On a Tuesday evening at a Jesuit house of studies in New York City, a group of seminarians gather around an old wooden table. Books are open, but they’re not breviaries or theological texts. The men are deep in deliberation, but not about Aristotelian philosophy or the finer points of the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Suddenly a map unfurls and a miniature green dragon is placed on the table.
The men are all playing Dungeons & Dragons. They have decided to have their characters challenge the young dragon in its lair. Dice clatter onto the table as everyone rolls for initiative to decide the battle order. Then the battle starts!
This scene would have been unimaginable when I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1980s on TV as a child in Belize, eagerly watching the Saturday morning cartoon that aired on CBS. Back then, Dungeons & Dragons (or D&D, as it is more commonly called) was practically unknown in my small corner of the world, and I had no knowledge of the accompanying game, books and toys. I also had no idea of the controversy swirling around it in the United States.
The television show featured a group of teenagers transported to a magical realm to fight evil, a premise that appealed to my love of heroic tales. I suspect that my friends and I would have loved the game, since we made up stories all the time but alas lacked the structured framework for the stories that D&D would have offered.
It wasn’t until I was in college in the early 1990s that I encountered the full scope of the game and its rich lore. I briefly played the pen-and-paper version, enough to get hooked, though opportunities to gather around a gaming table grew scarce after graduation. Still, I continued to immerse myself in the genre, particularly the Forgotten Realms universe after having been introduced to novels such as those by R. A. Salvatore and computer games like “Eye of the Beholder” and the “Baldur’s Gate” series.
I enjoyed the escapism that the world of Dungeons & Dragons offered, especially since it allowed me the same sort of escapist fantasy that I had so thoroughly consumed with the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien. Never, though, did I imagine the heights of mainstream popularity it would achieve so many years later—or the level of respectability it would attain.
Dungeons & Dragons recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, a milestone that marks its transformation from niche hobby to cultural phenomenon. Created by Gary Gygax and first published in 1974 by TSR (a company Gygax co-founded when he couldn’t find a publisher), D&D defined the tabletop role-playing genre with a simple premise: Players would embody heroic characters in a fantasy setting while one player, commonly referred to as the Dungeon Master, guided the narrative and controlled the world around them.
By the 1980s, D&D had spawned novels, comic books, toys, computer games and television shows. But its rising popularity, combined with artwork depicting monsters, devils and demons, triggered suspicion among socially conservative religious groups. Many feared the game was leading children astray, promoting satanic worship and damning souls. Though the panic eventually subsided, the negative fallout—combined with business missteps—threatened the game’s viability.
How remarkable, then, to discover that D&D has not only survived but thrived in communities that once viewed it with suspicion and shunned it. During my visits to formation houses for both the Dominicans and the Congregation of the Holy Cross, I also witnessed how the game has become a beloved activity among men preparing for religious life.
“For almost six years I have had the pleasure of playing D&D with men in formation at Bellarmine House, a Jesuit house of studies in St. Louis,” shares Steven A. Schoenig, S.J., the former rector (superior) of that house and the current socius of the Central and Southern Province of the Jesuits. “Playing this game with them has been a real treat for me amid the busyness of running the formation program and teaching at the university.” In Father Schoenig’s experience, the game offers something increasingly rare in our digital age: genuine human connection. “Sitting around a table using nothing but paper, dice and our common imagination means that we spend time together in a very human way—talking, thinking, arguing, laughing and working our way through complex conundrums.”
Playing D&D can reveal dimensions of character that might otherwise remain hidden in the structured environment of houses for religious formation. Father Schoenig notes this benefit explicitly: “I have learned a lot about the men from this game. I see new aspects of them that aren’t revealed anywhere else.” The multifaceted nature of the game creates numerous opportunities for personality assessment that complement more traditional formation activities. “It is a collaborative game, and so I see how they work with others,” Father Schoenig explains.
It is a problem-solving game, and so I see how they deal with adversity; it is an imaginative game, and so I see how they use creativity in unexpected situations; and it is a role-playing game, and so I see different facets of their personalities emerge. We bond with each other over the many hours we spend on this (sometimes) time-consuming game, but I don’t regret a single hour—we have created memories that we’ll be smiling about for years to come.
The recognition of D&D’s formational potential has also expanded into Catholic education and ministry more broadly. Catholic schools countrywide have established D&D clubs, recognizing the game’s educational value. John Sullivan, the Dungeon Master for the Dungeoneer’s Club at Jesuit High in Sacramento, asserts that “it definitely promotes leadership, because you have to manage a lot of people and their schedules and their creative ideas.”
While D&D’s core appeal remains its immersive fantasy, teachers have also discovered that the game offers remarkable educational benefits, including moral formation. Educator Kade Wells has been using D&D in the classroom for over 10 years and has seen such impressive results that he has given numerous talks on the subject; he now even teaches a graduate-level course to other educators on how to best implement D&D in the classroom. D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast also continues to release numerous resources to assist teachers.
Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games create what psychologists might call a “projective space,” an environment where internal values, fears and aspirations can be externalized and examined safely. Numerous mental health professionals are now using it as a framework for counseling sessions. “The game itself serves as this sandbox,” the psychologist William Nation explains. “It allows you to experience things in a way that is different from the way you would experience them if they happened to you. There’s a sort of psychological distance between you and whatever you’re engaging in.”
In his book Role-Playing Games in Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Guide, the therapist Daniel Hand outlines how effective it can be, especially in dealing with younger victims of abuse: “Role-playing games essentially hide the therapy behind a veneer of fiction, keeping the more threatening/overwhelming experiences at arm’s length, and placing a reassuring third party (the character) between the client and their issues.”
Now no longer viewed solely as a game played by socially awkward teenagers, D&D has also been enjoying a renaissance in the media spotlight, with numerous celebrities proclaiming their fondness for it, including Vin Diesel, Stephen Colbert, Aubrey Plaza and Henry Cavill. The game has also been featured prominently in TV shows such as “Stranger Things,” and has seen live shows put on by the likes of Critical Role and Dimension 20 fill venues such as Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden.
Broadway has also gotten in on the act, with the show “Twenty-Sided Tavern,” which is set to tour the country. I had the opportunity to see the show and was thoroughly captivated by its brilliant incorporation of what makes D&D great: imagination, unpredictability and audience engagement.
With Netflix recently announcing an upcoming D&D show set in the Forgotten Realms, Dungeons and Dragons seems poised to continue its increasingly rich tradition of storytelling and camaraderie. With D&D’s creator Gary Gygax having drawn much of his inspiration from the works of J. R. R Tolkien, its pedigree in epic morality tales remains a constant, and hopefully will continue as a source of instruction, escape and interaction for generations to come.
