D&D at 50, the games(board, card, role-playing) we play, the shows (reality, scripted) we watch, plus the eldritch power of shoulder pads

View this email online by Glen Weldon Welcome! It was the week we lost the guy who walked (around his studio audience shoving a mic in folk's faces) so Oprah, and many others, could run. It was the week Disney+ declared that it had seen quite enough of Manny Jacinto's arms, mystifyingly enough. And it was the week when a new development meant we can all start referring to J. Lo's recent film This is Me … Now: A Love Story as That was Me … for Like Two Years, Give or Take. Dungeons, Dragons and FAB-ulous Shoulder Pads Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year. The tabletop role playing game (TTRPG) has gone through a slew of revised editions, expansions and hack 'n' slay imitators, weathered a Satanic panic or two, seen itself replaced in the hearts and minds of the nation's nerds by games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon, only to experience a bold popular resurgence in recent years, thanks in no small part to so-called Actual Play TTRPG podcasts and web series like Critical Role, Dimension 20 and The Adventure Zone. In other words: As a pop culture phenomenon, it's been hacked, but it still slays. This article in the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine (July 26, 1981) came down generally positive on D&D, while devoting several column inches to psychologists fretting that players used it to escape reality, and to religious figures who warned that the game was a work of Satan. The cover alone may have been enough to fire up our pastor. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine / via Newspapers.com I played my first game of D&D in 1978, just four years after its launch. I was 10 years old; it was summer. My friend down the street invited me over to his house, which usually meant forcing me to play catch with him in his backyard (read: he'd whip a baseball at my face, I'd flinch and let it bounce off me, I'd pick it up and toss it back so it landed in the grass three feet in front of him with a woeful thud; repeat until dinnertime). On this occasion, to my surprise and delight, we sat on his screened-in porch as he took out what I have since learned was the box of rulebooks and polyhedral dice known as the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. I loved it from the jump, largely because everything about the game was so deeply indebted to my beloved Tolkien (Wizards! Halflings! Orcs! That titular dragon on the box cover, atop its pile of gold!). But it didn't last; my neighbor started at a new school in the fall, and we lost touch. I didn't start playing my first real, sustained D&D campaign until three years later. My friend David wanted to try his hand at being a Dungeon Master and invited me and three other kids I didn't know to form an adventuring party. When I arrived at that very first session in David's bedroom, they'd already created their characters – a fighter, a thief, and a ranger. They urged me to play as a cleric, who could hang back and heal them whenever they got beaten up. I liked the idea of staying out of the heat of battle and just being the guy who patched my friends up, earning their deep and abiding gratitude. Feeling needed, appreciated. It was tempting, I admit. But then destiny, in the form of my nascent queerness, intervened. David invited me to look through a thin paperback D&D supplemental rulebook called The Rogues Gallery – page after page of ready-made characters I could choose from. I flipped through the clerics, but nothing grabbed me. But then, on page 12, just above the chart of a class of characters called Illusionists, I saw it. Him. It was a pencil sketch by illustrator Jeff Dee. A tall, thin male figure stands facing the viewer. In his right hand he holds a staff, while his left is open, palm up. He holds his arms slightly away from his body, and sets his shoulders at a rakish tilt – the resulting stance is somewhere between that of an insouciant shrug and a hearty "ta-DAHHH!" He is surrounded by a thick fog – the spell he is presumably casting – out of which leer several monstrous faces. I liked that. But what I loved, what moved me, what sealed the deal for my young, closeted, queer self, was his outfit. Thigh boots, for one thing. I mean, what was I, made of stone? Plus, scandalously tight pants set off by a belt and dagger. And clinging to every ridge of his slim, muscular torso, a sleeveless tunic – a tank-top, basically – that still somehow managed to boast kicky shoulder-pads. This is the important bit, the part you must understand: I'm not just talking thin, epaulet-like shoulder bumps. No, these were dramatic, flared, Ming the Merciless meets Julia Sugarbaker shoulderpads. The other stuff – the parted-down-the-middle blowout, the cheekbones, the diadem, the big chunky necklace? Icing on the cake. Superfluous. I'm self-aware enough to know that it was that tank top with shoulder pads that did it. "I want to be an Illusionist," I said, firmly, which caused my fellow players to roll their eyes and mutter the first of what would turn out to be a sustained pattern of homophobic slurs in my general direction. I didn't, and still don't, care. I was fierce, and I was fabulous. I fell hard for the game, then. I subscribed to Dragon magazine, and regularly pestered my mom to schlep me to Dragon's Lair, in a sad strip mall just north of Wilmington, Delaware, where I dutifully bought more rulebooks, more dice, more dungeon modules and a steady stream of lead miniatures that I painted very, very, very badly. It wasn't easy. Just as I was entering my heedless, full-bore devotion to the game, the Philly paper ran an article in its Sunday magazine which cited "experts" about the game's purported Satanic roots. An article that, the following Sunday, caused the sweet, kindly pastor at our sleepy suburban Grove United Methodist Church to launch into what was (for him, anyway) a fire-and-brimstone sermon decrying the game. About the same time, novelist Rona Jaffe published Mazes & Monsters, an extended bout of literary hand-wringing over the game's supposed deleterious effect on the Youth of America, which was promptly made into a profoundly cheesy, absolute hoot-and-a-half of a TV movie starring a young Tom Hanks as a dude who suffers a psychotic break attributed to the game. Over the handful of years I played D&D in earnest, back then, I had to talk my parents off the ledge every time some new magazine article or 60 Minutes segment came out spotlighting the entirely manufactured "controversy" around the game. It was exhausting. But I kept at it; I had to. I needed to. Because there was this one time? When my friends and I were being rushed by a phalanx of orcs, and I cast an illusion of a deep pit on the ground in front of us, filled with bubbling acid and metal spikes, and the orcs failed their saving throws and believed they fell into said illusory pit, and impaled themselves on the illusory spikes, and dissolved in the illusory acid and thus died actual deaths? That? That was cool. And, for just those few fleeting seconds, down there in the deepest, most tortured throes of my closeted, excruciatingly awkward puberty, so was I. Ta-dah. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend Alicia Silverstone blew up online this week for recording herself eating a fruit picked off some rando bush she came across while walking down the street. Which was dumb, but it all got even dumber when someone else retweeted her post and erroneously I.D.'d the plant in question as "deadly nightshade." Thousands and thousands of folks just … accepted that. Happily, the content creator Alexis Nikole, aka Black Forager, was around to drop actual knowledge with the charm, wit and authority for which she is known, and in the process remind us all to call out phony online jamokes whenever we can. On the YouTube channel No Rolls Barred, a brace of young Londoners play different board games with each other. During the pandemic I fell in hopeless, parasocial love with each and every one of them, as they are all, in appealingly distinct ways, charming and funny and smart. And for those of us who still have a hard time getting friends together for a game night, their affectionate banter serves as a workable stopgap. Plus, their gameplay functions as Consumer Reports for board games – since I started watching I've picked up games like Gloom, Cockroach Poker, Salem 1692, Trial by Trolley and Muffin Time. Nothing in this life is perfect, of course, and No Rolls Barred is no different: About a year ago, the channel experienced a shakeup in leadership when its creator resigned amidst accusations of misconduct, which he refutes. But to my great relief it hasn't taken them off their stride – in his absence, they've kept churning out episodes full of the same brand of breezy British board-gaming camaraderie I fell so hard for in the first place. And speaking of board games: You know what sucks? Monopoly. It's long, it's boring – a slog for the whole family! Also? Not for nothing? Kind of evil, as board games go. You don't see Parcheesi or Sorry! holding up rapacious landlords as figures worthy of respect and emulation, after all. You know what's pretty fantastic, though? Monopoly DEAL! It's a fast, fun, easy-to-learn card game that imports the original game's iconography – the street names and utilities, yes, but more importantly, the graphic design (font, color scheme, etc.), with none of its interminable length. Each game takes just 15 or so minutes to play, and – bonus! – there's no banker involved, so your jerkface little brother can't cheat. Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to Pop Culture Happy Hour+! Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org/happy. Learn More What We Did This Week Vince Vaughn in Bad Monkey. Apple TV+ On Monday, the Core Four talked about those nuggets of physical media to which we still manage to cling in this, our benighted digital age. On Tuesday, Linda, Kristen Meinzer and Walter Chaw discussed the new Apple TV+ series Bad Monkey, based on the Carl Hiaasen novel. Stephen also reviewed which acts were featured on the first night of the Democratic National Convention – and who got bumped, despite that artist having personally witnessed an array of meteorological conditions. On Wednesday, the Core Four weighed in on which reality TV show we each think we would completely crush. Stephen also updated us all on where the 'Song of the Summer' sweepstakes stands. On Thursday, Stephen was back on DNC duty, getting us up to speed on The Chicks, and reviewing the other musical performances (and those that didn't appear) at the DNC's closing night. And on Friday, Stephen finished off his busy week by hosting both NPR's New Music Friday and PCHH, where he talked to Aisha, J.C. Howard and Ronald Young Jr. about Zoe Kravitz's new psychological thriller Blink Twice. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: J.C. Howard: Watching tennis during the Olympics and the beginning of the US Open. Ronald Young Jr.: Re-watching old favorite TV series like Veep, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Community, and more. Aisha Harris: Cue The Sun! The Invention of Reality TV, by Emily Nussbaum Stephen Thompson: The new song “Aftertaste” from Muna’s Katie Gavin Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: pchh@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Pop Culture Happy Hour emails. 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