Modeling the Socioeconomic Future with Dungeons and Dragons

Gary Gygax: (1), Charles Murray: (0), Artificial Intelligence: (?)

When I get too fed up with the relative noise level in the media about whether Charles Murray is or isn’t racist, or James Damore is or isn’t misogynist, or the coming wave of Artificial Intelligence is or isn’t going to destroy humanity, I crack open a cold beer with a few friends and play Dungeons and Dragons.

The first big reason nobody thinks of Dungeons and Dragons, the ultimately nerdy tabletop roleplaying game, as racist, is because it has different “races” than we do. There’s no differentiation between nationalities or ethnicities in it, and unless you’re climbing to the top of the pile of nerds to build a Drow (dark elf) character, there’s no accounting for skin color in it either. It does, however, dive deeply into the idea that different players characters, or “PCs,” have different levels of aptitude at doing different stuff. The game calls these “ability scores,” and the distribution of natural aptitude in these ability scores is set on none other than a classic bell curve.

YOLO

Let’s suppose one day you wake up and decide to live the nerd life. You bust out a blank character sheet, which looks something like this: (at least the top of it)

(Copywrite TSR, or Wizards of the Coast, or Hasbro, I can’t remember. This is a 3rd edition sheet from two decades ago, so I doubt they sue me. Further note to the tabletop gamers — I know 3rd edition is ancient at this point, but it is illustrative of the point of the article, which in fact has absolutely nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons. Settle down yo.)