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BURBANK, California – There was something about Dungeons & Dragons that spoke to Mario Alvarenga in a profound way. He tried it for the first time five years ago. It does not matter that he is not a teenager as are most beginners, but an adult. While he was playing role-playing, he could imagine scenes down to the smallest detail: the bump of cobblestones on a street, the smell of baked goods on a market, the coldness of the wind. The boredom in his life melted.
He joined a regular group, then two, then four. Soon, he ran the games as a Dungeon Master in his local gaming store. Alvarenga, who is 31 years old and working as a full-time caregiver, quickly found his life of non-work crushed by elves, gnomes, dwarves and wizards.
"If you asked me to calculate the number of hours I spent thinking of Dungeons & Dragons, I would be too embarrassed to answer," he says. His only regret? That he did not start playing sooner.
Yes, D & D is back. But it's cool now (sort of). And legions participate, including an unprecedented number of adult and female players, drawn to a recent popular redesign and new online gaming options. This is the ultimate sign that nerd culture is now in fashion.
Jon Diesel, Drew Barry Johnson, Dwayne Johnson, James Franco, Steven Colbert, Anderson Cooper, Vin Diesel Ta-Nehisi Coates: The list of celebrities who have come forward to roll 20-sided dice is as long as a wizard's beard. The "Game of Thrones" writer, George R.R. Martin, debuted as a young dungeon master, as did the hosts of the HBO series. Joe Manganiello is so obsessed that he has written a D & D movie screenplay. The game has been the subject of television shows including "Big Bang Theory" and "Futurama". Next month will see the release of a starter set for D & D "Stranger Things".
The popularity of the game has grown steadily over its 45 year history. But by 2018, its developers, Wizards of the Coast, have sold more units than ever before.
"If you ever said that a game containing a 328-page rule book would have reached the size of the last five years, I would not have believed it," says Mike Mearls, lead developer of the game. game. "How in the world of computers and video and mobile games does this stand out?"
D & D is essentially a collaborative narrative. The players claim to be fantastic characters who embark on a group adventure. They fight monsters, explore the field and roll the dice to decide the results. A dungeon master guides the story.
D & D has come a long way since Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson invented it in 1974 as an alternative to the miniature military war game. This is no longer a game to hide in the basement of mom.
Today, people play in events like "Drinks and Dragons" in Philadelphia and "Orcs!" Orcs! Orcs! "In Portland, Oregon. They pay $ 2,650 per person per weekend to play at Caverswall Castle, Staffordshire, England. They join the ranks of the Tokyo D & D Meetup groups (37 members) in Kolkata, India (501 members).
During the "satanic panic" of the 1980s, D & D had a hard time. Religious groups that associated it with occult practices and devil worship dreaded the power of the game on impressionable young minds. When two teenagers, both passionate players, committed suicide, they launched a campaign against this crime.
Today, however, the hammer of war has turned in the opposite direction: D & D is considered healthy, therapeutic.
50-year-old automotive product developer Jeff Moss has suggested to D & D, his former hobby for the youngest, that he seek together something he and his 11-year-old son Gustavo could do together.
A few days later, Gustavo textually quoted the regulations. A few weeks later, he and his father worked six hours every Saturday at a D & D table at the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory in Los Angeles.
"The Dungeon Master describes the final shot to get rid of a monster or whatever. And I look at this child's face and it lights up, Moss recalls. "There is no computer screen, but it visualizes everything that happens. I thought it was unbelievable. So, I gave it priority to play.
As Moss says so well: "The Nerd culture was not calm in 1982. It gets banged on. Now, everyone knows that nerds are the ones that engage you. "
More people play, in part, because it has never been so easy. D & D used to be a nitpicky, number-crunching affair. Then, in 2014, Wizards of the Coast released a new edition – the beloved 5th edition – which is simpler, more spontaneous and less dictated by the rules. As Barry Thomas Drake, 58, long-time player of L.A .: "No need to discuss the exact number of mouse hairs you need for a certain spell."
The company has also made it more inclusive. The rule that the strength of female characters is lower than that of men is over. The work of sexist art is over: finish the bikinis in armor, finish the monsters with breasts, finish the ladies with bare breasts (unless its character really claims it).
The characters appear in a rainbow of skin colors, body types and sexual orientations, such as wood elves who identify as non-binary.
"You can," suggests the "Player's Guide," "play as a female character who portrays himself as a man, a man who feels trapped in a woman's body or a bearded dwarf who hates being taken for a man. "
Women, in particular, love this new edition. D & D was originally a nerdy thing, the focus being on the guy. Yet, the number of players is 38% and increasing.
Their involvement is motivated by web series such as "Girls, Guts, Glory". Designed by eight young actresses from Los Angeles, she began by being a way to hone their improv skills and get together for a "scheduled linkage period". None of them had much experience with D & D and the first episodes were encountered. with cynicism.
"There have been rude comments," says one of them, Kim Hidalgo.
"Like," Oh, these are just models that Wizards of the Coast has hired, "says Erika Fermina." Or, "There's no way for them to play Nobody's playing D & D that looks like that "Someone compared us to the Monkeys, a group made."
"A group of girls," says Alice Greczyn.
Trolling has since been replaced by devotion. A mother from the Georgia coast admitted that there was no sleepover when her 12-year-old son and friends were not tuning.
[‘Growing up, we were the weird ones’: The wizarding, mermaiding, cosplaying haven of Epic Nerd Camp]
Nowadays, even the most surreal exploits are possible: playing D & D as a career. Popular podcasts like "The Adventure Zone" and "Critical Role" have turned anonymous gamblers into Internet fees. "Critical Role" began as a group of professional voice actors in Los Angeles who had fun with D & D in everyone's living room. It has become a multiplatform series bringing together half a million people a week.
Satine Phoenix created the largest Los Angeles D & D Meetup Group. She is now responsible for the official Wizards of the Coast community of the 40 million people who play the game around the world. She travels the world spreading the D & D gospel, organizing charity events, hosting web series, answering Dungeon Masters' "social navigation" questions and "orchestrating all experiences".
Phoenix, who has been playing since the age of 8, quotes D & D as his "longest relationship".
"It's a dream come true. And I did not even know that I had this dream. I did not know it was an option, "she says.
Technology has changed the game. In 2019, people play D & D via videoconferencing, via Skype and Discord. They use apps that roll dice, fill character sheets online, and draw cards on laptops and iPads rather than on graph paper. They live streaming on Twitch. When they can not get to a physical table, they connect to "virtual tables" like Fantasy Grounds and Roll20 to explore dungeons with players on the other side of the world. Here, dungeon masters rent themselves as itinerant knights: they will lead your campaign for 10 to 20 dollars per head.
"The time of" I can not find a band "is over," says Phoenix. "Now, it's" what style of play do I want? ""
Nevertheless, as in 1974, all you need to play well at D & D is paper, pencil and dice.
"When you're at a table, no matter what your age, it's invigorating," Phoenix says. "Even if it's just for those few hours, you feel. . . you feel."
On a sweet Saturday night, a dozen people sit around a D & D table at the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory. Frank Contreras, 18, who usually plays two consecutive sessions here every weekend, says that he likes the "opportunities" that offer the D & D stories. "Our world, the real world," he adds, "is a little dark." He had just finished beheading an ogre.
With D & D, a gray-haired and gray-haired disability accountant such as Leigh-Anne Anderson could reinvent herself as a sexy and furious barbarian police officer. Anderson, 50, plays in the evening of the Contreras group.
"I have a picture," she says, developing the drawing of a buxom woman with long red mats. "It's me."
For their Dungeon Master, Mike Arellano, it's less about escaping the real world than creating an alternate version of it. Arellano has a personal library of more than 1,000 books on D & D – on the history of China, Africa and Egypt, on currency, commerce and castles. "Because you never know when you might need to describe the proper layout of a burial vault."
For almost everyone, the game is about the connection. Analytical chemist Kristi Halbig, 40, admits that playing at D & D forces her to "talk to real human beings" on the other side of Mario Alvarenga's table at Geeky Teas in Burbank.
Jacob Whaley, 17, sits next to her: "My father says," I do not understand what it is. But I'm glad you hang out with people. "
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