Dungeons and Dragons

When I was in college in the early 1980s, every boy was expected to spend the early part of every week screwing up his courage to ask out The Girl, the one who walked in slow motion across the quad, her hair blowing in the wind.  If she agreed, he would spend Friday or Saturday night with her, dancing to Depeche Mode, watching Cannonball Run, and having sex.  This was his goal in life, all he could ever want or hope for or dream of.

If she refused, he would be forced to endure the humiliation of hanging out with other boys, eating take-out pizza and playing Dungeons and Dragons and waiting to try again iwith a new girl.

No one understood that many boys liked to eat pizza and play Dungeons and Dragons.  Especially those whose goal in life was to spend time with boys, not girls.



Gary Gygax invented the fantasy role-playing game in 1974, and by 1978 it was a phenomenon, being played in high school and college dorm rooms all over the world.  You developed a character (Elf, Dwarf, Wizard, Barbarian, and so on), endowed him with abilities (Strength, Charisma, Intelligence) and trekked with other characters through a heroic fantasy world, solving dilemmas and fighting enemies as you searched for a fabulous treasure.  

My character was usually a titan.

Six hours in a dim room with that cute chemistry major on one side and that hunky fratboy on the other, sitting so close that your legs sometimes brushed together and an occasional smooth bare chest was visible through buttons that had come undone.  Channeling the worlds of Conan the Barbarian or The Lord of the Rings. Pretending to be Boris Vallejo musclemen, without the nude ladies.  Plus you got pizza.  What's not to like?

The adults disapproved, of course, thinking D&D players were abandoning the real world, turning psychotic, or worshipping the Devil.  Several movies in the early 1980s featured teenagers turned catatonic or suicidal by the insidious board game.  For instance, in Mazes and Monsters (1982), some college kids (including Tom Hanks and Chris Makepeace) play in creepy caverns, and Robbie (Tom) gets so lost in the game that attacks his friends with a sword.

But we were just engaging in a little male bonding.  And sometimes Dungeons and Dragons games developed into something involving unzipping, nudity, and sausage sightings.

See also: 6 Naked Men in a Dorm Room