Many of us have heard of the phrase, “death of the author,” which is a literary theory that contends that the author’s intentioned meaning does not take primacy, rather the reader’s own interpretation is what is dominant. As Roland Barthes states in his piece The Death of the Author: “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.”¹ Obviously all texts have authors, and those authors will have intentions with how and what they’re writing. However, limiting interpretation and meaning to solely what the author wants or thinks is dangerously limiting. Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, even said the following:

I was lecturing at Cal Fullerton once and they misinterpreted Fahrenheit 451, and after about half an hour of arguing with them, telling them that they were wrong, I said, “Fuck you.” I’ve never used that word before, and I left the classroom. ²

Ray Bradbury had a meaning in mind for his books, and readers had another. Both are important, but emphasizing the author’s vision over everything is reductionist in the extreme. Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) faces a similar problem, in my opinion. Too much power has been given to authorial vision(s) in modern D&D in creating and restricting cooperative storytelling through a narrative. Game masters in the modern age, to me, seem to occupy an oxymoronic space in which they are both revered storyteller and simple tool for the players’ whims and wishes. Players, too, seem to have a specific vision for how they’d like the narrative or game to play out.

This enigma has come to life before! To give a personal example, I once had a Game Master run a game in which it felt as though we were progressing from cutscene to cutscene. Our characters had no agency beyond what we were allowed in the thirty seconds before another “cutscene.” Any action we made was waved away to allow the Game Master’s own narrative to come into fruition, woe to anything that stood in the way of his story. Simultaneously, the Game Master lavished characters with special and unique upgrades that somehow fit into what players wanted their stories should be. Both the player and GM had a narrative that was intentionally being made to the subversion of all else. The authorial power was being placed on a pedestal, on both sides of the GM screen, creating a twisted symbiotic relationship. This completely disregards the cooperative and emergent storytelling that makes tabletop roleplaying games so unique.

This is perhaps due to the increasingly mainstream (which I do not necessarily use in a pejorative sense) and heavily corporatized (this one is indeed pejorative) nature of D&D and tabletop roleplaying games in recent years. Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) has grown immensely over the past decade. By 2020, the Fifth Edition (5E) of the popular tabletop roleplaying game had its 7th year of consecutive growth, 33% year on year growth, and an ever increasing viewership on online platforms like Twitch.³

Much of this has to do with the aforementioned online streaming presence that many D&D creators have. In fact, this is how I originally delved into the hobby during the pandemic! Popular shows like Critical Role have tens of thousands of viewers and rake in millions of dollars in cash, presenting a dramatic narrative by professional voice actors. I genuinely adore the increased diversity and population that this has brought. So many people bringing in fresh perspectives have bolstered the hobby. That being said, unfortunately, too many in the sphere despise the increased population of underrepresented groups in the hobby (similar to Warhammer) and view this as an encroachment on their male-dominated space. This is ridiculous and hateful, full stop.

Nevertheless, what this “mainstreamification” has done, in my opinion, is present a singular view of D&D that has shifted from some of the roots of the hobby. Some of these older roots are encapsulated in what is dubbed as the Old School Renaissance (OSR), which I myself stumbled onto a couple years ago through Questing Beast (highly recommend!). A culture that emphasizes more grounded, creative, and organic gameplay. Below are a couple primers that are an amazing intro to the OSR:

A Quick Primer for Old-School Gaming — Friend or Foe OSR Blog⁴

Principia Apocrypha: Principles of Old School RPGs, or, A New OSR Primer – Ben Milton and Stephen Lumpkin⁵

I will likely put these on a resources page for posterity as these are amazing resources by amazing people. Please check them out!

The more general point to add on is that the diversified playing styles present in different groups due to the more grassroots nature of the hobby have now become streamlined and corporatized. This also presents in many games as a strict narrative game meant to achieve a predetermined goal on both sides of the table. The GM might want to introduce their big boss enemy in a dramatic sequence, but that may undermine organic change in an (attempted) verisimilitudinous world. Same applies to a player that wants their character to go through a very specific “arc” or have specific things happen to them (not to be confused with having a goal, which is great).

Ultimately, this is what I mean when I say, “Modern D&D has clung to strongly to authorial vision.” D&D — or any tabletop roleplaying game — is about taking part in a shared fantasy and creating a story together. When the GM or players have a strong vision in mind for what that story looks like beforehand, the game has already lost meaning.

1. Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath, Hill and Wang, 1977, pp. 142–48. https://sites.tufts.edu/english292b/files/2012/01/Barthes-The-Death-of-the-Author.pdf ↩︎
2. Weller Sam and Ray Bradbury. 2010. Listen to the Echoes : The Ray Bradbury Interviews. Brooklyn N.Y. Chicago IL: Melville House ; Stopsmiling Books. ↩︎
3. Wieland, Rob. “2020 Was the Best Year Ever for Dungeons & Dragons.” Forbes, May 19, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robwieland/2021/05/19/2020-was-the-best-year-ever-for-dungeons–dragons/?sh=3747f8624f37. ↩︎
4. https://friendorfoe.com/osr/ ↩︎
5. https://lithyscaphe.blogspot.com/p/principia-apocrypha.html ↩︎