The Essential 100, No. 2: Dungeons & Dragons - Chris Jones Gaming

? December 21, 2012Posted in: Gaming

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF DECEMBER 17 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART FOUR

Cover Story: How a tabletop adventure system defined video games.

P

erhaps no single work has shaped the video game medium quite like Dungeons & Dragons. Though not a video game in itself, this pen-and-paper role-playing game has done more to define the inner workings of the medium than any other single work or concept. Official D&D-licensed video games crop up every now and then, ranging in quality from wretched (those terrible NES ports of ?80s computer games) to brilliant (BioWare?s Baldur?s Gate series). When they do, they don?t have to stretch far in order to reflect the essence of D&D; they feel instantly familiar to anyone who has spent any amount of time video gaming, because video games carry D&D?s heritage at the genetic level.

The medium?s reliance on D&D?s design makes a lot of sense from a simple perspective of timing. Right as the pen-and-paper game was exploding across America, video games began to pupate from Pong clones into something more substantial. Naturally, the same young men who took interest in tabletop adventure sessions with their college friends were the ones who spent long, late nights in campus computer labs trying to alchemize streams of digital data into recreation. Of course they would look to D&D for inspiration.

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