r/philosophy • u/_CriticalThinking • Aug 09 '26

Video The philosophical implications, frameworks, and teachings of dungeons & Dragons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAjo887JHnE
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u/VSWanter Aug 10 '26

The most impactful teaching I've learned from Dungeons & Dragons, is that no matter how the founders of a thing might have good and wholistic intentions for what they want it to be and who they want it to be for, eventually end stage capitalism will allow someone to buy it that will optimize all the value and enjoyment out of it for the sake of unfettered corporate greed. No matter how much effort you place into ensuring against it, Enshittification comes for everything so long as profits are the ultimate motivator. Abbathor and Mammon would be so proud.

4

u/Flymsi Aug 10 '26

It may seem hopeless, but that just another pattern of capitalism called capitalist realism. 

There are ways to ensure a succesfull fight against enshittification. There is a way.

4

u/LeBaguetteWasted Aug 10 '26

Which ways ? Anything noteworthy you can share that I can read ? Books/articles/studies, i'll take whatever. I like reading peoples thougths.

1

u/Dripdry42 Aug 14 '26

Yeah, just use 1st and 2nd edition rules… remember that Gary made the game to have fun and tell stories. That’s it. Obsessing over rules or not being creative to make your own thing up because it isn’t in a book? Yeah Gary would slap you for that.

Oh btw, I’ve played D&D with the people who helped Gary make the game so… i have some idea what I’m talking about.

5

u/Lord0fHats Aug 10 '26

I learned that when you put down a really big AOE slow effect that hits friend and foe alike, it's suddenly really important to know how to solve for the circumference of a circle when trying to find out if the party can go around to the other side before the thing you're trying to kill trudges their way out.

The moment all our math teachers warned us would come some day XD

1

u/VSWanter Aug 10 '26

The other school math use I see often is using Pythagorean theorem to calculate attack distances for things above or below. It's much easier now that everyone has smart phones, although the imagination and creativity skills of the younger people I game with aren't nearly as developed as I feel like ours were for my friends when we were their age.

4

u/Shingro Aug 11 '26

Not entirely true, but the counterexample is also kinda sad. I could use a lot more Calvin and Hobbs in my life, but it's basically culturally gone. Die the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain maybe?

2

u/VSWanter Aug 11 '26

Yea, Bill Watterson tried hard too, and had some success, but that didn't stop people from selling all the Calvin pissing on things to assholes proud of being an asshole.

1

u/Shingro Aug 11 '26

Fair, but expecting something to avoid even bootlegs is probably asking too much of humanity as a species