I enjoyed this article by Peter Bebergal tremendously. To me it's about the power of imagination and the culture that supports it.
"To put it simply, Dungeons and Dragons reinvented the use of the imagination as a kid's best toy. The cliche of parents waxing nostalgic for their wooden toys and things 'they had to make themselves' has now become my own. Looking around at my toddler's room full of trucks, trains, and Transformers, I want to cry out, 'I created worlds with nothing more than a twenty-sided die!'
Dungeons and Dragons was a not a way out of the mainstream, as some parents feared and other kids suspected, but a way back into the realm of story-telling. This was what my friends and I were doing: creating narratives to make sense of feeling socially marginal. We were writing stories, grand in scope, with heroes, villains, and the entire zoology of mythical creatures. Even sports, the arch-nemesis of role-playing games, is a splendid tale of adventure and glory. Though my friends and I were not always athletically inclined, we found agility in the characters we created. We fought, flew through the air, shot arrows out of the park, and scored points by slaying the dragon and disabling the trap."
Read it: Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / How 'Dungeons' changed the world
Via: Boing Boing: How 'Dungeons' changed the world
More info: Dungeons & Dragons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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