The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga was one of the first thinkers to define games as exercises in world-making. Every game, he wrote, occurs within a magic circle where the rules of ordinary life are suspended and new laws come into play. No game illustrates this better than Gary Gygax's tabletop RPG, Dungeons & Dragons. In this episode, Phil and JF use D&D as the focus of a conversation about the weird interdependence of reality and fantasy.
Header image: Gaetan Bahl (Wikimedia Commons)
WORKS CITED OR DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Official homepage (http://dnd.wizards.com/) of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game
Critical Role (http://criticalrolepodcast.geekandsundry.com/) web series
 
Another RPG podcast JF failed to mention: The HowWeRoll Podcast (http://www.howwerollpodcast.com/)
Demetrious Johnson’s Twitch site
(https://www.twitch.tv/mightymouseufc125)
[Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameOver:KasparovandtheMachine)_ (documentary)
 
Chessboxing! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5TQSKmS3o)
 
Jackson Lears, Something for Nothing: Luck in America (https://www.amazon.com/Something-Nothing-America-Jackson-Lears/dp/0670031739)
 
Peter Fischli, The Way Things Go (https://www.amazon.com/Way-Things-Go/dp/B00005UW7W)
 
Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox, Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom (https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Philosophy-Raiding-Popular/dp/0812697960)
 
Lawrence Schick, ed., Deities & Demigods: Cyclopedia of Gods and Heroes from Myth and Legend (https://www.amazon.com/Deities-Demigods-Cyclopedia-Advanced-Dungeons/dp/0935696229)
 
Article on Mazes and Monsters (https://mashable.com/2015/10/28/tom-hanks-dungeons-dragons/#1V067KU7SEqa), a movie that came out of the D&D moral panic of the 1980s
 
Phil Ford, “Xenorationality” (https://dialmformusicology.com/2015/09/26/xenorationality/)
 
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element of Culture (https://www.amazon.com/Homo-Ludens-Study-Play-Element-Culture/dp/1621389995)
 
John Sinclair, [Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution with the MC5 and the White Panther Party](https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Army-Revolution-White-Panther/dp/1934170003)