I'm not going to lie and say I love Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D by those who love it). I hate it. My friends have tried to get me into D&D for years (I've lost countless hours to this game for all the wrong reasons), telling me how amazing it is once you understand the gameplay. But to them I say: no it isn't awesome, even when the rules start to make sense. However, as I am person who still tries to find the good in the horrible, I chose to review The Dungeon Master by Sam Lipsyte. By reviewing this story I had hopes that his view on D&D would make me fall madly in love with the game, and make me beg my friends to forgive me for my past discretions. Unfortunately, their deepest wish will never come true.
Fair warning: If you want to truly enjoy The Dungeon Master, you will need some knowledge of D&D (a fantasy role-playing-game that can involve dice, modules, miniture figures, and an imagination). If you've never played D&D, the references will seem obscure and most of the plot will fly over your head.
The Dungeon Master is about a group of friends who play D&D. The narrator of The Dungeon Master is a fourteen year old boy who is obsessed with playing D&D. The story follows the narrator as he tries to share his love of D&D with his unenthusiastic family, and as he fights with the Dungeon Master – a kid who is the maharaja of D&D gaming (the Dungeon Master being the key player in D&D games as he/she decides what obstacles, traps, monsters, people, or whatever the Player Characters - the other players - will face off against).
The Dungeon Master isn’t very long, clocking at only seven pages. However, reading it can feel tedious as the dialogue is strange and the writing style is coarse and unrefined.
One of the main problems I have with Lipsyte's story is that the flow is off. The prose is choppy, scene after scene happening without any transition. There were many times when I wasn't sure if the narrator was playing D&D or if he was daydreaming; Lipsyte never making the transition between the two clear.
The language used in this story is also peculiar. Lipsyte writes like he tried really hard to channel the voice of a teenager. Regrettably, somewhere Lipsyte got lost and channelled an elementary school kid instead. The end result is that I'm not sure if Lipsyte tried to write The Dungeon Master from the point of view of a twelve year old, or if his writing style resembles a twelve year old.
But even though I have heavily criticized the short story, it is evident that The Dungeon Master is a labour of love. Lipsyte writes about D&D like man who has spent many hours hunched over a D&D board, the story sounding like a D&D tournament that has been transcribed by one of its players.
If you like D&D, I'm sure there will be something in this short story for you. But if the mere mention of the name makes you think back to never-ending nights of forced D&D participation - skip this one.
The Dungeon Master was first published on The New Yorker website on October 4, 2010. The author, Sam Lipsyte, has written numerous books, his most famous being The Ask, The Subject Steve, and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. Currently, he lives in New York.
I can relate. Always loved the idea of D&D but I only ever managed to get into the video games. Still, at least it spawned this awesome article:
ReplyDelete"With a rending scream, Herk sent his thick, wide foot flying, where it made full and mighty impact with the dragon's testicles. The beast coughed once, the flames catching in its throat, its eyes gone wide, and went as if to topple to the ground -- but Herk was there below it still, rapidly and forcefully kicking the monster right in its scaly gumballs over and over and over again. It did not seem to be able to stand for the pain, but Herk's violent groin-kicks were of such speed and strength as to actually keep the behemoth upright."
Whahahaha. Scaly gumballs.
ReplyDeleteOkay, that alone has made me like D&D - something that none of my friends or Lipsyte ever achieved.
Thank you for making my morning.
"There were many times when I wasn't sure if the narrator was playing D&D or if he was daydreaming"
ReplyDeleteThat's the whole point of fiction: to blur the border between character and action, reality and fantasy.
As a person who played D & D as a teen I can tell you the author didn't do his research at all. To nerd out, Paladins don't serve Christ (even the gods are characters of higher levels and no one's ever touched that one), Rangers don't serve themselves (that would be rogues. Rangers are nature oriented), and no 17 level elf wizard could ever fight an army of frost giants (I'm guessing from memory here, but 4 or 5 would probably be a struggle). A little research would have gone a long way. This is a story of lame cliches. Disappointing really.
ReplyDelete