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A few weeks into January and I've already had what could well be the most exciting, enveloping gaming experience I'll have all year. It will certainly be hard to top, at any rate. I've been introduced to this weird, underground tabletop game that's unlike anything you've ever played before: a little thing called Dungeons & Dragons. (Actually, it's not, it's called Labyrinth Lord. But I'll get to that.)I'm being facetious, of course. Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy wargame that all but created the genre of role-playing games, is a massively influential piece of pop culture, a true 20th-century classic. Its influence extends far beyond its actual practice, which, 40 years on from its first publication, is still seen as a strange secret world, a hobby that's too nerdy for most nerds. This, combined with the fact that it's an inherently social game that you need to be initiated into - more so even than, say, poker - is why even a long-time gamer like me had never played it before.
(Actually, this is a white lie - I have a dim memory, like a scene from a nostalgic Shane Meadows film, of playing it in the study of an odd friend when I was a 16-year-old private schoolboy. You can picture the scene: school ties akimbo, blazers on the floor, cheap WHSmith A4 pads resting on nylon-clad knees, KLF bootlegs on the boombox. But the recollection is sufficiently indistinct that it might as well not have actually happened to me.)
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