Global Festival: Day 3 – Dungeons and Dragons

By Ed Wright

In the third day of Kingston University Student Union’s Global Festival week, the River sat down with the Anime and Sci-Fi Society to see how the popular game of Dungeons and Dragons embodies all of the qualities that the Global Festival represents.

Most people associate the game of Dungeons and Dragons with the so-called ‘geeks’ among us. Well while a lot of the people who play the game would refer to themselves as that, famous actors Robin Williams and Vin Diesel are keen fans of the game. You wouldn’t call them geeks…would you?

First published in 1974 Dungeons & Dragons is a structured yet open-ended role-playing game. It is normally played indoors with the participants seated around a tabletop. Typically, each player controls only a single character, which represents an individual in a fictional setting.

Veteran Dungeons and Dragons player, Gregory Haycock, a computer science student in his second year, said: “The best way to describe the game is as tabletop acting with statistical modelling. The players are effectively actors, while the ‘Game Master’ is the narrator in a story.”

The game has had a massive influence on film and video game culture over the last 35 years, has over sixty million players worldwide, and has been translated into a wide variety of languages. Anyone can play. It is the pinnacle of diversity and equality, as it is all fictional.

Relative newcomer to the game, Floyd Vawter, a second year fine arts student, said: “In Dungeons and Dragons, if you can say it and imagine it, you can do it. Whatever you want to be. There are no limits.”