The hipsters playing Dungeons & Dragons, old-school board game that’s gone from nerdy to cool again
The fantasy role-playing game, launched in 1974, is having a renaissance, with growing numbers of people getting out their graph paper and pencils to play it in bars and coffee shops, and document contests on YouTube and in podcasts
She also, despite her petite frame, happens to be “a female, tiefling barbarian: half woman, half demon. I carry a huge green sword.”
Millennials are driving the board games revival
Fortunately, the barbarian only comes out in certain contexts – namely, in one of the three different fantasy table-top role-playing games she participates in each month. Two of those are Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), a collaborative storytelling game first published in 1974, decades before Aprea was born.
“The stigma of D&D is that you’re a hard core closet nerd; you don’t even see the sunlight,” says Aprea. “But not all nerds are that way. As people evolve, this is getting to be less stigmatised because it’s fun to come out and drink and be social, but also get to play a game. There’s a level of community to it.”
That evolution is already well underway: Dungeons & Dragons has, against long odds, recently become something vaguely resembling cool. Regular games are popping up in bars and coffee shops, and in people’s homes. They’re being documented in podcasts and recorded on YouTube or Twitch, in some cases drawing thousands of viewers.
