Saturday 8 August 2015

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 8, Favourite Appearance of RPGs in the Media

I WON AT DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, AND IT WAS ADVANCED!

http://community-sitcom.wikia.com/wiki/Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons
I've been really looking forward to this one because I thought it would be really easy to find the clip of Pierce Hawthorne shouting that in Community... but I was wrong. So you'll just have to have me shout it instead.

My friend Mike (of Nazgob's Blog) introduced me to Community and I fell in love. I was watching The Big Bang Theory at the time, and starting to have issues with the way geeks and women were portrayed (this Tumblr post sums up a lot of my issues with the show: when I first stumbled across it, it was illuminating because it put into words a vague unease I was feeling), so to find another show that isn't about geeks, as such, but about real people that happens to include geeks - that was cool. And the characters are flawed but that's ok - you accept them and forgive them for their flaws because you see those flaws in yourself and your friends, and you become more accepting of your flaws, and your friends' flaws.

It's not a perfect show. It would be easy to pick many, many holes in it. But I love it. And I particularly love the two episodes devoted to Dungeons & Dragons: Season 2 ep 14, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and Season 5 ep 10, Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Each episode follows the group as they play a game of D&D to try to help someone resolve a personal issue (not necessarily with that person's appreciation). To again briefly compare with TBBT, when D&D is played there, it is played by the rules but not the spirit of the game: the second episode adds occasional in-game sound effects, but otherwise each episode is entirely them, in the room, play a game. And it is engrossing and engaging even for non-gamers watching.

I think the handling of D&D is fantastic, and then there are the paintball episodes, and the floor-is-made-of-lava episode and, oh, the 8-bit computer game episode and so many others. And it's fun and funny and loving and I adore it.

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