Dungeons & Dragons Brings Purpose and Fulfillment - and Maybe Structure and Connection for Retirees?

"Around tables cluttered with dice, maps and character sheets, players are doing far more than playing," writes Phys.org. It's what sociologists call serious leisure — "a hobby that demands skill, commitment and personal fulfillment," according to an associate professor/program director for Florida International University's Rehabilitation and Recreational Therapy Program: To understand what makes D&D more than just a pastime, [associate professor Emily Messina] studies how games like this promote identity-building and connection... Beyond personal expression, Messina says the social and emotional benefits of D&D reflect the very traits that make serious leisure valuable: the sense of identity, the relationships built through shared experiences and the continued connection with the same group of people over time... The game can also provide structure and purpose for people managing mental illness who might not be able to hold a full-time job because of their symptoms. The game gives them structure versus filling their day with binge streaming...

Activities such as D&D can be used by young children as a reward structure or with older adults, such as retirees, to help provide a sense of purpose and daily rhythm. "Post retirement is one of the most dangerous points in an adult's life," she said. "They lose that sense of structure and possibly their social connection." Building structure through leisure pursuits after retirement has been shown to help maintain physical fitness, social interaction, cognitive processing and attention span and decrease depression. "The idea of structure and reward with desired pursuit can work for all ages," Messina said.
The research was published in Leisure Studies.

DnD

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

I heard the company said they don't want white people playing the game [boundingintocomics.com]. Has this changed recently?

Re:DnD

[Rujiel]

Monopoly in its current form has pricing based around real-world segregation from the 30s, should that stop anyone from playing it? https://archive.is/xYd5E [archive.is]

Re:

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

I always thought Baltic Avenue was gentrified.

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[Alypius]

I generally assume anytime "D&D" is mentioned, it's as a generic term for any RPG that people enjoy. My friends and I moved to Pathfinder long ago and never looked back. We still have our 1st and 2nd edition AD&D books along with the regular D&D box sets, but they're heirlooms at this point. The new editions are prohibitively expensive (especially since you can get good RPG frameworks for free) and the cultural shift [x.com] really does nothing to encourage people to come back to it.

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[ozzymodus12]

It's even worse now. However, I really couldn't care less. I don't buy their products, I "download" them. You can just ignore the obvious political stuff they put in it. After all, you are the DM. They are not. I have all of the original first and 2nd ed books. There are plenty of other RPGs out there as well.

Welcome Them.

[geekmux]

Dating apps turned dating into shopping for women, declaring 80% of men “ugly” by swiping society standards.

I say raise the portcullis, and let thy Virgin Army through the gates.

- Grakor the Greybeard (a.k.a. Milton from Accounting in the Elder Realm)

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[gurps_npc]

That changes as you get older, turning about 50% of men over 60, and every 5 years goes down by another 10%.

The real problem is not the % of men deemed unattractive, but how it is defined. (I am using rough percentages, here)

80% of female attractiveness is how much they try. Weight, hair, makeup, clothing, mannerisms etc. 20% is not controllable by the woman. Bone structure, etc. Plastic Surgery works pretty well for women. End result, the pretty women are those that want it bad enough and does the hard

Re:Welcome Them.

[registrations_suck]

That's a lot of text to tell us that you're single.

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[gurps_npc]

Wow. You are so cool. I mean, your ability to take an intelligently written argument, think about who could have made it, then insult them, all in such few words.

It is amazing.

All without countering a single thing said.

You should be a politician. Or a 9th grader

Re:Welcome Them.

[registrations_suck]

That a lot of text to tell us to have no sense of humour.

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[nospam007]

"80% of female attractiveness is how much they try."

Indeed, 58 year old women looking like a 28 year old lizard.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Women that have not seen my bank account or my house think I look "fugly" or "gross". I have a very asymmetric face and an average build (not fat, not fit). But I'm a software developer that invests on the side and have been doing so for 25 years.

This is hardly news.

[Peterus7]

There's a burgeoning therapeutic and social skills D&D market currently, and a load of research that shows all kinds of significant mental health, social, and personal wellbeing to having a regular gaming group. What's a bit frustrating is she didn't actually do any serious research with geriatric populations, who would likely benefit from a regular RPG group. There's a lady in Germany who ran a little house on the prairie RPG at a nursing home, and did some great work there, but outside that little has been done.

Early players are "aging into" retirement

[davidwr]

If you were a teen playind D & D in the mid-70s, you would be about retirement age now.

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[DaveyJJ]

Hey! I resemble that remark!

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[rocket rancher]

If you were a teen playind D & D in the mid-70s, you would be about retirement age now.

Interesting. I was 15 when the Holmes Basic Set hit shelves -- and I've rolled plenty of dice since. I guess if you are talking Social Security full retirement age sure -- that's 67 for my cohort. I was a teen in the mid-70s -- but I've "retired" twice, and I'm still several years shy of 67. In the real world, people's retirement rolls have as much variation as their character sheets; retirement age is a pretty elastic notion. Retiring at 67 is a bureaucratic artifact, not a biological or financial necessit

Revised CR table and instructions

[packrat0x]

Use 3.5 Level chart, ie (Level - 1) * 1000 for next level.

Level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Power .25 1 2 3 4 6 8 11 16 23 32 45 64 91 128 181 256 362 512 724
ECR .25 .25 .50 .50 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

How to Use:
For each party member, find their level (row 1) and the corresponding power (row 2). Total the po

Actively using your imagination

[OrangeTide]

versus scrolling your smartphone for hours everyday.

Gee, I wonder which is better for your brain?

Personally, I'm anti-D&D but pro-TTRPG and gam

[wwphx]

I just find the cost of D&D to be a bit stultifying. And you can count on them dumping the system in 15 or so years to get everyone to repurchase it and shore up their profits. Yes, it's theoretically open source, and there's absolutely no reason you can't continue playing the older versions of the system. I've always had an aversion to any game, such as Deadlands, where each class needs its own rule book.

Regardless of whether or not this survey/study may be flawed, there's no doubt that long-term gaming helps with mental acuity and building community: it's a cooperative, creative endeavor that is very mentally stimulating. I'm not far from retirement, and while I don't expect we'll be moving to a retirement community or home, I definitely hope to engage in more gaming when that happens.

Of course, I do have the advantage of having worked in the industry at Flying Buffalo Games in the early '80s, they made Tunnels and Trolls and the Nuclear War card game, among many other goodies.

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[registrations_suck]

First edition is still the best.

And my first edition books have long since been paid for.

Re:Personally, I'm anti-D&D but pro-TTRPG and

[nospam007]

Should be a piece of cake for AI, just asked:

Let’s build a campaign tailor-made for a retirement home. Light on rules, high on laughter, heroic in spirit.

Setting: The Kingdom of Evergreen Bay. A coastal town where heroes are those who have lived long enough to know better. The Queen has just announced a Grand Jubilee. Unfortunately her magical Crown of Memory has vanished. Without it, she forgets everything every morning. Chaos rises: bakery dragons stealing pastries, mischievous garden gnomes reshuffling street names, a talking cat claiming to be the rightful ruler.

Player characters: Retired legends. A knight with a squeaky prosthetic knee. A wizard whose spells occasionally summon knitting supplies. A rogue who insists every locked door once knew him. Each has a gentle superpower based on life experience: calming frightened creatures, recalling ancient gossip, mending broken hearts or broken chairs.

Main quest: Find the Crown before the Jubilee. Clues lie in familiar, comfy places: the Lighthouse Library (guarded by stubborn seagulls), the Tea-House of Time (where seconds stretch), the Bingo Caves (numbers echo and help solve puzzles). Instead of brutal combat, most problems are solved with clever words, teamwork, or bribing a troll with homemade cookies.

Theme: Growing older = growing powerful. The world needs what elders know.

We can expand with maps, NPC portraits, printed recap sheets each session, even songs if the group wants. The next step is choosing the first scene: the jubilee announcement and the discovery the crown is missing.

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[wwphx]

Heh. Reminds me of Wizard's Guide To Baking.

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[ShakaUVM]

Or Kings of the Wyld, which is about an adventuring group that comes out of retirement for one last mission. One of them retired to be a city guard, another a king... pretty good story. Good mix of pathos and humor.

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[HiThere]

Real D&D didn't involve computers. (It often did involve painting purchased figurines.)

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[Dripdry]

what in the heck are you talking about?
buy a set of first or second edition books, maybe a few expansion books, or get the pdfs online.
1st edition was DESIGNED TO BE MODIFIED. Gary just wanted people to have a loose framework to have FUN and tell cool stories. it says so IN THE BOOKS.

This total madness around the bureaucracy of D&D rules blows my mind. It genuinely feels like political propaganda, but by WotC, making people think there's some HUGE group out there playing exactly by the "aaaaaaks

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[tlhIngan]

The problem with D&D itself is Hasbro, because they need money machine go whirr. As in WotC (Wizards of the Coast) is making up close to a majority of Hasbro's revenue these days between D&D and Magic The Gathering. Both items are high margin goods, since they're publishing books ad playing cards which even printing inside the US is vanishinglly small and the consumer cost is relatively high at basically close to a hundred dollars per book. It's margins only exceeded by the software industry.

Of cour

You don't even need to buy them with Retroclones

[Chaset]

There are plenty of "retroclones" out there, like OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, Dark Dungeons, etc. are just re-implementations of the various OD&D, 1st/2nd edition, Rules Cyclopedia, etc. rulesets, all downloadable.

I'm not aware of the newer stuff (3rd ed or newer, I guess they are not 'retro' enough.), but the older stuff is good enough to get the framework for interesting play.
There's also Dungeon Slayers, whose basic rules are downloadable.