--- title: The Magic of D&D Can Save Us—But Only If You Let It description: Dungeons & Dragons gives us permission to play pretend, writes Kate Welch. canonical: https://time.com/6267122/dungeons-and-dragons-play-pretend/ author: Kate Welch article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-03-31T11:00:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T15:39:46.720Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Magic of D&D Can Save Us—But Only If You Let It og:description: Dungeons & Dragons gives us permission to play pretend, writes Kate Welch. og:url: https://time.com/6267122/dungeons-and-dragons-play-pretend/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt749b504a1c9153f3/698a3b8747ca384d8b3baa1e/Worldwide-DD-Game-Day-2007.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Worldwide-D&D-Game-Day-2007 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Magic of D&D Can Save Us—But Only If You Let It twitter:description: Dungeons & Dragons gives us permission to play pretend, writes Kate Welch. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt749b504a1c9153f3/698a3b8747ca384d8b3baa1e/Worldwide-DD-Game-Day-2007.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # The Magic of Dungeons & Dragons Can Save Us—But Only If You Let It > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs takes readers inside the newsroom, revealing the journalists, ideas and editorial choices behind the stories shaping the global conversation. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Adventure Never Ends: A Tabletop Saga [Watch (HLS stream): Adventure Never Ends: A Tabletop Saga](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1D3R1dzr.m3u8) (39:18)  _Published 2023-04-13. In its 50 year history, the game of Dungeons and Dragons has inspired generations of players—each for their own reasons—but the common themes of community, creativity and confidence are hard to miss. This short film features dedicated players including actor Matthew Lillard and Luke Gygax, son of D&D co-founder, Gary Gygax. A film by DiMuccio & Miller._ Mar 31, 2023 11:00 AM UTC by [Kate Welch](https://time.com/author/kate-welch/) ## Kate Welch Mar 31, 2023 11:00 AM UTC I became aware of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) at the same instant that I was made to believe that D&D was maybe not for me. In 2003, I was working in a coffee shop in a small North Carolina town. (College and I hadn’t gotten along, and I didn’t have anything close to a five-year plan.) The boys that sat in the back of the shop ordered nothing but water for hours and stopped talking only when I delivered it to them, giving me the distinct impression that, whatever secret conversations they were having, I wasn’t welcome. It took me weeks to even realize that what they were doing _was_ playing D&D. I’m pretty sure they thought I’d make fun of them for it. We’ve all heard the stories, seen the shows, and watched the movies where the “nerds” get beat up for their hobbies. Many (particularly men) cling to this experience like a trophy: If you weren’t persecuted in the ‘80s for your interest in Star Wars or D&D, you haven’t really suffered for love. Perhaps not. But D&D, at its very core, is a game you have to play with other people. It’s a game that requires the intimacy that comes with community. Simply put: you had to have at least one friend as “nerdy” as you to play. Growing up as a self-ascribed “nerdy girl,” I often felt invisible and excluded for my interests (even from the nerdy guys around me), and was exceptionally lonely as a result. So I know how those boys in the coffee shop felt. I’d been a devoted Star Wars role-player in online chat rooms since I was 13\. It wasn’t a hobby you shared with folks. It was something you hid. Besides, neither the word “dungeons” nor “dragons” particularly lit me up. The game had a _Heavy Metal_ magazine vibe to it—a publication I appreciate as an adult, but one that I suspect was not aimed to appeal to young women and girls. At the time, it seemed to me that D&D was almost certainly about wielding huge swords (meh), killing dragons (zzz), and carrying bare-breasted damsels over your shoulder (woof). I was fine with my story-driven Star Wars chat room dramas, thank you very much. It was only years later, around 2010, that I saw Acquisitions Incorporated on the main stage at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. For the uninitiated, Acquisitions Incorporated is a D&D party that stars the creators of the [Penny Arcade](https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685%5F1984940%5F1985513,00.html) webcomic and whoever they can talk into sharing a stage with them while they play hilarious games of D&D. These five dorky, lovable dudes played D&D in front of a packed theater and brought the house down. Until then, I doubt anyone thought of this hobby as having entertainment value. In fact, until then, I didn’t realize what D&D actually was. It was _stories._ And I had to play it. **_Read More:_**[_How D&D Changed the Culture_](https://entertainment.time.com/2008/03/05/what%5Fdd%5Fdid%5Ffor%5Ftv/) Hearing about other people’s D&D games is like hearing about a dream they had: It sounds like complete nonsense to you, and you’re not sure why they’re telling you about it. I wasn’t going to put you through it, but my editor for this piece says I should, so picture it: A party of adventurers pauses at the edge of a cliff, taking a moment’s deserved rest, when suddenly the clicking of massive insect legs boils up over the precipice. Giant spiders! With a trademark holler (“cooOOOOokie crisp!”) my dwarf barbarian, Magsys Destinaxe, jumps into the fray. I roll a natural 20 on the die—a critical success. Magsys jumps on the back of a spider and rides it down the slope of the cliff, splitting it apart with her axe, until it slides gently to a halt safely at the bottom. (See what I mean? Dreadful.) But talking about it further made me learn what D&D _felt_ like. Since that first exposure in the coffee shop and later at Penny Arcade Expo, I have played hundreds of hours of D&D, both as a player and a dungeon master running the game. In 2017, Acquisition Incorporated invited me to be on their weekly streamed D&D show for several years, where I made some of the best friends of my life. I joined Wizards of the Coast, who have published the game since 1997, to become the first female game designer on D&D’s fifth edition. I’ve run games for all kinds of people, young and old, strangers and friends, old-timers and novices. What I’ve found is that something mystical happens when you give yourself permission to play pretend. Being vulnerable and creative is a big part of it—you must trust and be trusted with what feels like subjective foolishness. But when you add these elements of collective imagination and improvisation, you create a strange alchemy that inscribes pathways in your brain, tangible as the memories of real life, even though it lives solely in the minds of a select few. Those pathways bond you in ways that no one else can understand. D&D and other tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) are being used across the world as a [learning tool](https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=honors) in classrooms and even as an effective form of [therapy](https://www.underdoggames.com/a/blog/benefits-of-playing-dungeons-and-dragons). I started playing on the Acquisitions Incorporated weekly live-streamed show, The “C” Team, with four people I barely knew. As debilitating as it can be to play improvised pretend fantasy in front of a few other cooperating adults, it’s beyond overwhelming to do it in front of hundreds of onlookers. I was terrified. But what I didn’t expect is that the bond that typically extends to your table mates spread throughout a community of fans who witnessed the story alongside us. Our campaign was personalized in the imaginations of each individual who followed the show, adding to and bolstering the tapestry of storytelling before us. Letting go of inhibitions about playing pretend is difficult. Letting people in is, perhaps, even more so. People might think we’re childish if we play pretend. They might make fun of us, or laugh us out of our coffee shops. I do understand. But, you see, I have witnessed so much magic from people shaking off those inhibitions to weave stories together for themselves. And doesn’t that matter so much more? Maybe magic can’t save us, but (unless it’s an evocation spell) it certainly can’t hurt. ## Transcript I could bash the door down and you could come in through one of the windows. That's a good idea. The zombies have noticed you, pummeled you hard for eight damage. Oh, my goodness. That's more than half of my hit points. 20 Nat 20. Nat 20! Nice. So what are you going to do now? Roleplaying? I don’t know Just It ended up being a thing that’s gotten me friends, gotten me closer to friends and just really changed my life. A great beast rears its head. It is yellow and black and red. What do you do? It was not a hobby that girls were invited into. I don't know the rules, it's complicated, it’s hard. Everybody knows all of the cliches about Dungeons and Dragons. And a lot of those are true. Hmm. How does D&D help people? Well, it's helped me. I'm a bit socially awkward. I like I think many people of my generation struggle a little bit with small talk or socializing. Hi. [applause] Hi everybody. [applause] What you are about to watch tonight for those of you who might not be as familiar with Dungeons and Dragons as others is a game. It's a game of imagination mostly, but also luck and of legendary stories. So our story... What D&D helps me with is it gives me a way to be social and to be myself, to be the best version of myself with other people, which is really the main challenge of acting of any performing, is how can I remain myself, change nothing about who I am or what I'm feeling, and yet be witnessed in some of my most vulnerable moments. Alright, TJ Interview. Take one. My name is TJ Storm. I'm an actor. And why am I an actor? Can you imagine being anything in the world? We have so much to feed our imagination. Sometimes when you're down, you can just disappear into another world and Dungeons and Dragons is a large part of that. I played ever since I was just first getting into high school, and I still do. It fed our imagination, it made us read ten times more than we would have ever read, and it brought us together. We did it every week, every chance that we had. We talked about it. We drew pictures. We read mythology. We read rule books. We told stories. I'm an actor because when I was 14 years old, I found something I fell in love with and I've just done it my whole life. You know, I distinctly remember growing up in Michigan and going to like K-Mart and buying action figures. True story. I actually played action figures the day I went to prom. [Laser sounds] My ability to sort of play in my imagination my whole life has led me to where I am now. I think the role playing helps people explore who they want to be. I'm cool. I'm very cool now. I was not cool when I was 13 and I read a whole lot. I didn't go out. I didn't have friends, nothing. So I started role playing and I was aware I was cogent enough to realize, but I was a nerd, like a real one. And so when I when I started doing the Star Wars role playing online, I was like, wow, I could be like someone cool and sexy. At some point over the years, as I as I played these characters, they became part of me. My name is Xander Jeanneret. I'm a professional role player and actor and voiceover artist, so I got introduced to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and the concept of fantasy in general at a really young age. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek. Those influences really have driven what I look for creatively. I've been super fortunate because I'm able to go on these D&D adventures, have it taped, and then be able to share this with everybody around the world. I have grown up gaming. My dad was a pretty busy guy. My dad was my best friend growing up. So where we were able to spend time was through gaming. My name is Luke Gygax, and my father was Gary Gygax, who created Dungeons and Dragons, which I think is a very powerful game. A passion of mine that's very important is carrying forward the torch of my father's work. When you make a commitment to play Dungeons and Dragons, you are making a commitment to a group of people and put things away and escape from the world and interact with your friends. And I think that's important. Like when you were a kid, you know, you'd hang out and play with your friends. I don't care if you're 18 or 80 years old, I think you can still benefit from that. I remember being very poor when I was young. We could only eat at meal times and we didn't have a car. And then when we were able to move into a large house and my mom was able to buy a Cadillac that she wanted, then I knew D&D was successful. Was I surprised? No, because I believed in my dad and he was my dad. So of course I knew it was going to be successful, but before the Internet and multiple news sources, there was some misunderstandings. If you didn't know anything about the game and you just flipped it open, looked at some illustrations, there was a stigma It began as a cult phenomenon, then it caught on. Now a new game is sweeping the country. In this case, we saw Dungeons and Dragons being painted as the devil. This Friday, the town of Putnam will hold a town meeting to discuss whether Dungeons and Dragons should continue to be played in their schools. That sort of attention was like a huge attraction. Like, whoa, what? This is this is something I'm not supposed to be doing? I think that helped actually spread Dungeons and Dragons and create interest. It’s like, you know, heavy metal and D&D were bad boy things to do. It was something that you couldn't even talk about at school and you couldn't be public about your love for this game, which is pretty humorous when you think about it. You're sitting in the basement of your buddy’s house all weekend drinking soda, eating chips, and you know, making believe instead of going out and getting in trouble. Now, my father, he would always laugh and shake his head. He goes, Do you think I'd be writing games if I could really throw magic spells? Don't you really think that you have to rethink your position about the game and at least make known the potential for abuse of the game? We used to have these huge rallies. My mom would bring me to church and they would talk about playing records backwards and they would talk about this kind of music and D&D. That is the first time I had my books destroyed because of the panic. It was not pretty and I was not happy about it. I lost my original Deities and Demigods. Swords, poison spells, battles, maiming, killing. Hey, it's all imagination. Is it? The game has been involved in a number of murders and suicides. It warns the players not to get themselves confused with their character roles. I was a kid growing up with this, so my dad was a game designer and people would come up and ask for his autograph and he would make occasional television appearances. This is make believe and nobody's murdered and there's no violence there. I mean, to use an analogy with another game, who was bankrupted by losing a game of Monopoly, nobody is because the money is make believe, the property is make believe and the bankruptcy is make believe. Yeah, there was death threats and my father always carried a firearm with him and I can laugh at it now, but at the time it was very serious Challenge your imagination, to come alive, and battle with the creatures of Dungeons and Dragons. Now it's known for Dungeons and Dragons, but it wasn't in the beginning. Are you ready to be the ultimate Pokemon master trainer? Magic The Gathering. The Trading Card Game. My name is Peter Adkison. My first company was Wizards of the Coast. We started Wizards of the Coast to do RPG products. We had Magic The Gathering, Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons. In earlier editions of the game, there was a barrier for entry. There was this fear factor of I don't know the rules, it's complicated, it's hard. They were skeptical at first. Like the Magic company. What does this have to do with role playing? Role playing actually was my first love. And if you're a gamer and love D&D and you have a chance to buy it like that, that's just incredible. Who gets to do that? Well, I got to do that. Wizards of the Coast had done a very nice job in making it streamlined, easy to understand and accessible to everyone. We're all gamers and we go through phases where we're really obsessed about one game or one category of games, but really we're all in the same tribe. So just like how Pokemon, I believe, brought customers to Magic The Gathering, I believe video games have brought customers, enthusiasts, to tabletop games. It's now bigger than ever. The ever popular role play game has captivated fans since 1974. Tabletop games are here. Tabletop games, zero games, miniature games, all kinds of games. There's undoubtedly an RPG for everyone. It is throughout the culture. It's everywhere. It's such an exciting time to be in this resurgence of gaming. To my left, you'll recognize Gary Gygax, inventor of Dungeons and Dragons. Greetings, people who loved D&D or loved comic books when they were a kid. Now they're grown ups and they remember how good those things made them feel. People have started to figure out that D&D is a collective storytelling experience and everybody is fully equipped to contribute to it. You now don't have to find a group of people to physically go watch, play Dungeons and Dragons. You can get on your phone, get on your laptop, go to Twitch on your on your TV and tune in and watch a game. And that demystifies it right there. It's a weird kind of theater sports because there's that chance element and and you're kind of rooting and you feel like if you just prayed hard enough, you could get it to roll to the side that you want. There's this excitement in the moment that I don't even really see in great live theater necessarily. What matters is your investment. There's something exciting about, like everybody's eyes glued on, somebody rolling the d20. You know, what did you get? Let’s see what we got here, number one. I'm already sitting on the top [huge crowd applause] Everybody knows all the cliches about Dungeons and Dragons and a lot of those are true. Yeah, I am that type of person. I like those cliches. I was. I'm already that person. Yeah. When we started the comic strip, the idea, for me at least was to win a contest in a magazine. Acquisitions Inc. was the first time I ever played it, and that was a big part of the idea was that, okay, we're going to have somebody who's sort of a lapsed player, somebody who's a new player, and I know exactly what the point was where it started to get cool. It's pretty rare that we foresee anything, anything, but live play. Live play. Live play definitely brought D&D back. Seeing other people- and we brought live play back, so... Live from the PAX Unplugged Theater of Annihilation. Welcome to Acquisitions Incorporated. I don't understand the value you place on something so insignificant. I'm not insignificant. I'm Jim ******* dark Magic. You’re Jim Dark magic? Yeah. I'm the New Hampshire Dark Magics. You know, it's true. She walks away from Rosie. She walks away from Jim. And she says, she comes over to you, she says, I have read all about you. I have followed your career with great interest, you and a lot of other people lady. Being able to watch Acquisitions Inc. and to feel like I want to have an experience like that myself, that has been a huge, incontestable factor for the rise of the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons in this particular time and space. And he just rips off the top half of his Wizard robe revealing this incredibly buff guy and he starts wrestling the dwarf gods like- Oh, wrestle, wrestle! I don't think that you can talk about the success of Dungeons and Dragons in this time without talking about Twitch and the rise of Critical Role and streaming games. Your unconscious body is currently grappled and in its jaws. Oh no. And then it burrows underground. I am in love with storytelling and always have been. Advances in technology have leveled the playing field in a way like it's never been before, and anyone with a good idea or with passion for something can really make a go of it. Role playing is sort of the great unifier, in my house I run a game for my son and my daughter and you watch group dynamics and team building and passion strategizing and human empathy blossom in kids. The fact of the matter is is that it's nice to have a place. And just because of the way our brains work, it doesn't even have to be a real place. It's nice to have a zone in which you can practice socialization and being friends with people and practice being a person. You know, I've got a younger son who was struggling with math and socializing, too to some degree. Those are hard skills to learn, right? But he took to it right away and the improvement it made on him, like you can see it in the test scores it just helps it just helps settle him down and teach him some skills that he really needs to learn. I mean, I definitely know that D&D is being used therapeutically because I know therapists who leverage it as a tool in their practice, like Game to Grow as we call them, the Adams. A lot of our kids are so burnt out on therapy and they've been in social skills training programs that haven't really helped them, want to care about being around other people. This is more important than learning how to make eye contact or learning how to shake hands effectively. This is an opportunity for your child to care about being around other people. Games of all kinds have a power to improve people's lives. Game to Grow is all about spreading that mission. We're not teaching kids how to camouflage, how to behave like neurotypical people. We're saying it's totally okay for you to operate authentically like yourself. We're going to do it in a group and we're going to kill some monsters. Giant clockwork spiders erupt into the room. I attempt to slash at one of the spiders. Awesome, make me an attack roll. That’s 14. That's a 16 plus 8. And I throw a hand axe at it. Nice. You smash that thing to dust. I probably first heard of it by my dad telling me stories of games he ran when he was my age. Adam saw me in the waiting room and said, Hey, wanna play with us? And then I did and it was amazing. I like getting to act out bizarre situations and also handle them in ways I wouldn't actually ever handle them seeing what can happen. How is she going to change as a person? I'm one of the main characters. It's kind of wish fulfillment. My name is Bo A Mo, but you can call me Bo A Mo and I'm really good at the magics. I am very good at performing. I'm good with horses. I'm good at getting what I want by any means. I was bullied by a lot of people at school when I could go play D&D, I could be my charismatic rogue character and he could talk to people effectively. I remember what it was like to escape the mundane or worse, escape middle school and be able to go to some place where you can see yourself as a hero. And that was what I got out of that experience, was being someone who was, you know, an aspirational version of myself. I didn't really know what it was before I started. It was a mystery, but I really like it. I make rules for myself on how I want my character to act, even though I don't need to. It's It’s a great way to express my creativity in a way that feels like I can implement it. I think it's a game that finds you where you need to be found. If you're a kid who's lost and and sort of struggling for friendship and struggling for connectivity. There's a game and a table that is there and accepts you for who you are and where you're at. And it's a safe space that everyone understands you're playing a character, but you can really use that as a tool to test your social boundaries. I'm not very strong, I’m not very athletic, but I love to make characters that do that, and I think it's very fun to just be somebody that I am not. Those personality traits are a part of you all along and role playing really helps you kind of audition them for yourself. A lot of my friends who are trans or non-binary, they will play characters that sort of reflect how they they view themselves on the inside and we use the correct pronouns or we use pronouns that they're thinking about using in the future and they see how that feels. I think that's so valuable and really we don't have a lot of spaces like that today. I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I thought that I was exactly the same as everybody else in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Everybody around me was Caucasian, and one kid pointed it out, You are not like us. And I was like, I’m not? So for the longest time, although Dungeons and Dragons was right up my- I had been doing online Star Wars roleplaying since I was like 13 years old. So I knew that D&D was going to be up my alley, but it was very clear to me back then that it was not a hobby that girls were invited into. I am the same yet I am not the same. Then I saw a guy named Bruce Lee. He looked different than everybody else on the television at the time, and I was like, He's different. Different is cool. Different can be awesome. I just got fed up waiting for someone to invite me, and I put together a group and it was a blast. This new life are the Dungeon Masters and the players taking control of the narrative and saying, I don't like what's being portrayed in media. We're going to do it our way and we're going to do it right. Isn't that sort of what you're doing in Dungeons and Dragons? You're an adventurer. That's not the common guy. Typically, you are the hero of the story. And why is evil, you know, surging up everywhere and why is there so much trouble and people being waylaid and so much bad stuff going on because you're the hero. It's your job to go out there and beat evil and help the forces of good. The way I learned Dungeons and Dragons is often times down in the basement of our house. I would convince my dad to run solo for me. In roleplaying games, he very much favored good players over evil. All of us at times feel a little inadequate in dealing with the modern world. It would feel much better if we if we knew that we were a superhero or a mighty wizard. My father passed away on March 4th of 2008. As anyone who's lost a parent knows, it's a you know, it's a it's a life changing event. So I organized a gathering, a wake, after the funeral itself. People played games. We showed the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon on the wall, and I had a podium set up so people could share their favorite story about my father. And someone said to me, Hey, Luke, this was really fun. You should do it again next year. Jolly Blackburn happened to be in earshot and he said, you can call it Gary Con. It kind of grew from there. The next year I threw a game day and 175 people showed up. The next year was 240 people and last year we were just about 3000 people. What's special about Gary Con is the feeling that you are with your family. It's not maybe your blood relatives, but it's your family that you choose. The gaming community. And that's what I really want to foster. Camaraderie, community, friendship around the table. Obviously, in March of every year or so, there's nothing that beats being here in person. Here's where we start. The COVID 19 pandemic has reached another alarming milestone. In Italy, nearly 800 people have died within the last 24 hours. This morning, more and more of America closed for business. -order for people to stay at home. Coming up on February, things started heating up. People were beginning to close down or postpone events and it just became clear as more evidence mounted of how serious this pandemic was, that we had to do something. Let me find a place to do this. So my family and I went into quarantine on March 13th. Since that point, we have, as a family of five, have been in our house. I just don't know how we go back to doing anything until there's a full on vaccine slash cure. Look, it's a pandemic. Everybody has been stuck inside. We are not connecting. Humans are not meant to be like this. This has been horrifying in a lot of ways. And one of the bright spots has been learning that it really is about the people around you. That's what life is about. In this moment of the pandemic, I think people just need a relief from fear. I mean, everyone is so full of tension and stress and unknowing of what's next and and how we're going to make it through. And, you know, being rattled by these Gary Con’s my baby and I was most concerned about Gary Con, but I was also concerned about all the small vendors, all the small publishers who come to conventions. For a lot of people, playing games is a major part of their social life. It's the way that they unwind, they forget the world and they connect with others. So if they weren't able to fulfill that need, it could be devastating in a lot of ways. We're social creatures, and if we're alone all day, generally isolated, staring at a computer screen, it's really hard to get that that need met. Hello. Today, my character is a third level sorcerer and his name is Kenny Kaboom. I’m playing a minotaur, a rogue arcane trickster. [overlapping voices] I was really surprised if I'm being honest, at how pervasive Dungeons & Dragons was during the pandemic and how many people embraced it. People actually turned towards Dungeons & Dragons rather than getting away from the game to help them fulfill their social needs. The world feels like it's upside down. And I think that people are turning to entertainment, into RPGs, into storytelling in a way to remove themselves from the fear that they're constantly living under. I want to feel that we're connected as a community, as a world, as a people. Not everybody has a family in their home. Their family is right outside, but they can't be with them during this time. So this is a very strong medicine for the pandemic. But there is something very special about sitting down at that table, often face to face. I think is the best way to do it still and connect with people and create new stories. And you bond through that. I think I love Dungeons and Dragons cause my best friends and I share a table. I love Dungeons and Dragons cause, you know, as we grow older, we have something that we still hold together. I love Dungeons and Dragons cause I play with my kids, that as I get older, I'll remember those moments. It's a game, but when you sit in a table, you're creating memories every time and it's not like going to the movies or doing anything else. You're sitting in just each other’s space. And so for me, it's just I can't imagine a life without it. Hi everybody! Ladies and gentlemen, Kate Welch Being back at a live stage game is so exciting for so many reasons. Feeling the energy of sitting at a table with other human beings, there's nothing like it. Tabletop gaming is actually magic Matthew Lillard I am Beadle, the greatest dungeon delver ever. I went to acting school in New York and we got together a bunch of guys I went to acting school with and I was like, well we should play. Does anybody know where Matt Lillard is? He was in his trailer! Everybody is waiting for you. [laughter] I’ve been playing with the same group of guys ever since. We've taken our passion for the game and have now built a company around delivering a deeper, richer sort of experience of the game. That is Beadle & Grimm’s. You know, when we first started this company, we talked about how important it was to be at the table. So it's not online. It's a in-person shared experience. And that's the goal, right? Like how great can your life be if you can create a company that you're with your five best friends doing what you love. Welcome please, Luke Gygax. [cheering] We are stronger together. Virtual allowed us to keep some connectivity, but we didn't see the bigger picture. We saw the table. We didn't see the room. Yet everybody stuck with us. They supported us. But we are so happy to be back here in-person in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for Gary Con XIV. My family's very fortunate that so many people reached out to us when my father passed away because they felt they'd lost somebody who was important in shaping their life because this game, Dungeons and Dragons, has meant so much to people. All of the parts here represent, you know, your dad's life. So from when he sat here in the park, daydreaming about being a fantasy novelist and maybe, living at Stone Manor one day to actually being an award winning fantasy novelist, a best selling fantasy novelist and living in Stone Manor. So much of his life and all of his accomplishments, everything happened in that little eight eight block by eight block area. You missed the convention scene because the conventions are, you know, are the gathering of the tribe, you know, getting together, realizing that we're not alone out there in the wilderness, that, you know, geek nation is going right cause it's here in Lake Geneva where it all started. And it's also the son of Gary Gygax, Luke Gygax, trying to walk the line between appealing to old school gamers while also being more contemporary. He's got a difficult road to do that and to honor his father's legacy is challenging, but he pulls it off so well and it's just good to be back and seeing his convention going again. So good to be back to normal. It's funny, Dungeons and Dragons tricks you into letting your guard down because it's just a game and then everything happens. I know that we're just rolling dice and doing math, but we're all looking for some sort of escapism or some sort of lesson from a didactic story or some sort of meaning behind life. And I think we find that meaning in storytelling. Xander Jeanneret Why hello there. [applause] TJ Storm [applause] We've always told stories together. Dungeons and Dragons just happens to be the name that we put on communal storytelling. If you go to a cave in France, you'll see their Dungeons and Dragons on the wall. It looks like a hunter hunting a bison and that was a great story no doubt that day. If you go to Egypt and you go into the temples there, you'll see 5000, 6000 year old scratchings, hieroglyphics, art, writing, that is the story of a people. But we get to do it for fun now, whereas before we had to, we needed to. It kept us alive as a people. And that communal storytelling, it still does keep us alive. It brings us out of our houses when we could easily be at home. We could order food in. We don't have to touch another person, hear another person, see a real person's face. But we get together now to play D&D, and we do it in small groups and we do it when we can, wherever we can, over whatever distance we can. We connect. All of us do it. There's not a single person in the world who doesn't play make believe when they're a kid. It's something that every single person in the world can be good at. And I am Deborah Ann Woll. Thank you all very, very much. It gets you away from all the things that suck, it puts you into a setting that at least I have when I've been upset, wished I was in. I wished I wasn't in this world and I was in another one. A great beast rears its head. It is yellow and black and red. What do you do? If I'm ever feeling down or like after a hard week of school, I go play Dungeons and Dragons and it makes me makes me ready for the makes me ready to keep going. Hard. Hit it hard. Yeah. Matthew interview, take one. That was my first ever slate. That's how you do. Good morning, sunshine. I'm going to try and look just look at the lens. It works. If it's Deborah, turn her away. It's Ricky's time to shine. If Mal Gré were to answer that, he would show his weakness, and that is unwise. By the way, I still had a good time at prom. Hello? I was a baller. 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