Culture

Platforms: Literally any flatish surface

Remember when it was alright to pretend? The time, way back, when a semi-snapped green stick was a luxurious imagination stimulant? Those days, for most of us, are now long gone. For whatever reason, pretending to be a Beetleborg is no longer awesome. And I think that is a shame.
 
The answer lies on the twenty faces of a polyhedral die, on the rubber grime and pencil shavings on a grayed sheet covered in attributes and weapon names. A party of players pick from a variety of different roles, be it fighter, cleric, thief or wizard - it's all very fellowship - and solve a series of fantastical problems set out by a dungeon master, by combining a nuanced combat system with a pile of non-combat skills that can be mixed and matched in whichever way is vaguely conceivable.
 
The great thing about Dungeons and Dragons is that there are just enough rules to scaffold everything, to keep the dire-wolves of shame and embarrassment at bay. A character with a high arcane skill who comes across a talking spell-book would be foolish not to try and communicate with it.
 
The idea that Dungeons and Dragons is somehow anti-social is mega-double-triple-dumb. I'd quite like to talk to chums as we play cricket on the green, but they are on the other side of the field. That's the trouble with athletic people. Too much running away.