris Pine. It also proved popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, giving people a reason to Zoom with friends and talk about the problems of Faerûn, the fictional setting for much of D&D, instead of those in the real world. And those 1970s and ’80s teenagers, most now middle-aged, are rediscovering D&D and teaching their kids. The game is everywhere.
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I grew up in a small town where you were the sort of kid who played hockey or you played D&D. While some kids might have done neither, there wasn’t a single kid who did both. I played hockey. In my world, D&D was played by nerds, dorks and skids. You know, weirdos. And if it seems like my social paradigm was informed almost exclusively by narrow-minded teen movies released between 1986 and 1994, well, you’d be right.
NEXT GENERATION D&D Calgarian Dionne Angman, also part of my demographic cohort, remembers it like I do. “When I was a kid, it was more the nerdy kids who would play D&D.” But her kids, 16-year-old Deia and 18-year-old Blake, don’t see it that way. “To a degree, it still is nerds,” says Blake. “But now the definition of the term ‘nerd’ has expanded. Really anybody can do it.” What follows is the four of us fumbling around, trying to come up with a modern definition of nerd. We never really land on one, and it’s not something that seems to concern the kids all that much anyway. Presumably, they were raised on better movies.