D&D: Important Research

As I think D&D is a prominent and popular modern way to explore magic, it seems completely relevant to my research that I should participate in a game or two and document my results. Luckily I happen to know a Dungeon Master that was willing to hook me up with just the kind of game I was looking for – an all Mage game. (For you newbs, this means that all of the characters had to be conjurers of some sort. In regular D&D there are normally a variety of occupations and races. This game is only conjurers and only conjurers that were humans before they were mages. I once played an elven sorceress- which was cool, but would not be relevant here as I want to explore the relationship between people and conjurers.)

Before we began playing our ga… I mean before the research process could begin we had to create our characters. With everybody forced into playing the same thing it was interesting to see how our characters differed, and how everyone went about shaping their conjurers. We all had the same rule book and had to first create a human character –with qualities that we chose from the book. Then we were free to choose what kind of conjurer we wanted to be, followed by what spells we wanted based on what we were able to do given all the limitations we just picked out.

Although my group may or may not be an accurate focus group, it was interesting that we all decided to go in completely different directions. (To save their reputations I will use the first initials of my group members’ names-in case they haven’t publically gone nerd yet.) For the human part of our character creation, S decided to be a handsome janitor, J decided to be an unsympathetic bank robber, D decided to be a scientist of the P.H.D. level, B decided to be a dancer with karate skills, and I decided to be a loner detective. For the mage part, S went for Necromancer, J is a Warlock, D is a Wizard, B is a Sorceress, and I am a Shaman. (The differences for the newbs: necromancer = raise the dead and usually twisted, warlock/witch = bad wizard with mind powers- like telepathy-, wizard = neutral conjurer with time/space magic –can see the future, etc.-, sorceress/sorcerer = good conjurer with light powers- calls lightning from the sky-, and shaman = neutral conjurer with nature based powers -makes trees grow, talks to animals.) We each chose a different kind of conjurer from one another by accident, but I think everyone had something in mind when they made their characters.

For me it was Harry Dresden. I had just come off of reading the first book and really wanted to be a magic slinging detective. For B, she just wanted to be a dancer and a good person- the clueless fun character. D was completely basing his character off of Dr. Who. He even asked the DM if he could have a sonic screwdriver. J wanted to be a rebel character to try to screw up the DM (his brother). And S didn’t exactly know what to pick so he did some funky combination of things (an attractive janitor with the power to make zombies) because it sounds complex and he’ll have to think harder about the decisions his character makes.

All in all I wonder about some things now. Are all conjurers somewhat based off of other ones? I can name a ton of them based off of Merlin. Maybe Merlin is based off of someone too. I’m also seeing that magic is a form of entertainment for us. I wonder how far that extends. As in, when is magic entertaining and awesome and when is it frightening? Is the entertainment factor why magic is awesome?