Dungeons & Dragons is more popular than ever before. As a result, D&D culture is starting to seep into other activities for grown-up gamers, including their professional lives. Is D&D now being used to network and blow off steam the way adults play poker?
[h=3]A Change in Culture[/h]American culture, at least, has changed its relationship with Dungeons & Dragons:
This change paved the way for older players to return to the fold, as exemplified by the Old School Renaissance (OSR). What form of D&D you play doesn't matter, as every version lives eternally online. And as adults have gotten stable jobs that allows them more free time, they're finding they once again crave a connection with friends and peers.
The rise of professional game masters is evidence that this market exists and it's thriving.
[h=3]The Professional What?[/h]Professional game masters are paid for their services. Several factors contribute to the possibility of such a job: the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, available leisure time, and the free cash necessary to pay for it. It took a while to get off the ground, as we covered in "D&D Goes to Work Part II: Professional Game Masters" in 2015.
Two years later, theory became reality. I interviewed Timothy James Woods, who was living the dream of a professional game master...and shortly thereafter became the subject of several publications fascinated by his achievement.
Woods isn't alone. Game mastering for kids is certainly part of a professional GM's income, but the very existence of professional game masters means that increasingly, adults value Dungeons & Dragons enough that they're willing to pay for the experience.
[h=3]Game Night for Creatives[/h]It's probably no surprise that many creative professionals, who have gone on to launch fantasy-themed franchises, are themselves avid D&D players:
D&D is certainly an influence on writers:
Be it comedians, television hosts, or creators of geek-friendly content, it makes sense that D&D would prove fertile ground for creative professionals, both to develop their own skills and network with each other.
Will D&D replace poker as the weekly adult get-together for busy professionals? For some very influential creatives, it already has.
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
[h=3]A Change in Culture[/h]American culture, at least, has changed its relationship with Dungeons & Dragons:
When mainstream American culture was largely about standing in a factory line, or crowding into smoke-stained boardrooms for meetings, or even dropping acid and collapsing in a field for your hundred-person “be-in,” the idea of retiring to a dimly lit table to make up stories with three or four friends seemed fruitless and antisocial. Now that being American often means being alone or interacting distantly—fidgeting with Instagram in a crosswalk, or lying prone beneath the heat of a laptop with Netflix streaming over you—three or four people gathering in the flesh to look each other in the eye and sketch out a world without pixels can feel slightly rebellious, or at least pleasantly out of place.
This change paved the way for older players to return to the fold, as exemplified by the Old School Renaissance (OSR). What form of D&D you play doesn't matter, as every version lives eternally online. And as adults have gotten stable jobs that allows them more free time, they're finding they once again crave a connection with friends and peers.
The rise of professional game masters is evidence that this market exists and it's thriving.
[h=3]The Professional What?[/h]Professional game masters are paid for their services. Several factors contribute to the possibility of such a job: the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, available leisure time, and the free cash necessary to pay for it. It took a while to get off the ground, as we covered in "D&D Goes to Work Part II: Professional Game Masters" in 2015.
Two years later, theory became reality. I interviewed Timothy James Woods, who was living the dream of a professional game master...and shortly thereafter became the subject of several publications fascinated by his achievement.
Woods isn't alone. Game mastering for kids is certainly part of a professional GM's income, but the very existence of professional game masters means that increasingly, adults value Dungeons & Dragons enough that they're willing to pay for the experience.
[h=3]Game Night for Creatives[/h]It's probably no surprise that many creative professionals, who have gone on to launch fantasy-themed franchises, are themselves avid D&D players:
Pendleton Ward, 34, says D&D was a huge influence in creating Adventure Time, his trippy Cartoon Network fantasy set in the postapocalyptic Land of Ooo (“I like how monsters in D&D are fully realized, with instincts and natural habitats and cultures,” he says). The same goes for David Benioff, 45, Weiss’ fellow Game of Thrones showrunner, who acknowledges how much his teenage D&D adventures taught him about basic storytelling. “I had a regular game with the Feinberg brothers,” he recalls of his adolescence in New York. “The whole campaign must have lasted four years.”...Community creator Dan Harmon, 43, has a regular game with such friends as Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation), Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley) and Paul F. Tompkins (Mr. Show With Bob and David)...The notion that D&D gameplay can draw an audience is being tested increasingly these days, with games being played on podcasts like Nerd Poker and YouTube channels including Nerdist, where Chris Hardwick, Hollywood’s geek laureate, has been previewing Storm King’s Thunder, the latest prewritten campaign from D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast....Hardwick and Nerd Poker host Brian Posehn used to be part of a tight D&D circle that included Patton Oswalt.
D&D is certainly an influence on writers:
...the Times published an article about the game’s formative influence on a diverse generation of writers, including Junot Díaz, Sherman Alexie, George R. R. Martin, Sharyn McCrumb, and David Lindsay-Abaire. (To the Times’ lineup, I’d add a murderers’ row of Ed Park, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Paul La Farge, Colson Whitehead, and Sam Lipsyte.)
Be it comedians, television hosts, or creators of geek-friendly content, it makes sense that D&D would prove fertile ground for creative professionals, both to develop their own skills and network with each other.
Will D&D replace poker as the weekly adult get-together for busy professionals? For some very influential creatives, it already has.
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
