Questions about Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1st edition)

reply to post by sparrowstail


Thanks for the link. I'll check that out.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I didn't expect this many. I'm glad to see so many people on here enjoy the game. It would be cool having a game going on here some how.

the risk with the game is the person might build up a character. Then if the character gets killed, the person feels so much remorse that they go and commit suicide. This has happened many times, so beware. It's not super common but it can happen. Many create a rule that if you're character dies then you can still use them again in the next module, and they come back to life.

reply to post by spartacus699


No, actually that's largely an urban legend perpetrated by christian extremists/witch-hunters/dolts. The news hyped this kind of garbage for a while until they realized it was a load of bull.

Sure some D&D players have committed suicide, and some of those deaths have coïncided with the loss of a character. From my role playing experience with the first edition of D&D, I'd say it was customary for an average player to lose 2-3 characters per year. Not an uncommon experience, quite easy to corellate with just about anything.

Lets get real. No one kills themselves because they lose a game character. Suicide is generally linked to a combination of complex factors that build up over time. If you kill yourself over losing your D&D character, then the overwhelming chances are you would have done it anyway the next time some girl laughed at your acne.

Roleplaying is actually good for you. Same as a few other things biblebashers want to carry on blaming for blindness and demons and whatnot. Roleplaying builds character, social skills, empathy and imagination. In the real world, where roling dice and having fun with friends *doesn't actually* summon *real demons* , there are many psychologists who use role-playing as a therapeutic solution to a variety of mental disorders. Turns out that RPG's do quite the opposite to what the irrational nutters would like you to believe : they SAVE people from suicide.

Study

A schizoid young man made a methodical attempt at suicide. He revealed a paucity of object attachments leading to profound isolation. His early upbring led him to extreme isolation of affect and a fear of fragmentation. His inner life was not safely reachable by conventional therapy. After he became involved in playing a fantasy game, Dungeons and Dragons, the therapy was modified to use the game material as displaced, waking fantasy. This fantasy was used as a safe guide to help the patient learn to acknowledge and express his inner self in a safe and guided way. The patient ultimately matured and developed healthier object relations and a better life. The theoretical underpinnings of this process are explored, both in dynamic terms and in terms of the biologic correlation and equivalence of dreams and waking fantasy. The utility of this game as a vehicle for treatment of selected individuals is discussed.

Originally posted by Ismail
reply to post by spartacus699

 

Roleplaying is actually good for you...builds character, social skills, empathy and imagination. ... there are many psychologists who use role-playing as a therapeutic solution to a variety of mental disorders... they SAVE people from suicide.

edit on 12-7-2013 by Ismail because: can't spll. See ?

I agree and very interesting case there.
I feel quite confident believing RPG's develop many essential and obviously useful skills. Basically AD&D for me was like the evolution of the "McGyver'ism" idea. That is, "Thinking/Collaborating", on your feet, under pressure, in a variety of challenging situations, and then applying the available resources to solve these challenges. Situational Awareness, Cooperation, Critical thinking, Communication, Problem solving, Leadership, Team dynamics, all get a work out and evolve as a character/campaign matures. It would seem to me that any complications that may arise in a person's real life, including suicide, I would suggest would be indicative of deeper undiagnosed emotional/mental illness or deficit that was present before starting the RPG.

I'm 38 so if you do the math, ya role playing games where huge in the 80's. We played many games for years and years. I guess overall it's pretty healthy passtime. But I'm just saying "there is that danger". Like it's real. Then I guess there's the idea of in D and D perhaps someone might consider seeing if they could do spells and stuff like that in real life. So there's that slight chance they might transition into witchcraft. So there are some issues. But role playing board games I don't think are super popular anymore. Not like WOW and stuff like that. At least in those ones they don't have that risk (at least I don't think) of completely losing your character.

Lets play some D&D right now okay..

You see a big dragon, he's coming to eat you. It's your move, What do you do?

reply to post by spartacus699

You see a big dragon, he's coming to eat you. It's your move, What do you do?

I commit suicide because of the gay demons that my opponent the gamemaster summoned when he pretended to cast a *real* magick spell and also because the dragon is red and I don't like that color.