Marathon: I Don't Have A D&D Problem (2 of 13)

Here is #2 in the 13 part series. You can listen to I Don't Have A Dancing Problem here. It's been a while since the last one, but life interferes.

I Don't Have A Dancing Problem is the song, and it's a midtempo song that usually picks up for the chorus ("fuck this, I'm going dancing") about doing something you enjoy despite what other people may see, say and think.


This song is about dancing and the thrill of letting go for a couple hours. The closest parallel I have is Dungeons and Dragons.

Both of them are done usually in low-light with some pretense of keeping it quiet, since the disapproving eyes are everywhere, if they knew what you were doing, as if there's better things to do. Much of person to person dancing, as I hear secondhand, is about the improvisation of two people, physically. D&D is also about improvisation, but it's mental. It's all held together by the Dungeon Master, but it's done in concert with the other actors (the other people at the table.)

The similarities...well, there's been days when I've lived for the end of the classes or beginning of the night when I'd get to play, throw dice and inhabit a world of the DM's making. It got to the point where I was doing my character sheet in a blacked out room with the lights off during one of my science classes.


From there, it spiraled. I'd do it in my spare time, between going to punk rock shows, writing for the other websites in my life and eventually it became a central part of my socializing activities. The hook was simple, I and a group of people I knew helped flesh out the DM's imagination and become entwined in the story he (and once, she) wanted to tell.

I began to mark my weekdays not by how close they were to weekends, but their proximity to D&D games. Unlike weekends, which had the unfortunate side effect of happening in a life that I had to put up with every day, the hours which I played D&D were a glorious escape into our rich fantasy lives. It's the fact that this is not a one-person thing, but something shared which makes it special. Yes, I can exist in a fiction, but when it's shared by a group, it makes it more precious.

(Yes, rich fantasy lives. This was last edited a month ago. A ghost in the machine, or memorializing its exorcism? Even I don't know.)

D&D was/is my escape, a covenant with strangers and their personas which may or may not be like the people outside the floor or table. They're both noisy social activities that are hard to coordinate for large groups of people.

"I'm not down with twelve steps unless you're showing me new moves," Aaron sings in the middle of the song, and I agree with him. There's a huge social stigma around D&D and it's one of those things that people have asked "Really really?" and I say yes. For better or for worse, I'm resistant to the view of Dungeons and Dragons as something that is supposed to ruin me. I don't want to get better or do more grownup things, like get drunk in public and hoot around women.

I tried my hardest to tell my parents that if they were going to get magazines at about 1/3rd the cost, I'd like to add Fast Company and GQ to the list and I couldn't do it with a straight face. (I opted for Wired and Mother Jones instead.) I'm not growing out of this.

I don't think I'm going for anyone's idea of a normal life. D&D is a symptom of this decision, but I've been strung up for all my life and now I finally feel relaxed in it. Whatever I make of my life next is my own work, leaving my fingerprint, my way.




















Let's roll the dice.