Episode 6: Dungeons&Dragons, or the Reality of Illusions - a podcast by Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

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)

Further episodes of Weird Studies

Further podcasts by Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Website of Phil Ford and J. F. Martel