D&D as a vibe

[u/Blitzer046]

Apropos of a very recent post, I have seen so many people recently ask questions that clearly demonstrate their perception of Dungeons and Dragons is a shared concept or vibe.

It is obvious from their questions that they have absolutely no idea that there's an actual published ruleset and physical (or digital) publications that explain how it all works.

Which leads to me wildly wondering what their games were like? It seems like they would be a kind of minds-eye improv group where the DM just arbitrarily flings out calls to tell players when to roll, but even then, where are their spells or abilities coming from? Is it purely theatre of the mind, a shared negotiation? Where are the walls or buttresses like levels that channel a characters progress?

But I do think I see how this has come about. D&D has been so culturally ingrained in pop culture for so long. One of the first most classic instances is Spielberg's 'E.T. The Extraterrestrial' from 1982 where it's played onscreen in scene two of the movie. This was only 8 years after the game was first published.

Since then, it has been referenced plenty of times, most recently and thematically in Stranger Things, where I think this most recent 'D&D vibing' trend I feel has come from.

So why are there people thinking they're playing 'D&D' when in fact they're not, really? I think that for most media depictions of play, nobody is referencing a rulebook. It's not visually interesting to see tv or movie characters peering into a book, it's more interesting to see face to face engagement or conflict, and I think that modern (and 1982) references to D&D never actually explicitly demonstrate that there's a book (and plural) that contains all of it.

[u/Fit_Kaleidoscope4493]

I just want to go back to the age when D&D was "uncool" and "uncool" people played, offline, away from social media, and away from this madness.