Nov. 21st, 2022 03:03 pm
Of Dungeons
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thetableyoufearthemostMy first principle of being a Dungeon Master for young people is precisely that: be a Dungeon Master. Not a Game Master.
Yes, I understand the intellectual property reasons behind the use of “GM” rather than “DM” in most printed tabletop RPG materials. No, I do not judge you for using the other title. But, at my table, I’m the DM.
I used to be much less insistent upon this point. Then, over the course of the first six months or so that I was running a campaign for my middle school aged son and his friends, I slowly realized that no one was gathering at my kitchen table on Wednesday nights to simply play a more imaginative take on the average board game.
They were gathering in order to fight their way through Dungeons. That meant that what they needed was a Dungeon Master…
***
“Dungeon” is a strange word. It doesn’t always quite mean what you might think it means in this context.
Gary Gygax, the Dungeons & Dragons co-creator often cited as the father of modern role playing games, said that “Dungeon” came into use in his RPGs during an old wargame he was playing with friends. They played through a scenario in which the invading force had to get into a fortress through an escape tunnel that had been dug out of the fortress’ dungeon. The scenario proved to be a hit with the players, and thus the “Dungeon” became a fixture at his table, and therefore in the gaming scene at-large.
Is the story true? It seems plausible enough. Students of the history of RPGs know that Gygax, who passed away in 2008, often liked to play fast and loose with the truth, so maybe it isn’t as simple as that. Much of the initial D&D lore was inspired by the Lord of the Rings, and more than one person has noted in the past that the early RPG “Dungeons” tended to bear a striking resemblance to the Mines of Moria (which in turn bear a striking resemblance to… well, we’ll get to that). Moria was a “Dungeon” in the sense that a Balrog had been imprisoned there, so perhaps there’s something to that theory. However it came into its now-common usage, to millions of RPG fans the word “Dungeon” now means something quite different from “a place where prisoners were kept in medieval castles.”
Essentially, a “Dungeon” is any enclosed area which the players must navigate through, face a series of challenges, and finally defeat a big “boss” monster, in order to achieve a major goal. Perhaps that goal is finding a lost jewel or a magical weapon, perhaps that goal is learning a truth that will lead to ultimate victory in the campaign, or perhaps it is to rescue an imprisoned ally. Dungeons are often subterranean and dark, and more often than not are easy to get lost in if the players aren’t careful. Typically, players will have to explore numerous rooms and levels of the Dungeon with baited breath, knowing that danger lurks around every corner.
“Dungeons” are a vital part of most RPGs. Most campaigns will feature several, and often one of them will be the climactic challenge of the entire storyline. D&D’s greatest Dungeons, such as Castle Ravenloft or the Tomb of Horrors, are the stuff of legends and populate the tales of many older players. The word “Dungeon” is used this way in video games, too. Nintendo’s 1985 masterpiece The Legend of Zelda included 9 “Dungeons” that bore all of the hallmarks described above, and the on-screen gaming world hasn’t looked back since.
***
“Dungeons” go by a different name outside of the gaming community: Labyrinths.
The classic example that may have come to mind when you read the word “Labyrinths” was the infamous maze in Crete built by Daedalus, into which the hero Theseus descended in order to slay the Minotaur and save the Athenian children from further sacrifice to that monster. In that tale, Theseus’ escape from the Labyrinth is made possible by the beautiful Ariadne, who gave Theseus a ball of thread which he used to retrace his steps through the complex and bewildering path he traversed to the center where the Minotaur dwelt.
Was Daedalus the original DM? Hmm…
Other Labyrinths appear in myth and literature, of course. The aforementioned Moria is an example. The Fellowship of the Ring gets quite lost on their trip through Khazad-dûm, and instead of a Minotaur the party faces another horned and fearsome monster, a Balrog. Fans will recall that, while battling the Balrog, Gandalf the Gray falls into Shadow–an event that the other members of the Fellowship see as a disaster, but which results not only in the monster’s defeat, but in Gandalf’s resurrection as Gandalf the White.
And for this reason, Moria emerges as a particularly interesting Dungeon/Labyrinth for our purposes, because, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, we see Gandalf go through what Carl Jung would call individuation. Gandalf isn’t the only LotR character that goes through this process, nor is Moria the only Dungeon/Labyrinth in the story, but it’s a great example for our purposes.
What is individuation? To put it entirely too briefly, Jung says that it’s the process by which one becomes his true Self. And to summarize in a sentence what we could take many volumes to explicate, the process of individuation involves becoming aware of and integrating the Shadow (the personal traits we dislike about ourselves, or have ignored or repressed), being guided through our unconscious minds by our Anima/Animus (the feminine soul of a man/masculine soul of a woman), and finally achieving wholeness as the Self.
We’ll chat about this more in later blog posts. A lot more, in fact. But suffice to say, for now, that Gandalf’s journey through his “labyrinth,” his descent into the dwarven dungeon, was, without question, crucial to his character development and thus absolutely vital to the story.
***
“We’ll take your bones,” he said sweetly. “We’ll bring you where you belong,” added his friend.
It was the first night of our second “campaign” as a group. After their first adventure wrapped up, the middle schoolers had somehow talked me into running “Curse of Strahd” for them, an infamous horror-themed D&D campaign that scares the pants off of many a strongly-constituted adult. After getting the full consent of every parent involved, we were diving into the deep end, beginning with a Dungeon that the source book calls simply the “Death House.”
Death House doesn’t seem like a Dungeon at first. The adventurers encounter a girl and a boy in front of a large, four-story house, begging for help because their “baby brother Walter is inside and there’s a monster in there!” After bravely rushing in and quickly discovering themselves locked in, the adventurers soon discover that everyone living in the house–including the siblings they saw out front–have been dead for at least 300 years. Venturing to the top floor, the party discovers the bones of the two children–and their ghosts reappear, this time expressing sadness because their final resting place wasn’t with the rest of the family.
Where is the rest of the family? Well, somewhere in the dark, horrifying, three-story subterranean crypt below the house, naturally. They’re down in the heart of the Dungeon.
I wish I had the words to explain what happened that night. Something about middle school kids lovingly reenacting a mission to set the past right and showing compassion to the dearly departed is… beyond description. Was I overcome by the sudden display of maturity and grace this roleplaying scenario evoked from adolescents? Was the game giving them space to grieve the loss of their own childhoods as they prepared for adulthood by having them take a vision quest to “bury” these “children’s bones?” Was it the fact that, even though they were scared out of their minds–we’d dimmed the lights and turned on scary background music in the dining room in order to set the mood–they wanted very much to go and ritually find themselves in the darkest parts of that Dungeon?
Yes, I suppose, to all three of those things and much, much more…
***
I find it fascinating that Dungeons & Dragons and other TTRPGs emerged at a time in Western culture where rituals are at an all-time low.
Even for those of us who belong to religious communities, ritual life has been significantly pared down. Even many of the more liturgical churches of the Christian tradition, such as the Catholic Church and Anglican Church, have reduced their ritual life to the point of being borderline iconoclastic, in many cases. Judaism has maintained its Bar & Bat Mitzvahs and other rites of passage, to varying degrees in various places and denominations, but for many Jewish families, ritual life doesn’t seem to go beyond lighting a menorah at Hannukah.
But what is a ritual, and why does it matter?
Joseph Campbell, the author of the masterful The Hero with a Thousand Faces and someone who was deeply influenced by Jung, said: “A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”
In particular, initiation rituals symbolically mark the beginning of the Individuation process. It’s one of the great mysteries of the human soul that our process of becoming ourselves seems inextricably linked to participation in Stories greater than ourselves, but such has been recognized by cultures and religions throughout the ages. It is the depth wisdom of initiation.
Taking this understanding as our basis, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to argue that D&D is filling a need for ritual participation in the labyrinth myth. For many of its players, it's an initiation into the kind of Shadow work that needs to be done for the individuation process to work.
Young people seeking to begin the individuation process–that slow process of becoming their true Selves-have precious few opportunities for ritual participation in myth in our modern culture. Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs offer them that opportunity. In particular, they give them an opportunity to ritually participate in the same basic myth structure that Tolkien recognized as being absolutely crucial for Gandalf and the other heroes of the Lord of the Rings–the Labyrinth. Young people subconsciously sense the need to incorporate the Shadow. They want to face down the minotaurs in their lives and in themselves.
Don’t get me wrong: the young people I play D&D with absolutely do not consciously realize that’s what’s going on. Or, at the very least, they’ve never verbalized anything like that to me. Nevertheless, we’ve had plenty of nights at my kitchen table where I couldn’t help but imagine Jung and Campbell giving me a knowing smile…
And so I create Dungeons for them. I make them very, very dark and scary. I fill them with horrible monsters. And then I narrate them without the slightest hint of how they might fight their way out of them, save perhaps for some loving encouragement from the occasional Goddess. To escape, they’ll have to rely on their companions and themselves. These are their labyrinths to conquer, after all. This is their initiation ritual. This is the myth they create for themselves, out of themselves, in order to participate fully in themselves.
***
Joseph Campbell had this to add about journeying into labyrinths:
“We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us.
The labyrinth is thoroughly known ...we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination we shall find a God.
And where we had thought to slay another we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world.”
If we take Campbell seriously–and I very much do–should we be surprised if a group of Dungeon-going middle schoolers, traveling together into the labyrinths of their own souls through a kitchen table ritual, accomplishes some small part of what Campbell promises to Heroes? I think not.
So please, call me Dungeon Master. No one is here to play mere games.
And join us on the journey ahead, if you’d like. This blog will dare to enter some dark places along the way, but you’ll be among friends.
Yes, I understand the intellectual property reasons behind the use of “GM” rather than “DM” in most printed tabletop RPG materials. No, I do not judge you for using the other title. But, at my table, I’m the DM.
I used to be much less insistent upon this point. Then, over the course of the first six months or so that I was running a campaign for my middle school aged son and his friends, I slowly realized that no one was gathering at my kitchen table on Wednesday nights to simply play a more imaginative take on the average board game.
They were gathering in order to fight their way through Dungeons. That meant that what they needed was a Dungeon Master…
***
“Dungeon” is a strange word. It doesn’t always quite mean what you might think it means in this context.
Gary Gygax, the Dungeons & Dragons co-creator often cited as the father of modern role playing games, said that “Dungeon” came into use in his RPGs during an old wargame he was playing with friends. They played through a scenario in which the invading force had to get into a fortress through an escape tunnel that had been dug out of the fortress’ dungeon. The scenario proved to be a hit with the players, and thus the “Dungeon” became a fixture at his table, and therefore in the gaming scene at-large.
Is the story true? It seems plausible enough. Students of the history of RPGs know that Gygax, who passed away in 2008, often liked to play fast and loose with the truth, so maybe it isn’t as simple as that. Much of the initial D&D lore was inspired by the Lord of the Rings, and more than one person has noted in the past that the early RPG “Dungeons” tended to bear a striking resemblance to the Mines of Moria (which in turn bear a striking resemblance to… well, we’ll get to that). Moria was a “Dungeon” in the sense that a Balrog had been imprisoned there, so perhaps there’s something to that theory. However it came into its now-common usage, to millions of RPG fans the word “Dungeon” now means something quite different from “a place where prisoners were kept in medieval castles.”
Essentially, a “Dungeon” is any enclosed area which the players must navigate through, face a series of challenges, and finally defeat a big “boss” monster, in order to achieve a major goal. Perhaps that goal is finding a lost jewel or a magical weapon, perhaps that goal is learning a truth that will lead to ultimate victory in the campaign, or perhaps it is to rescue an imprisoned ally. Dungeons are often subterranean and dark, and more often than not are easy to get lost in if the players aren’t careful. Typically, players will have to explore numerous rooms and levels of the Dungeon with baited breath, knowing that danger lurks around every corner.
“Dungeons” are a vital part of most RPGs. Most campaigns will feature several, and often one of them will be the climactic challenge of the entire storyline. D&D’s greatest Dungeons, such as Castle Ravenloft or the Tomb of Horrors, are the stuff of legends and populate the tales of many older players. The word “Dungeon” is used this way in video games, too. Nintendo’s 1985 masterpiece The Legend of Zelda included 9 “Dungeons” that bore all of the hallmarks described above, and the on-screen gaming world hasn’t looked back since.
***
“Dungeons” go by a different name outside of the gaming community: Labyrinths.
The classic example that may have come to mind when you read the word “Labyrinths” was the infamous maze in Crete built by Daedalus, into which the hero Theseus descended in order to slay the Minotaur and save the Athenian children from further sacrifice to that monster. In that tale, Theseus’ escape from the Labyrinth is made possible by the beautiful Ariadne, who gave Theseus a ball of thread which he used to retrace his steps through the complex and bewildering path he traversed to the center where the Minotaur dwelt.
Was Daedalus the original DM? Hmm…
Other Labyrinths appear in myth and literature, of course. The aforementioned Moria is an example. The Fellowship of the Ring gets quite lost on their trip through Khazad-dûm, and instead of a Minotaur the party faces another horned and fearsome monster, a Balrog. Fans will recall that, while battling the Balrog, Gandalf the Gray falls into Shadow–an event that the other members of the Fellowship see as a disaster, but which results not only in the monster’s defeat, but in Gandalf’s resurrection as Gandalf the White.
And for this reason, Moria emerges as a particularly interesting Dungeon/Labyrinth for our purposes, because, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, we see Gandalf go through what Carl Jung would call individuation. Gandalf isn’t the only LotR character that goes through this process, nor is Moria the only Dungeon/Labyrinth in the story, but it’s a great example for our purposes.
What is individuation? To put it entirely too briefly, Jung says that it’s the process by which one becomes his true Self. And to summarize in a sentence what we could take many volumes to explicate, the process of individuation involves becoming aware of and integrating the Shadow (the personal traits we dislike about ourselves, or have ignored or repressed), being guided through our unconscious minds by our Anima/Animus (the feminine soul of a man/masculine soul of a woman), and finally achieving wholeness as the Self.
We’ll chat about this more in later blog posts. A lot more, in fact. But suffice to say, for now, that Gandalf’s journey through his “labyrinth,” his descent into the dwarven dungeon, was, without question, crucial to his character development and thus absolutely vital to the story.
***
“We’ll take your bones,” he said sweetly. “We’ll bring you where you belong,” added his friend.
It was the first night of our second “campaign” as a group. After their first adventure wrapped up, the middle schoolers had somehow talked me into running “Curse of Strahd” for them, an infamous horror-themed D&D campaign that scares the pants off of many a strongly-constituted adult. After getting the full consent of every parent involved, we were diving into the deep end, beginning with a Dungeon that the source book calls simply the “Death House.”
Death House doesn’t seem like a Dungeon at first. The adventurers encounter a girl and a boy in front of a large, four-story house, begging for help because their “baby brother Walter is inside and there’s a monster in there!” After bravely rushing in and quickly discovering themselves locked in, the adventurers soon discover that everyone living in the house–including the siblings they saw out front–have been dead for at least 300 years. Venturing to the top floor, the party discovers the bones of the two children–and their ghosts reappear, this time expressing sadness because their final resting place wasn’t with the rest of the family.
Where is the rest of the family? Well, somewhere in the dark, horrifying, three-story subterranean crypt below the house, naturally. They’re down in the heart of the Dungeon.
I wish I had the words to explain what happened that night. Something about middle school kids lovingly reenacting a mission to set the past right and showing compassion to the dearly departed is… beyond description. Was I overcome by the sudden display of maturity and grace this roleplaying scenario evoked from adolescents? Was the game giving them space to grieve the loss of their own childhoods as they prepared for adulthood by having them take a vision quest to “bury” these “children’s bones?” Was it the fact that, even though they were scared out of their minds–we’d dimmed the lights and turned on scary background music in the dining room in order to set the mood–they wanted very much to go and ritually find themselves in the darkest parts of that Dungeon?
Yes, I suppose, to all three of those things and much, much more…
***
I find it fascinating that Dungeons & Dragons and other TTRPGs emerged at a time in Western culture where rituals are at an all-time low.
Even for those of us who belong to religious communities, ritual life has been significantly pared down. Even many of the more liturgical churches of the Christian tradition, such as the Catholic Church and Anglican Church, have reduced their ritual life to the point of being borderline iconoclastic, in many cases. Judaism has maintained its Bar & Bat Mitzvahs and other rites of passage, to varying degrees in various places and denominations, but for many Jewish families, ritual life doesn’t seem to go beyond lighting a menorah at Hannukah.
But what is a ritual, and why does it matter?
Joseph Campbell, the author of the masterful The Hero with a Thousand Faces and someone who was deeply influenced by Jung, said: “A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”
In particular, initiation rituals symbolically mark the beginning of the Individuation process. It’s one of the great mysteries of the human soul that our process of becoming ourselves seems inextricably linked to participation in Stories greater than ourselves, but such has been recognized by cultures and religions throughout the ages. It is the depth wisdom of initiation.
Taking this understanding as our basis, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to argue that D&D is filling a need for ritual participation in the labyrinth myth. For many of its players, it's an initiation into the kind of Shadow work that needs to be done for the individuation process to work.
Young people seeking to begin the individuation process–that slow process of becoming their true Selves-have precious few opportunities for ritual participation in myth in our modern culture. Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs offer them that opportunity. In particular, they give them an opportunity to ritually participate in the same basic myth structure that Tolkien recognized as being absolutely crucial for Gandalf and the other heroes of the Lord of the Rings–the Labyrinth. Young people subconsciously sense the need to incorporate the Shadow. They want to face down the minotaurs in their lives and in themselves.
Don’t get me wrong: the young people I play D&D with absolutely do not consciously realize that’s what’s going on. Or, at the very least, they’ve never verbalized anything like that to me. Nevertheless, we’ve had plenty of nights at my kitchen table where I couldn’t help but imagine Jung and Campbell giving me a knowing smile…
And so I create Dungeons for them. I make them very, very dark and scary. I fill them with horrible monsters. And then I narrate them without the slightest hint of how they might fight their way out of them, save perhaps for some loving encouragement from the occasional Goddess. To escape, they’ll have to rely on their companions and themselves. These are their labyrinths to conquer, after all. This is their initiation ritual. This is the myth they create for themselves, out of themselves, in order to participate fully in themselves.
***
Joseph Campbell had this to add about journeying into labyrinths:
“We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us.
The labyrinth is thoroughly known ...we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination we shall find a God.
And where we had thought to slay another we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world.”
If we take Campbell seriously–and I very much do–should we be surprised if a group of Dungeon-going middle schoolers, traveling together into the labyrinths of their own souls through a kitchen table ritual, accomplishes some small part of what Campbell promises to Heroes? I think not.
So please, call me Dungeon Master. No one is here to play mere games.
And join us on the journey ahead, if you’d like. This blog will dare to enter some dark places along the way, but you’ll be among friends.
Great articles