Here's an idea.
"Dungeons and Dragons" can make you a confident and successful
person.
[DING]
D&D is a tabletop role playing game.
Now, there are a lot of different tabletop role playing
games, like "Shadow Run," "Call of Cthulu," "Vampire,"
"Pathfinder," but D&D is the originator, popularizer,
largest, and the most well known.
First published in 1974 by the late Dave Arneson and Gary
Gygax , both of whom deserve a moment of silence.
"Dungeons and Dragons" is a game built
on collaborative storytelling.
There is a group of adventurers, and they are charged
with some sort of grand task.
This is a role playing game.
It takes place entirely in our collective imagination.
You know like save the important person,
find the relic, defeat the badness.
One person, the dungeon master or game master,
plays not as an adventurer but as the rest of the world.
They play the nonplayer characters, the bad guys,
the weather, a blade of grass.
You name it.
I am the dungeon master.
They are the one in control.
The adventurers describe the actions
that they would like to take to the DM, who then
lets them know how it goes.
There are a lot of rules and mechanics,
which make a D&D game go.
But at the heart of it are these two things,
improvisation and dice rolling.
In a D&D game, you aren't restricted,
like you are in a video game, to a limited set of actions.
When a problem or obstacle presents itself,
you can try anything, like anything anything,
like go nuts.
Because a person and not a computer
is on the receiving end of your crazy ideas,
the possibilities are basically infinite.
The DM will probably make you roll
the dice, the result of which will
be modified by your character's natural abilities.
And then this determines how well you do in the game.
So, for example, let's say a human mage, a dwarven warrior,
and a elvish thief are in the forest when
an owl bear emerges.
A mage casts a force spell on the owl
bear, which has a low willpower, so it's knocked backwards.
The dwarf dashes around to execute a [? bustop ?].
He rolls athletics, a skill he lacks, and rolls a 19.
Success!
As the owl bear falls, the elf does a leaping backflip
to pickpocket, which because of his high acrobatics
and dexterity, he achieves and gets
the circlet of forking paths.
This circlet gives you plus 1 to hit
when facing a gazebo, which we all know
is useless, because it's a gazebo.
But hey, everyone loves good loot.
Anyway, if you don't know much about "Dungeons and Dragons"
firsthand, you probably know it by reputation.
Up there with model trains, late 19th century
Russian literature, and "Magic the Gathering,"
tabletop gaming sits high on many (COMIC BOOK GUY
IMPRESSION) nerdiest thing ever lists.
These games tend to conjure a very specific kind of person.
But assumptions about gamers aren't based on reality,
they are rather the effect of a spiteful glamor
spell, which was effective because of your low perception
spell.
I'm attacking the darkness.
Nah.
JK.
It's because of common assumptions
based on stereotypes supported by popular media.
So that's not your fault unless you
write for "Big Bang Theory."
In which case it is your fault.
Knock it off.
[CANNED LAUGHTER]
The fact of the matter is that there
are many famous outgoing people whose
names appear on marquees all over the world that
are dungeoneers.
There are some that you would expect,
like Patton Oswald, Rainn Wilson, Chris Hardwick, Alexis
Ohanian, and Wil Wheaton, but there
are a bunch of other others, like Vin Diesel,
Curt Schilling, Michelle Malkin, James Franco, Sasha Grey,
and two time NBA MVP Tim Duncan.
Furthermore, not to insert myself into awesome company,
but I play tabletop RPGs and have for awhile.
And so have my friends, and we're
pretty unfamiliar with the classic tabletop nerd
stereotype.
I mean, I was the president of the Theatre
Society in high school.
I might not be helping my case much.
Anyway, it stands to reason that real D&D players don't actually
fit their cultural stereotype.
In fact, they have a chance to be more sociable, more
outgoing, maybe even more successful than non D&D
players.
Hear me out.
German philosopher Martin Heidegger
described the way in which the world
is lit up through our interactions with it.
And these interactions augment what
he called the at handedness of entities within the world.
To Heidegger, this is how worldhood is constructed
within our consciousness.
Basically, our view of the world is
constructed upon our constant and varied interaction
with things.
The more things we interact with,
the more we're able to react to new situations
and go with the flow.
The D&D universe is interaction on hyperdrive.
It provides infinite possibilities,
and it expects its players to constantly
innovate within the game universe
to accomplish goals, solve problems, defeat beholders.
It gives you an infinite amount more flow to go with.
Excuse me, Flo.
The effects of the choices you made
and skills that you learn during the campaign
hopefully stick with you, enlightening new possibilities
when you're normal you and not halfling rogue you.
As a player, you deal with larger-than-life problems
and the ever shifting politics of collaboration.
And as a DM, you learn how to manage
an entire group of people and their environment.
While you might be naturally shy or soft spoken,
if you have to play as a Dragonborn battle mage,
you'll have to figure out pretty quick how to take
control of the situation.
Why?
Because if you don't, then the campaign is doomed,
and the there's no game to play.
Game over, man.
Game over.
And if you, actual you again, are a little disorganized,
but your pals are coming over for a game that you're DMing,
you're going to make sure that all the character sheets
and tiles are in order so that everybody knows who they are
and what they're doing.
And also Cheetos.
Where are the Cheetos?
Always Cheetos.
I don't know what it is with D&D and Cheetos.
Now, aside from having to perform a character in front
of a group of people, players are
expected to do their part in crafting
an interesting and engaging story while it's happening.
How can I help you, dear madam?
Oh please.
No need for such deference.
I am no better than a gnome.
And you're not even really in control.
I mean dice rolling gives you a lot of experience
with the randomness of the universe
and how to deal with it or work around it.
Roll a natural 1 on your athletics
check climbing that mountain wall and broke your leg.
No problem.
Good thing you have a high intelligence and marksmanship.
Make yourself a rope elevator out of that grappling hook
and branch.
Heave ho.
But you're right.
Most people aren't super genius marksman in real life.
How is any of this actually useful?
Unlike, basically every other game, tabletop
games require a lot of improvisation.
And as it turns out, that makes them a lot like real life.
And that's not all.
Social dynamics, public speaking, creative problem
solving, organization, mace swinging, these
are all very useful real life skills.
D&D provides a system for understanding people's actions
and motivations by giving them classifications
of sane, insane, good, evil, and all combinations thereof, which
is infinitely useful in the workplace.
I have people skills.
And while you might not be building a rope elevator
in real life anytime soon.
The fact that you had to describe in detail its design
and operation to your DM is great practice
visualizing and putting your ideas into words.
Which if you ever want to build something impressive
with a group of people, which describes most fun careers,
might turn out to be pretty useful.
Of course, not every tabletop gamer
is going to be a charming, savvy, bon vivant
with great problem solving skills.
And clearly not every successful anything is a former D&D nerd,
but it seems a pretty easy case to make that D&D,
and other tabletop games nurture a set of skills,
which are not only useful but maybe necessary
for making it big.
What do you guys think?
Can tabletop games contribute to success?
And if you are a gamer, have they contributed to yours?
Let us know in the comments.
And "Dungeons and Dragons" joke about subscribing.
Please subscribe.
I detect feels.
Let's see what you guys had to say about Doctor Who
and Religion.
So there were a lot, a lot of comments that
fell into one of two groups.
The first being that "Doctor Who"
can't be a religion, because it doesn't involve any faith.
And the second being that "Doctor Who"
was more of a philosophy than a faith.
So we're going to respond to both of those two
groups in turn right now.
Goldlucky13 and a lot of other people said "Doctor Who"
can't be a religion, because people don't actually
believe that Doctor Who is real and that his adventures never
actually happened.
To that I say there are a lot of people
who are, I think, very devout who probably don't believe
that their religious texts or mythos is real,
is literally true but more of an inspiration on how to live
and how to treat other people.
And so I think the fact that Doctor Who definitely doesn't
exist doesn't necessarily take him out
of the running for being a religious figure of some kind.
LuxinNocte and a bunch of other people
pointed out that "Doctor Who" was
more of a philosophy than a religion, which
I think is a really interesting distinction to make.
For me, a philosophy is more about removing mythos instead
of trying to access the world and ideas and ethics
through mythos.
And the existence of a very strong mythology in "Doctor
Who," I think, kind of makes it hard to call it a philosophy.
But maybe I'm being really academic.
TheOneHDuck makes a really interesting point
about "Doctor Who" being, if it is a religion, being
a very early religion, because of the separateness
of its values and ideas, which I think also
gets to the heart of one of the things
that we were really interested in in making the episode, which
is not if "Doctor Who" is a religion, but if "Doctor Who"
could be a religion.
AboFinal points out that "Doctor Who's" mythos
is just as magical as the mythos for pretty
much every other religion out there, which
is a pretty good case, I think.
To loonoortje, who wants to know whether or not
I would travel with the Doctor, the answer
is of course I would.
The three things I would bring.
I would bring a guitar.
I would definitely bring my phone,
because if there's one thing I've
learned watching "Doctor Who" is that having a phone
is incredibly useful.
And then I would probably bring, I don't know, my dog maybe.
But he's really dumb and would probably run away
or get eaten by a dinosaur.
So I'll have to get back to you on the third thing.
I got to think about it.
TehBrawler posted a really great comment
about the cosmology developed by "Doctor Who"
being kind of incomplete or a bad one,
because the Doctor changes his worldview
with every regeneration, which is really interesting
and sort of asked this question of whether
or not our saviors or gods need to be perfect characters.
Christianity might say yes.
Other religions might say no.
It's a really interesting distinction.
To Allan Black, number one, genetics.
Sorry.
Number two, just shave with scissors.