Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 1

The Pictures are So Much Better:

Cross-Media Trends and Orality in Dungeons & Dragons

Nicholas J. Mizer

COMM 663

Texas A&M University Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 2

“It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or

television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said,

‘Because the pictures are so much better.”

- (Schiesel, 2008, p. 1) Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 3

THE PICTURES ARE SO MUCH BETTER:

CROSS-MEDIA TRENDS AND ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

Introduction

Despite having over thirty years of history with which to work, the academic study of role-playing games (RPGs) has been overwhelmingly synchronic. There is an acknowledged world of difference between the pulp-fantasy influenced original Dungeons & Dragons game of

1974 and its MMO1-derived edition released in 2008, but very little understanding of what those changes actually entail. Many of the changes to RPGs are best understood when examined in light of changes to related media such as film, video games, and literature, each of which have their own dynamic histories that intertwine with the history of RPGs.

This paper documents changes in the form of tabletop role-playing games since their invention in 1974 and correlates that development with a shifting relationship to fantasy in other media. Although many role-playing games have played important roles in the history of the medium, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) will provide the case study for this analysis. D&D serves as an excellent focus for two main reasons: as the first role-playing game it provides the greatest time depth in which to study changes to the medium; further, D&D has consistently been the most popular RPG and is the natural choice for establishing a baseline understanding of the medium as a whole.

After providing a brief overview of the Dungeons & Dragons and the nature of RPGs I will summarize the relevant work of two authors, Daniel Mackay and Walter Ong. Mackay has the distinction of being one of the few researchers to consider the cross-media dimensions of

1 Massively Multiplayer Online,” a computer game type exemplified by Blizzard’s popular World of Warcraft. Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 4 role-playing games, although his study tends to emphasize questions of content, rather than those of form addressed in this current study. Ong, while not a game researcher, has developed a robust theoretical framework for understanding media forms. His work on the characteristics of orality will help to illuminate the often underappreciated implications of RPGs' dynamic relationship with orality. Because Ong leaves room for varying degrees of “residual orality” in media it is possible to describe the game as more oral at some points in its history than at others.

Following this literature review I will present a quantitative analysis of references to other media in Dragon magazine, a popular hobby publication, from 1975 to 2004. Changes in both the frequency of these references and the specific media referenced provide insight into the cross-media dynamics of this time period. Changes in the frequency and balance of these cross- media references provide a guide for understanding changes to the form of the game itself.

Tracking these changes in form can prove a complicated endeavor, because the way players used the game varied between regions, and even between various groups of players in the same area. This variability cannot be dismissed, but the current analysis relies on materials published by the game manufacturers, TSR and for an understanding of the predominant trends. These rulebooks and adventure modules provide, at a minimum, data on prescriptive recommendations for game play. More optimistically, they can also be taken as generally suggestive of the medium as practiced by the majority of players at any given time.

Adventure modules offer an especially rich picture of the medium because they are more closely connected with the actual performance of the game. Where rulebooks provide a generalized framework of how the game can be used to create and experience narratives, adventure modules provide blueprints for a specific set of adventures. As the medium has changed, the nature of Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 5 these blueprints has also changed, reflecting different models of how players could use the medium to generate narratives.

The evidence suggests that as D&D developed players increasingly drew on other media to aid both their understanding of the game and to provide models for negotiating the narratives they created through the medium. In this process a shift occurred in which players relied increasingly on visually-oriented media, promoting a gradual decrease in the residual orality present in the original form of the game. This shift affected nearly every facet of game play, but the specific areas addressed below are changes to the negotiation of the game world, the narrative structures produced through play, and the development of characters within that narrative structure.

A Brief Overview of Role-Playing Games

History of the Medium

Role-playing games derive from a combination of miniature war games, fantasy literature, and oral storytelling. Miniature war-games, first documented in 1811 as a training tool for the Prussian military, involve the use of small figurines or tokens that represent military units or individual soldiers in the simulation of tactical warfare (Mackay, 2001, p. 13). These simulated skirmishes are mediated through the use of rules quantifying the relative strengths of opposing forces and typically use dice to simulate the vagaries of chance in determining the outcome of battle. In the twentieth century amateurs took an increasing interest in this form of play, and in 1915 H.G. Wells produced Little Wars, the first war game designed for amateur recreation. This adaptation proved highly succesful, and war gaming developed into a popular hobby over the course of the next forty-five years (Mackay, 2001, p. 13). Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 6

For most of the history of these games, players re-enacted famous battles from various historical periods, but it was the medieval setting that would prove most influential to the history of RPGs. In 1968 a group of war gamers gathered together in Minneapolis-St. Paul to play “little medieval games, a very dull period of war games” (Fine, 1983/2002, p. 13). The leader of the group, Dave Wesley, modified the standard rules of the game to give each player individual goals and strengths by having them play the roles of specific knights or kings (Fine, 1983/2002, p. 13).

One of the players in Wesley’s games, took this concept to another level:

I was the first one to come up with a violation of the basic concept of warfare of the period. We were fighting an ancient game. Very dull again. And I'd given the defending brigands a Druid high priest, and in the middle of battle, the dull battle, the Roman war elephant charged the Britains and looked like he was going to trample the army flat, the Druidic high priest waved his hands and pointed this funny little box out of one hand and turned the elephant into so much barbeque meat (Fine, 1983/2002, pp 13-14).

Thus was fantasy introduced into this new, more personal type of wargaming. Arneson went on in 1970 to start what is generally recognized as the first role-playing campaign, Blackmoor. The primary innovation of Arneson's campaign was the introduction of the “dungeon crawl,” in which players took on the roles of individual heroes exploring an underground labyrinth (Fine,

1983/2002, p. 14).

At this point Arneson's innovation was limited to his own circle of players, and their form of play had not been fully systematized into a fully organized set of rules. This systematization came about as Arneson began corresponding with a fellow member of the Castles and Crusades

Society (a medieval war gaming enthusiast club), Gary Gygax (Fine, 1983/2002, p. 14). Gygax and Arneson collaborated on a set of rules for this new type of play and in 1974 they published the new game through Gygax's gaming company, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). The full title Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 7 was Dungeons & Dragons: Rules for Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and

Pencil and Miniature Figures, and it consisted of three booklets: Men & Magic, Monsters &

Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness. The verbose subtitle hints at how new this concept was within the gaming community, as they had no ready words to afford a simple description.

The concept took hold fairly quickly, however, and Gygax and Arneson began expanding and modifying the rules with new releases. Depending on how one tallies these releases, there have been as few as nine or as many as eighteen editions of D&D. Major edition changes under the original published, TSR occurred in 1978 with the introduction of Advanced Dungeons &

Dragons (AD&D) and Basic D&D, and in 1989 with the second edition of AD&D. After TSR went bankrupt in 1997, another gaming company called Wizards of the Coast purchased the rights to D&D. Wizards has issued two major editions to the game: Third Edition in 2000 and

Fourth Edition in 2008. Some of the specifics involved with these successive releases will be discussed below, but essentially each release of the game represents changes to the medium and how it is used to create narrative and ludic experiences.

The Invisible Rules of Play

The release of the original D&D, which have been affectionately labeled “the Little

Brown Books,” established a basic framework for RPGs that has remained fairly stable even to the present day. Certainly, the specific rules have changed greatly, and some RPGs have even eschewed the use of random determination of outcomes2, but the basic structure continues.

Markus Montola, a game researcher from the University of Finland, describes this basic structure as “the invisible rules of role-playing” (2009, p. 22). These invisible rules boil down to three points:

2 The Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game (Wujcik, 1991) is one prominent example of this type. Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 8

1) Role-playing is an interactive process of defining and re-defining the state, properties and contents of an imaginary game world.

2) The power to define the game world is allocated to the participants of the game. The participants recognize the existence of this power hierarchy.

3) Player-participants define the game world through personified character constructs, conforming to the state, properties and contents of the game world (2009, pp. 23-4).

The method of defining the game world depends on the specific medium of RPG in question, whether tabletop, live action, or virtual. In tabletop RPGs, usually referred to in the current paper simply as RPGs, “the game world is defined predominantly in verbal communication”

(2009, p. 24).

In D&D and similar games, one player is designated as a referee or director. Known as the “,” (DM) this participant provides the primary definition of the game world through verbal description and visual aids such as maps. The other participants, identified in game terminology only by the unmarked form “players,” provide primary definition for the heroes of the story, called “player characters.” Players do this both quantitatively and qualitatively; quantitatively, through numerical representation of strengths and abilities; and qualitatively, through verbal description sometimes accompanied by a visual portrait. Once the

Dungeon Master describes a specific setting in which the characters find themselves the players respond by describing the actions of the characters. The Dungeon Master determines the effects of these actions on the game world through a combination of random dice rolls, rules, and directorial license. Once these effects are communicated to the players, the communication loop begins anew as the players describe their characters’ response to the changed situation.

Described in these theoretical terms, the game can seem quite complicated, and the negotiation of this reality is in fact quite a complex system. In actual play, however, this Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 9 complexity is smoothed over, and an example of game play provides the clearest understanding of how the game works:

DM The room opens out in front of you. It's thirty feet wide and sixty feet long. There's a wooden door in the wall across from you. In the middle of the room there is a stone dais three feet high. On it is a stone statue, winged, with a hideous face. A small fire is burning in a depression in the stone before it, and thick aromatic green smoke rise from it. AL Anybody in the room? DM No. BOB Wingfoot the Thief advances cautiously into the room, probing the floor with his collapsible bamboo pole. AL Egbert the Dwarf stands in the doorway, his crossbow cocked and ready. DM O.K. CATHY Sareesa the Sorceress enters the room behind the thief. She takes a wand from the pouch on her belt and holds it ready in one hand. …...... DM With a clatter of stone wings, the gargoyles come off the wall and swoop at you. AL Shut the door! BOB Let me out first! I take a flying leap between the two at the doorway. …...... DM The first gargoyle reaches the door, striking at the back of the retreating thief.... BOB Who has vaulted out the door like a human arrow, landing cat-like on his feet. DM What's the probability of doing that? BOB Pretty much the same as climbing sheer walls [a formally defined proabability in the rules], I'd guess. (Rolls two dice) Look at that! I made it! DM O.K. But probably knocked the dwarf and the magic-user in in the doorway. (He rolls again behind his screen.) The sorceress is knocked down, but not the dwarf. (Holmes, 1981, pp. 11-14).

As can be seen, once players step into the cycle of negotiating and navigating the game world, play can flow rather seamlessly, providing the sense of a developing narrative.

Literature Review

Daniel Mackay and the Dynamics of Content

While some discussion exists regarding the connections between role-playing games and other forms of media such as movies, television, video games, and literature, thus far the discussion has emphasized content rather than form. Daniel Mackay, author of one of the few long studies of role-playing games, exemplifies this tendency. Working within the perspective of Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 10 performance studies, he presents a fairly robust history of role-playing games as a foundation for his “descriptive perspective of the role-playing game as an art form” (2001, p. 3). As a part of this history Mackay offers a series of equations to explain what he calls "The role-playing game's reciprocal relationship with popular culture” (2001, p. 17). For example, he explains the explosion of fantasy films in the late seventies and eighties as

Role-Playing Games (=Fantasy Literature + War Games) + Star Wars Phenomenon (=Technical Innovations + Ideological/Demographic Context) ------Influx of Fantasy Films (particularly Sword-and-Sorcery Films) (Mackay, 2001, p. 22).

This equation purports to explain how the content of role-playing games affected a shift in the content of films, but does not consider the relationship between the two media forms. Similarly, when he considers the subsequent influence of other media on role-playing games, his equation reads

First-and-Second Generation Role-Playing Games (=Fantasy Literature + War Games) + Specific Literary/Comic Book/Film/Television/Computer-Game Setting ------Third-Generation Role-Playing Games (Mackay, 2001, p. 26).

For Mackay, then, the content is the most important element for understanding a game: "As both the locus for the role-playing game's theater of events and the primary attraction for role-players, the fictional milieu is quite important to the success of the game. The role-playing genres...are all defined by their setting" (2001, p. 29). This focus on the influences of "images, signs, and product art" (Mackay, 2001, p. 26) assumes a static medium for conveying the narrative and setting of the game. In other words, Mackay documents changes in the narratives and settings of Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 11 role-playing games but ignores changes in the form of the games themselves (i.e., the medium in which the narratives were produced).

Even when discussing the extension of a fictional setting across multiple media Mackay fails to consider the difference between the media themselves. He identifies the phenomenon of imaginary-entertainment environments, or "fictional settings that change over time as if they were real places and that are published in a variety of mediums [sic]...each of them in communication with the others as they contribute toward the growth, history, and status of the setting" (2001, p. 29) The trans-media nature of these environments is indeed noteworthy, but

Mackay glosses over their most important feature: the differences between the media in which they exist. He marshals Baudrillard in his defense:

The medium itself is no longer identifiable as such, and the confusion of the medium and

the message (McLuhan) is the first great formula of this new era. There is no longer a

medium in the literal sense: it is now intangibly diffused, and diffracted in the real, and

one can no longer even say that the medium is altered by it (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 30 cited

in Mackay, 2001, p. 29).

Without delving into a full discussion of Baudrillard, it should be pointed out that the quotation at hand addresses the blending of media and reality rather than the abolition of difference between different media. This point and Baudrillard's broader ideas about simulation certainly have much to offer the field of game studies, but do not justify blinding ourselves to the differences between media. Mackay's attempt to use the text at hand in this way may be initially Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 12 compelling, but testing it against the actual history of role-playing games will show that it is insufficient.

Walter Ong's Psychodymanics of Orality

Jesuit scholar Walter Ong has written extensively on the distinctions between oral and literary cultures; that is, between cultures whose worldviews are strongly influenced by oral or literary media. For Ong, the central distinctions between these media are the “differences in

'mentality'” associated with them (1982, p. 3). Because his audience is so steeped in the literary mindset of the modern era his first task is to convey a sense of “an oral universe of communication” that exists not as a “variant of a literate universe,” but as a distinct set of assumptions about the world and humanity's place in that world (1982, p. 2). In describing this oral universe as more than simply proto-literary Ong seeks to correct the error perpetuated by scholars who have assumed “that oral art forms were to all intents and purposes simply texts, except for the fact that they were not written down” (1982, p. 10). This assumption has often been made by scholars studying RPGs, in that the implications of their oral nature have been largely ignored.

Ong details the oral universe by listing nine “psychodynamics of orality,” the mental tendencies produced in cultures steeped in oral media (e.g., the human voice), three of which apply directly to the study that follows. First, Ong describes orality as “aggregative rather than analytic” (1982, p. 38). Because of the pragmatics of memory, oral cultures tend to aggregate concepts into formulas and epithets, such as the “brave soldier” or the “sturdy oak”, rather than break them down into component parts. In his words, “traditional expressions in oral cultures must not be dismantled: it has been hard work getting them together over the generations, and there is nowhere outside the mind to store them” (1982, p. 39). Originality in this context Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 13

“lodges not in making up new stories but in managing a particular interaction with this audience at this time” (1982, p. 42). Second, orality inextricably embeds language in human action, bringing language “close to the human lifeworld” (1982, p. 42). “Trades were learned by apprenticeship...from observation and practice with only minimal verbalized expression,” and thus for oral cultures knowing (or saying) is doing. (1982, p. 43). This connects to a third point, that in oral cultures “knowing means achieving close, empathetic, communal identification with the known,” making knowledge “empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced” (1982, p. 45).

The remaining six features of oral thought are presented here, both for the sake of completeness and because they are very suggestive of further avenues of research into questions about RPGs’ orality. Ong further describes oral thought as (1) “additive rather than subordinative,” that is, oral language tends away from subordinating grammatical structure to meaning because speech is never separated from its full existential context. In other words, oral structures are based on the pragmatics of speaking rather than the syntactics of meaning (1982, p.

37). In order to better preserve mental storage, oral cultures tend to be (2) “redundant or

'copious'” (1982, p. 39). Unlike a reader, the audience of an oral discourse cannot glance back at previous pages to remember what was said. Thus, “redundancy, repetition of the just-said, keeps both speaker and hearer surely on the track” (1982, p. 40). Because orally-based knowledge is always only one generation removed from extinction these cultures also tend to be

(3)”conservative or traditionalist.” Because of this embeddedness in the human lifeworld, orality is also (4) “agonistically toned.3” Foucault's ideas about discourses of power would likely strike a primarily oral culture as too obvious to be stated, for “orality situates knowledge within a

3 The agonistic nature of orality is especially interesting to the student of RPGs (cf. Mason, 2004). Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 14 context of struggle. Proverbs and riddles are not used simply to store knowledge but to engage others in verbal and intellectual combat” (1982, p. 44). Oral cultures are also (5) “homeostatic”, in that they “live very much in a present which keeps itself in equillibrium...by sloughing off memories which no longer have present relevance,” and (6) “situational rather than abstract”, in that they “tend to use concepts in situational, operational frames of reference that are minimally abstract” (1982, pp. 46,49).

These psychodynamics describe primary oral cultures, which are cultures completely untouched by writing. In cultures that utilize written media these tendencies will still appear to varying degrees, a phenomenon that Ong labels “residual orality.” The advent of electronic media has produced a third type, that of secondary orality, which “has striking resemblances to the old....But it is essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality” (1982, p. 136). In

Ong’s terms, then, the analysis presented below shows role-playing games a medium that displays decreasing amounts of residual orality as time progresses.

Methodology and Presentation of Data

Originally published as The Strategic Review in 1975 and renamed The Dragon in the following year, during its heyday TSR's official publication served as the central forum for discussing RPGs. At its peak in 1984 Dragon's official circulation averaged almost 115,000 copies per issue, although presumably a great many more players read the magazine secondhand

(TSR, 1984, p. 4). Typical content in the magazine included rules expansions and variants, short fiction, and game reviews. Although readers often submitted articles and features to the magazine some were written by paid staff, especially in the magazine's later years. Although the bulk of content was devoted to games published by TSR, especially D&D, the magazine was not officially a house organ and often included information about other publishers' games (Jaquet, Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 15

1980, p. 2). Wizards of the Coast, the company that had taken over publication of both the game and the magazine in 1997, shifted the magazine to an electronic format entirely focused on D&D in 2007. Because this most recent change represents a radical change in both format (the magazine now contains no advertisements, for example) and content, data from the electronic version of the magazine have not been included in this study.

The analysis presented below documents references to other media in the articles and advertisements in the magazine. Seven issues were included in the study, ranging from 1975 to

2004. Within each issue the number of advertisements and articles was counted, with this total designated as the number of meaningful units in the issue. After this count was established, each unit was examined for references to other media. Each medium referenced in a unit produced a hit for that media type, but multiple references to a given medium within a unit did not produce multiple hits. The total number of hits in that issue was then compared to the number of units in order to produce a ratio of cross-media references to meaningful units (fig. 1).

1.1

1

0.9

Ratio 0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Year

Sample Points Fisher’s LSD Line Figure 1. Ratio of Cross-media references to Units by Year. N=7; p=.001. Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 16

The data clearly demonstrate an increasing awareness of other media within the pages of the magazine. It is admittedly speculative to assume that this increase matches an increasing influence of other media on the game, but with many of the references coming from the players themselves, this is not an unfounded conclusion to draw. At the very least it can be seen that readers looking to the magazine for ideas about their game play would be increasingly confronted with associations between their game activities and other media. If these articles and advertisements can be taken as any kind of measure of gamers' perception of the medium, it is clear that the role of other media in that perception grew increasingly predominant over time.

But what types of media played the greatest role within this process?

In order to identify trends in what media the magazine presented to its readers, the relative prominence of each medium was analyzed year over year (fig. 2). References to other media took a variety of forms. One issue, for example, offered a discussion of which

“Japanimation” films provided the best ideas for D&D adventures (Kostura, 1991, p. 4).

References to role-playing games based on comic books, literature, and television shows, were a prominent form, as were advertisements and reviews for video games. Inclusion of any given medium within the magazine suggests that the readers and editors not only consumed entertainment in that medium, but that they considered that consumption as connected in some way with their game play. Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 17

100%

90%

80%

s 70% e c

n Visual Art &

e 60% r

e Music f e 50% Video Games R

l

a Movies t 40% o

T TV

f 30% o

Literature

% 20% Comics

10%

0% 1975 1979 1984 1991 1996 2000 2004 Year

Figure 2. Media References by type. (*=p<.05; **=p<.01) Year Comics Literature TV Movies Video Games Visual Art & Music 1975 14.29% 85.71% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1979 6.67% 53.33% 6.67% 6.67% 0.00% 26.67% 1984 18.60% 34.88% 11.63% 6.98% 9.30% 18.60% 1991 21.54% 29.23% 13.85% 9.23% 15.38% 10.77% 1996 11.76% 37.25% 11.76% 11.76% 23.53% 3.92% 2000 5.13% 25.64% 5.13% 15.38% 43.59% 5.13% 2004 12.82% 25.64% 10.26% 17.95% 25.64% 7.69% Average 12.97% 41.67% 8.47% 9.71% 16.78% 10.40% Fit Line -0.0009 -0.0164* -0.0020 0.0053** 0.0128** -0.0028

As might be expected given the literary origins of RPGs, literature is the most commonly referenced medium in all but two of the years and has the highest average percentage of any of the media. Looking diachronically the sample data here suggest a number of possible trends, but a linear regression shows only three statistically significant changes. Literature holds a decreasing share of magazine real estate over time (p<.05), while movies and video games show a significant increase (p<.01). Two possible trends not statistically significant for this study, those in visual arts/music and comics, call for further research. Visual arts and music, grouped together in this study because of the exceptionally varied nature of references to those media, but separating them in future studies may help to get a better picture of what appears to be a sudden Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 18 introduction and immediate decline of these media. The sample data on comic books also show a uniquely cyclical presence, but a greater sample size should be examined before venturing speculation on the implications of such a trend.

Discussion

Movies, Video Games, and Visualization

The increase in references to both movies and video games reflects corresponding trends in American media as a whole during this period. As Mackay has documented in his work on the changing contents of role-playing games, the late seventies and eighties saw an explosion of fantasy films, especially sword-and-sorcery films (2001, p. 21). In fact, American cinema produced no sword-and-sorcery fantasy movies until either 1974 or 1977, depending on whether one considers The Golden Voyage of Sinbad as fitting that genre.4 A list of fantasy blockbusters shows the pervasiveness of fantasy in American film during the same period that movie references increased in the magazine: Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1979), Hawk the

Slayer (1980), Dragonslayer (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Sword and the Sorcerer

(1982), Krull (1983), Conan the Destroyer (1984), Ladyhawke (1985), Masters of the Universe

(1987), and Willow (1988) are only a few examples (Internet Movie Database, 2010). Dungeons

& Dragons itself was adapted to movie form in 2000, a release promoted by feature articles in

Dragon (Herndon, 2000, pp. 63-66). With such a wealth of new material it is not surprising to find that gamers increasingly drew on movies in their discussion of role-playing games.

Video games present a case very similar to that of fantasy film, in that their general rise in popularity strongly parallels the trends identified in Dragon. Most of the references to video games are to computer (and console) role-playing games (CRPGs), which college students began

4 Mackay cites 1978 as the year of the first sword-and-sorcery film in America, based on the International Movie Database records in 2001 (www.imdb.com). Since that time the website has added 50 titles to its sword-and- sorcery list. Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 19 programming on mainframe computers almost immediately following D&D's 1974 release

(Barton, 2008, p. 30). This led to what historian Matt Barton has called “The Dark Age” of

CRPGs, so named because “many of these games are lost to history, and comparatively little is known about them save from the recollections of those few privileged enough to know about them (2008, p. 11). 1984, the year in which the Dragon data first shows video game references, marks the beginning of Barton's “Silver Age,” while the peak years of references from 1996-

2000 line up almost perfectly with the “Platinum Age,” “so named because it is during this time that we see the finest CRPGs yet designed” (2008, p. 12). In many ways, then, video game references provide an accurate picture not only of CRPGs' presence in tabletop gaming culture, but of their own history as well.

The increases in these two visually oriented media within the pages of Dragon magazine match broader trends in the culture, but how do they correspond with trends in the form of D&D itself? One easily identifiable trend is the increasingly visual nature of the game. Comparing the first edition AD&D Player's Handbook, which was released before the influx of movie and video game references, to the second edition of the same book, released in the midst of those references, shows a notable increase in full-page full-color artwork accompanying the text. This can be partially explained by the increased commercial success of the game, allowing for a larger artistic budget, but a side by side comparison of the artwork suggests that other factors were at work as well (figure 3). The artwork of first edition suggests the influence of medieval woodcuts or the illustrations of Gustav Doré, while the later illustrations' use of light, shadow and perspective could be described as more “cinematic.” Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 20

Figure 3. The contrasting styles of First (Left) and Second (Right) Edition AD&D.

(Gygax, 1978, p. 23; Cook, 1993, p. 17).

Although the changes in the illustrations are strikingly suggestive, they still do not directly address the form of game play itself. Changes to the actual rules governing play do address the form of play, however, and they also suggest an increasingly visual game. The most telling of these changes deal with the role of miniatures in negotiating the game world, especially in combat situations. As mentioned above, D&D grew out of miniature war gaming. One common misconception, however, is that early players carried their miniature-focused heritage directly into the new game. On the contrary, Gygax explains that

For about two years D&D was played without benefit of any visual aids by the majority of enthusiasts. They held literally that it was a paper and pencil game, and if some particular situation arose which demanded more than verbalization, they would draw or place dice as tokens in order to picture the conditions. In 1976 a movement began among Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 21

D&Ders to portray characters with actual miniature figurines (Gygax, 1978, p. 13, cited in Randall, 2008).

Even as miniatures were reintroduced into the game, anecdotal evidence suggests that many players only used them to represent a general “marching order,” rather than the full tactical combat of wargaming (cf. Maliszewski, 2010; Randall, 2008). Certainly, the rules did not provide a detailed framework for the tactical use of miniatures until Wizards released third edition in 2001. With this release, the negotiation of combat was dependent on the use of a

“combat grid,” a large sheet of 1” squares laid out on the tabletop (Tweet, 2003, p. 133). Rather than an optional aid to visualizing a complex scene, the centrality of the combat grid to the game starting in third edition made these visual aids a necessary part of play.

It is difficult to understate the effects of this change on the players' negotiation of the game world. When imagining a combat scenario based on oral description, the player is free to visualize from any angle, significantly including a first-person perspective. Once the battle grid is laid out, the players hold an inescapably isometric, third-person view of the game world. In

Ong's words,

For oral cultures, the cosmos is an ongoing event with man at its center....Only after print and the extensive experience with maps that print implemented would human beings, when they though about the cosmos or universe or 'world', think primarily of something laid out before their eyes...a vast surface or assemblage of surfaces (1982:73).

Thus the implementation of the battle grid and the visually mediated negotiation of the game world represent a significant shift away from an orally-structured medium. Combat, which had once been negotiated through ephemeral oral description was now embodied in the tactical layout of the battle grid. Negotiation of the game world was mediated through the objective medium of the figures and abstract tactical analysis replaced empathetic participation. The increasingly visual nature of the game, corresponding with the increasing references to the visual Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 22 media of movies and video games, demonstrate that D&D as a medium was developing into a medium structured less and less by Ong's psychodynamics of orality.

Trends in Fantasy Literature

At first glance the downward trend in literature references seems to suggest an opposite trend in the game, away from typographic culture and towards the secondary orality of electronic media such as movies and video games. A deeper analysis of trends within fantasy literature during this period, however, reveals a story much more in line with the trends just discussed.

Before presenting that analysis, the accuracy of the findings regarding literature should be discussed because a downward trend in fantasy literature does not fit the general cultural trend during this period. In fact, fantasy literature grew immensely in popularity during this time, and beginning with Robert Jordan in 1998, fantasy authors began debuting at number one on the The

New York Times Book Review Best Sellers list. The gaming industry also became increasingly involved with fantasy literature during this period, beginning in 1984 when TSR began publishing novels, many of which were based on specific game settings used in play (Wizards of the Coast, 2003). The inconsistency between this well-established fantasy literature boom and the data from Dragon suggests the need for refining the metrics of the study. As measured here, a single reference to a fantasy novel scored the same as a full page ad listing dozens of fantasy novel, and adjusting the study to account for those differences would likely produce different results.

Regardless of whether literature became more or less central to D&D as a medium, the nature of that literature changed dramatically. The fantasy literature most reference in early issues of Dragon, and that cited in the first edition of the Dungeon Masters Guide is the pulp sword-and-sorcery fantasy of authors like Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, and Robert E. Howard Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 23

(Leiber, 1976, p. 4; Gygax, 1978, p. 224). Later, quest fantasy dominates, as represented by the works of R.A. Salvatore and Robert Jordan (“TSR Previews, 1990, p. 84; Zuvich and Kooharian,

1996, p. 31). This latter form of fantasy shows much less residual orality than the earlier sword- and-sorcery literature, matching the trend of the game away from oral characteristics.

Walter Ong describes the familiar “plot arc” of Western literature as the distinguishing feature of typographic plot structure, a feature that is notably absent in oral narratives:

Persons from today's literate and typographic cultures are likely to think of consciously contrived narrative as typically designed in a climactic linear plot often diagrammed as the well-known 'Freytag's pyramid' (i.e. an upward slope, followed by a downward slope)....In fact, an oral culture has no experience of a lengthy, epic-size or novel-size climactic linear plot. It cannot organize even shorter narrative in the studious, relentless climactic way that readers of literature for the past 200 years have learned more and more to expect (1982, p. 142-3).

The formulaic techniques of oral narrators, according to Ong, lead to more episodic, modular forms of narrative than the analytic, calclulated techniques of literary narratives. When viewed in this light the strong oral influence on pulp fantasy such as Vance's Cugel the Clever can be clearly discerned. Historians of fantasy Mendlesohn and James say of Vance's work, “There is very little plot but its picaresque encounters with magical or monstrous beings is strongly reminiscent of medieval Arthurian romance,” and later describe the picaresque plot structure as

“'bracelet' fantasy (in which each adventure could be removed, or another added, leaving the chain of the story intact)” (2009, pp. 69-70, 90). In contrast, quest fantasies are characterized by the story arc, which implies a defined ending: “Quest fantasies come to an end...whereas sword- and-sorcery always have room for another adventure” (Mendlesohn and James, 2009, p. 119).

The linked adventures of sword-and-sorcery, then can be compared to a highly oral epic form like The Odyssey, while quest fantasy matches literary epics like Paradise Lost. This suggests that the fantasy literature employed by early players represents a more oral mindset than that Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 24 employed by those playing after the rise of the quest fantasy novel.

Besides plot structure, sword-and-sorcery also differs from quest fantasy in it characterization. The earlier form is known for its relatively “flat” characters, often known by descriptive epithets, such as “Cugel the Clever” (another similarity to The Odyssey) or “Conan the Barbarian.” The emphasis is more on the adventures of the characters than their psychology.

Ong connects this type of characterization with the oral form: “We know that the type 'heavy' (or

'flat') character derives originally from primary oral narrative, which can provide characters of no other kind. The type character serves both to organize the story line itself and to manage the non-narrative elements that occur in narrative (1982, p. 151).” In comparison with non-fantasy literature, even the characters in quest fantasy may appear flat and iconic, but much more attention is given to their histories, psychology, and personal relationships than in sword-and- sorcery literature. The protagonist of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, Rand al'Thor, for example, is a conflicted hero, resisting the pull of destiny and navigating complex (if often misogynistic) relationships with his female companions (Jordan, 1990). Although the distinction between the two subgenres is not clear-cut, and the range of character depth for the genre as a whole tends “flatter” than many other genres, quest fantasy generally present a less oral, more typographic style of character development than its predecessor.

The changes in fantasy literature's plot dynamics and characterization both match similar trends within D&D. The change from episodic, orally-structured adventures to the typographic plot arcs of quest fantasy can be tracked most clearly in D&D's officially published adventure modules. These modules consist of a booklet, or a collection of booklets, providing a ready- made scenario for Dungeon Masters to present to players. The first of these publications,

Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, was published in 1978, and they have been a prominent piece of Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 25

D&D publications ever since (Gygax). Originally, these publications were called “adventure modules,” but starting in 1983 with they were simply called “official game adventures” (Hickman). This small change hints at a tidal shift in the function of these publications. The earlier term, “module,” fits well within the oral framework of linked narratives. They were eponymously modular, and could be slotted in to any game because they typically only described an adventuring locale that Dungeon Masters could place anywhere in their established game world.

“Official game adventures,” however, often presented a specific plot arc with a defined introduction, climax, and conclusion. Many of these adventures were linked together like novels in a fantasy series to produce a longer epic plot. The landmark release in this trend towards typographic plot structure was the series, which was paired with a related series of quest fantasy novels. Veteran gamer and self-proclaimed “grognard5” James Maliszewski describes the trend well:

The original Dragonlance modules were unique in that they presented not merely an entire campaign story arc -- what we'd today probably call an Adventure Path -- but, more importantly, it was an arc written for specific characters who had specific fates. Gamers love to bemoan "railroading," but few adventures were as railroad-y as Dragonlance, a series whose every dramatic element was mapped out in advance. There were, as written, few or no provisions for deviating from the planned story arc or introducing new characters into the saga. Goldmoon would always be the first cleric since the Catalcysm, Raistlin would always slowly descend into evil, and poor Sturm Brightblade was always doomed to die (2008a, ¶4).

Dragonlance set a trend, and published adventures increasingly presented more or less linear plots which often ended with a final cinematic conflict against “the boss,” as the final enemies of video games are typically called. Although some adventures reacted against this “railroad” tendency and presented more “sandbox” oriented adventures (i.e., scenarios that promoted free-

5 According to Maliszewski, the original grognards were veteran Napoleonic soldiers known for complaining about changes to how the emperor used them in combat. Veteran gamers dissatisfied by the changes to gaming have adopted the term for themselves (2008b, ¶1-2 Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 26 form play), the general tendency was towards the typographic plot structure of quest fantasy.

Because most D&D play involves custom-made characters, trends in character depth are in many ways more difficult to identify through published materials. While one group might play a scenario with the more iconic character style of oral narratives, another might play the same scenario with complex character motivations more common to typographic narratives. The

Player's Handbook does provide insight into how publishers assumed players would want to create their characters, however, and the changing guidelines provide by different editions of the game suggest that characters became more complex over time. This increasing complexity can be seen in both the mechanical and narrative aspects of character creation.

A large part of D&D characters' mechanical representation derives from their class, a suite of abilities that describe the characters' basic type. The Little Brown Books, for example, provided players with three class options: fighting-man, magic-user, and cleric (Gygax, 1974).

The first supplement to D&D, , added a fourth class also generally considered a “core” class, the thief (Gygax & Kuntz, 1975). Each of these classes matches a broad archetype drawn from fantasy literature. The fighting-man, magic-user, and thief are fairly self explanatory classes, matching the stock warrior, wizard, and rogue types. Clerics draw on a slightly more nuanced archetype, that of the fighting holy man drawn in large part from the popular image of the Knights Templar. In many ways the very idea of character classes fits the patterns of orality, in that characters are understood primarily through the archetype. Fighting-men are bold, magic- users sagely, thieves wily, and clerics pious. Little attention is given in these early editions to the individual personality or background of the characters.

Two trends in the mechanics of character creation suggest an increasingly nuanced view of character identity: the proliferation of classes and the increasingly customizable nature of Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 27 characters within a given class. Within five years of D&D's original publication the class count had grown from the original three to ten (Gygax, 1978). Most of these new classes were specializations within the original types: a player could choose between thief and assassin, or between cleric and druid. This proliferation of classes continued throughout the years, and by the turn of the century players could choose between twenty-seven different classes, with specialized “prestige” classes bringing the total to well over double that number (Crystal Keep,

2007). New rules allowed players to customize their characters even further as they made choices about skill points (numerical representations of specific abilities like horse riding) and feats, “special feature[s] that either give [a] character a new capability or improve one that he or she already has” (Tweet, 2003, p. 87). These new options still defined characters in terms of what they could do, but had clearly moved away from the single-epithet archetypes of both oral narrative and early D&D.

“What does your character look like? How old is she? What sort of first impression does she make? When she prays, what deity or deities does she call on, if any? What led her to become an adventurer?” Third Edition encouraged players to “establish [their] character's identity by creating details that make her more lifelike, like a main character in a novel or movie” (Tweet, 2003:103). Although some players developed detailed personalities for their character before this, and some players still ignore these questions, the inclusion of the topic in the Player's Handbook demonstrates that “thick” character description featured a more prominent role in the more recent editions of D&D. Fourth Edition takes character development a step further by providing a questionnaire to the player, with questions such as “How trusting are you?” and “How do you feel when faced by setbacks?” (Heinsoo, Collins, & Wyatt, 2008, p. 23-

4). This encouragement of psychological realism and depth maps directly onto Ong's distinction Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 28 between characters in oral narrative and those produced by typographic cultures, as should be expected given the transitions in fantasy literature described above. As D&D players increasingly referenced typographically structured fantasy literature the characters and plots they created shifted to match those modeled by that literature.

Conclusions

Over its thirty-plus years of development, D&D has changed from a medium displaying a high degree of residual orality to one largely structured by typographic culture. These changes can be seen in changes to the types of media associated with the game, as measured by references made in Dragon Magazine. These changes in media references correlate with changes to the way that players negotiate and experience the reality of their game worlds. The increase in references to movies and video games paint a picture of a medium of that has become increasingly visual as opposed to oral, with the psychodynamics of the game experience more aligned with the objective analytic distance of typographic culture and less with the participatory empathy of oral culture. At the same time, the typographic media on which players draw their model of the game world has also shed much of its residually oral characteristics, promoting more linear plot structures and a more prominent focus on complex characterization. Although these changes are not monolithic, the published materials connected with game play provide clear evidence of the medium's shift away from orality.

These findings suggest a number of directions for further research into both D&D and cross-media effects. The agonistic nature of orality provides one such avenue of inquiry. The trends identified suggest that further research should find decreasing amounts of competition in the game, perhaps especially between the Dungeon Master and the other players. One significant area of Walter Ong's theories left largely unexplored in the current study is the concept of Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 29 secondary orality, which he connects with electronic media such as movies and computers. The increase in references to these media call for an examination of D&D for trends towards the

“more deliberate and self-conscious orality” Ong describes (1982, p. 136). The story told here begins with the assumption of D&D's initial orality, but how did such a strongly oral medium come to exist in age marked by secondary orality? The answer to that question promises insight into both D&D and the broader culture that birthed it. Most broadly, what are the mechanics of cross-media influence and intra-medium development, and what is the relationship between these dynamics and change in the culture as a whole? This final question pinpoints most directly the contribution this study attempts towards a fuller understanding of the relationships between medium, message, and culture. Running head: ORALITY IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 30

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