Dungeons and Dragons: if you've never heard of this game, you've probably been living in a cave for the past thirty years. But even though D&D is a lot more mainstream now than it was in the 1970s and 1980s (when I started playing), many viewers probably don't know a whole lot about this game, in which players take on the roles of heroes who have adventures in a fantasy world. Jesse Spiro's documentary The Dungeons and Dragons Experience is a fascinating look at the game and the people who play it, taking viewers on a guided tour of the world of D&D.

Spiro explains what D&D is all about in an interesting and quite effective way: not by describing the rules of the game, but by interviewing players and letting them talk about their experiences. The various participants have a variety of different perspectives and cover a broad range of ages, but they have one thing in common: they're all intelligent, quite articulate people... which is really not that surprising, given that they enjoy playing a game that focuses on using imagination and being creative.

Spiro also takes his camera into actual game sessions, showing the interviewees as they're playing: this effectively both de-mystifies the game and shows what's so fun about it. We can see that the Dungeon Master (the referee) is very much a storyteller, evoking a world that the players collectively participate in and help to create, at the same time. As a DM myself, the interview footage really captured what I love about the game: it's fun to create an interesting, rich world with the elements of an exciting storyline, but it's when the players get involved that the story comes to life... and often goes in unexpected directions. As the players and the DMs explain in their interviews, and as we see in the games themselves, D&D is a collaborative, social experience... and as a game, it's unique in offering challenging play in a totally non-competitive environment. With D&D, there are no winners or losers; the fun really is in the experience of playing.

The Dungeons and Dragons Experience doesn't limit itself to exploring what it's like to play the game. We learn about the origins of the game in tabletop war games where players reproduced historical battles; D&D was invented in the 1970s when Gary Gygax and his friends had the idea of playing not generals, but individual heroes, and of setting their adventures in a fantasy land rather than real history. The documentary touches on a number of other interesting topics, such as the 1980s anti-D&D mania (which was fueled by the media's sensationalizing of an incident that turned out not to be related to the game at all), gaming conventions, and live-action role-playing.

Another interesting aspect of The Dungeons and Dragons Experience is that it explores the ways in which the game encouraged creative tendencies in its players, often leading to productive careers or business ventures, from the art career of Donato Giancola to the small businesses started by avid players, creating and selling things like dice, miniatures, or props.

The Dungeons and Dragons Experience does an excellent job at managing the tricky balance between explaining too much and assuming too much: the result is a documentary that is equally enjoyable for both viewers who have never heard of D&D and those who are avid players of the game. Avid D&D players will be particularly delighted by some of the interviews that Spiro has managed to snag for the documentary: artists Donato Giancola and Larry Elmore, writers Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (authors of the Dragonlance novels), and D&D's creator, Gary Gygax.

All in all, The Dungeons and Dragons Experience is an extremely polished and well-crafted piece. It's not entirely perfect – for instance, the voice-over narrator sounds a bit hokey at times – but it really does an outstanding job of presenting its material. With a running time of 60 minutes, the documentary moves along at a brisk (but not rushed) pace; there was undoubtedly a lot more that Spiro could have covered, but he's wisely chosen to err on the side of quality over quantity: it's not such a bad thing to leave your viewers wishing for more.

The DVD

Video

I was very impressed with the quality of the video transfer for The Dungeons and Dragons Experience. The documentary, which is presented in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, looks consistently clean, bright, and sharp.

Audio

The soundtrack for the documentary is satisfactory overall. Depending on the environment that the interview took place in, some of the interviewees sound a bit flat and muffled, but this is undoubtedly a limitation of the source material. For the most part, the sound quality is quite solid, and certainly the voices are always easy to understand.

Extras

About four minutes of additional interview footage with Gary Gygax is included: he offers a few more thoughts on "family lore" and reflects on childhood games of cops and robbers.

Final thoughts

It's always nice to discover a surprise gem of a film, and The Dungeons and Dragons Experience is one of them. The documentary takes a thoughtful, fair, and very interesting look at what it's like to be involved with the role-playing game known as D&D. Whether you've been an avid player for years, or you've never really heard of the game before, this documentary is well worth watching. Highly recommended.