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Witches, Druids, Clerics… Dungeons & Dragons have so many magic and religious elements that I couldn’t resist researching what scientific papers and academic studies have to say about this most popular roleplaying game!

And you won’t believe what I found out!

Curious? Let’s go!

Hello Symposiast! I’m Dr Angela Puca, Religious Studies PhD. This channel is your online resource of information on all things magic, Pagan and esoteric, backed by peer-reviewed studies and academic research.

This video is dedicated to the King of D&D, Matthew Mercer, who’s a subscriber to my channel and mentioned it in the Critical Role newsletter!

So, Matthew, I’m honoured. Thank you, and this video is for you!

D&D first appeared in the 1970s amid a moral panic over cults. In 1978, a reporter said that the game inspires fanatic devotion usually associated with mind-bending religious cults.

This vague sense that there was something “religious” about this new game continued into the 1980s. The activist group BADD – or Bothered about Dungeons and Dragons – and similar groups also claimed that fantasy role-playing games were actually a cult, not only like religion but actually were a dangerous religious movement masquerading as entertainment. (Laycock, 2015, p.51)

Now, when I searched for academic research on D&D, I found a few papers trying to assess whether the game is dangerous or alienating. I’ll cover the psychological component first and then move on to whether D&D is a religion or can be likened to one! Based on these premises, it won’t surprise that there were a few papers around the 1990s evaluating potential detrimental effects on D&D players. None of them found a significant correlation between role-playing games and harmful behaviours or tendencies. A study from 1987 tested whether players of D&D were more emotionally unstable and hence potentially keener to violent deeds and found no correlation. (Simón, 1987)

Another one from 1990 tried to assess feelings of alienation in players compared to non-players and, even so, the sense of alienation was slightly higher among players the study was done on a small scale – with 70 participants in total, 35 players and 35 non-players – which makes that marginal percentage hardly statistically significant. Also, the scientists themselves concluded that negative effects are unknown or non-existent. (DeRenard and Kline, 1990)

There are also studies inquiring whether D&D can actually be beneficial and meet fundamental human needs! A medical case report from 1994 showed that D&D could be successfully used to release unconscious fantasies, and frees fears, and improve relationships with others and oneself.

There are also studies inquiring whether D&D can actually be beneficial and meet fundamental human needs! A medical case report from 1994 showed that D&D could be successfully used to release unconscious fantasies, and free fears, and improve relationships with others and oneself. (Blackmon, 1994)

A more recent study from 2013 explored the ways in which D&D players use group communication to meet social needs. The study found that D&D fosters pro-social behaviour and fulfils needs such as democratic participation, a sense of belonging, the need for spontaneity and that to be moral. (Rameshkumar and Bailey, 2020)

Now let’s dig into the religious side of D&D.

Let me premise that we’re not arguing that D&D is a religion but that it has religious elements and a religion-like impact.

As Laycock highlights, there are three ways in which fantasy role-playing games can be usefully compared to religion.

• First, there are many religious elements in D&D – such as an ethical system, gods, rituals, magic, and the supernatural.
  
• Second, D&D shares with religion the possibility of experiencing a more idealized time and place, a world of heightened meaning.
  
• Third, by inhabiting another world we are able to look back at our own from a new perspective. This too is a function that fantasy roleplaying games share with religion, as many Religious Studies scholars now attribute to Religions a core feature of meaning-making and belief-making that provides structure and shapes peoples’ experience in the world.

Also, providing a connection to a realm of heightened meaning, fantasy role-playing shares a function with myth and religious ritual. (Laycock, 2015, pp.51–75)

Let’s now analyse the Gods, the ‘Alignment’ ethical system and the potential religious function of ‘other worlds’.

GODS MYTHOLOGIES WORLDVIEWS

D&D features many creatures from ancient mythologies. Along with the “Player’s Handbook” and the “Dungeon Master’s Guide,” the “Monster Manuals” belong to the core rulebooks of the game.

Here, numerous beasts are described and endowed with ability scores and other game statistics. Many of these creatures are from Greek mythology. Such as Medusa, titans, centaurs, harpies, nymphs, and many others. Beings from other mythologies are also common, such as the Mesopotamian shedu, the Indian näga, the Japanese kirin, and many more.

Along with demons (such as Asmodeus and succubi), fairy creatures and dinosaurs, and numerous others inspired by myths, religions, literature, or pure imagination. These religious elements are not only external to the players, who have to deal with them but also integral to the characters as well. The role of the cleric, for instance, combines the strengths of the fighter and the divine user.

Later on, other classes were added, such as a holy knight called a paladin, monks and nature-worshipping druids. Some of these classes can have access to “psionic abilities” like levitation, telekinesis, clairvoyance, astral projection, and so on, which change and develop through the many rulebooks issued through the years. Deities are of central importance as they not only give the religious characters the power to perform their miracles, but they also send omens, help, or even punishment. Since worshipping gods is an integral part of the game, every character – depending on their background or origin story – is suggested to select a deity and use its ethos as a guide for their actions. (Perlini-Pfister, 2012, pp.282–287)

Also interesting to analyse the ethical apparatus, called ‘alignment’, a feature of game mechanics that frames the morality of all intelligent beings in the game.

(This feature has gone through substantial changes in the 5^th Edition but I will stick with my source, which was published before that release.)

The Alignment is an aspect of the character’s essential nature more than the sum total of their moral choices. That said, there are tests on the internet to assess your alignment and I couldn’t resist but taking it. Can you guess my alignment?

Come on, pause and write it in the comments and then you’ll see if you guessed it right!

So my alignment is… NEUTRAL GOOD!

Sounds pretty accurate as I make decisions based on what achieves the greatest benefit and the least harm to the parties involved, regardless of conventional morals.

Back to D&D, over the decades the alignment has evolved its framework but the most popular articulation is this one.

&D is a unique game in framing morality in such stark and absolute terms and was inspired by Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson for this ethical framework and other elements, too. Indeed, several passages in the novel are dedicated to Holger’s scientific musings on Law and Chaos, which he eventually decides resemble “modes of existence” more than forces. Chaos draws strength from war, while peace and order are only possible under Law.

However, Law and Chaos are not equivalents of good and evil. For instance, for the faerie creatures Law is as painful and intolerable as Chaos is for humans as Chaos creatures seek to “restore some primaeval state where anything could happen.” Hence why magic is also linked to Chaos!

Science is the enemy of Chaos because Chaos uses magic to alter the laws of the physical universe. As Laycock suggests, the three Abrahamic religions are also allied with Law and condemn witchcraft. Thus rationalism and transcendent religion are allies against a magical worldview associated with archaic religion. t is essential to notice that while D&D offers the concepts of good and evil, it does not presume that good will ultimately triumph and gives players no incentive to choose good over evil. (Laycock, 2015, pp.51–75)

The construction of “other worlds” and connecting to them through travel are central to D&D. The first edition mentioned expeditions to unexplored lands, other times and dimensions, and even included rules for visiting the (populated) planet Mars as alternatives to the underworld. Similarly to religious traditions, role-playing games – like other popular media – juxtaposed our experience of the world with conjurations of fantastic cosmic dimensions; bringing our attention to various aspects of human existence and allowing us to explore them from a different lens.

(Perlini-Pfister, 2012, pp.282–287)

But how can playing D&D be so transformative if it’s a make-believe role-playing game?

Well, in recent years religious studies scholars have researched the so-called ‘invented religions’ – like Jediism and Discordianism – attesting to the substantial impact that narratives play when they resonate on a deep level. The act of connecting and living that narrative – regardless of its fictional nature – provides meaning and affects how people inhabit their world. And Laycock argues that even with more prominent religions, the truth claims of their worldviews cannot be proven empirically but that doesn’t stop them from exerting an observable influence on the way that people order their world. Religion provides models of humanity’s place in the cosmos and enables us to think in ways that were previously impossible. The imaginary worlds of fantasy role-playing games provide similar models and can, in some cases, provide a similar form of agency.

Perhaps Mircea Eliade’s theory of “the sacred” can help us understand the longing for meaning that attracts people to D&D.

Eliade’s theory of religion assumes the existence of a sui generis category of phenomena that exists across cultures, which is called “the sacred.” It exists in contradiction to the profane or mundane reality. The sacred is also a realm of heightened meaning and reality compared to which the profane world is merely a shadow. Human beings cannot live without meaning and so are always attempting to reach out to the sacred. Religion, for Eliade, is humanity’s attempt to access, commune with, and participate in the sacred.

The sacred acts are not only like a separate place but like a separate time. Myths describe acts of creation that occurred in a primordial sacred time in which the world was formed and/or imbued with meaning. Storytelling and religious rituals recreate these myths. Eliade argues that for archaic human beings, myths and rituals created an experience of time travel in which humanity returned the world to its state of primal meaning. He describes sacred time as illud tempus (that time) because it is not understood to exist in a normal chronological fashion. Sacred stories exist simultaneously in the past and in the present, where they are re-enacted through ritual.

Accessing sacred time, myths and rituals provides an infusion of meaning that renews the world and even offers the possibility of reordering it. (Laycock, 2015, pp.51–75)

And isn’t that what happens when you’re fully immersed in a campaign?

And what do you think? Does playing at D&D have any less of an impact on your emotional state and your life because it is a make-believe game? Or do you find it utterly transformative? I’d love to know in the comments.

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REFERENCES

Adams, A. 2013. Needs Met Through Role-Playing Games: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Dungeons & Dragons. Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research. 12(1).

Blackmon, W.D. 1994. Dungeons and Dragons: The Use of a Fantasy Game in the Psychotherapeutic Treatment of a Young Adult. American Journal of Psychotherapy. 48(4), pp.624–632.

DeRenard, L.A. and Kline, L.M. 1990. Alienation and the Game Dungeons and Dragons. Psychological Reports. 66(3_suppl), pp.1219–1222.

Laycock, J.P. 2015. Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. University of California Press.

Perlini-Pfister, F. 2012. Philosophers with Clubs: Negotiating Cosmology and Worldviews in Dungeons & Dragons In: P. Bornet and M. Burger, eds. Religions in Play: Games, Rituals, and Virtual Worlds. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, pp.275–294.

Rameshkumar, R. and Bailey, P. 2020. Storytelling with Dialogue: A Critical Role Dungeons and Dragons Dataset In: Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics [Online]. Online: Association for Computational Linguistics, pp.5121–5134. [Accessed 31 January 2023]. Available from: https://aclanthology.org/2020.acl-main.459.

Simón, A. 1987. Emotional stability pertaining to the game of Dungeons & Dragons. Psychology in the Schools. 24(4), pp.329–332.

First uploaded 5 Feb 2023