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“Others play at dice”1: Friendship and Dungeons & Dragons

Jeffery L. Nicholas

D&D gamers exemplify Aristotle’s claim that “no one would want to live without friends” (1155a5). The popular view is that a gamer is a loner or maybe even a loser, someone without friends, who maybe spends his time in a room alone or, if he has managed to find other losers like himself, in his mom’s basement until he’s 40, unemployed, and still a virgin. Movies like Saving Silverman or Shaun of the Dead play with this stereotype, sometimes reinforcing it and at other times resisting it. Yet gamers in fact value friendship highly. One might even see gaming as an attempt to find friends and build that political community of which Aristotle says friendship is the root. The really interesting thing about gamers is that, as they play Dungeons & Dragons, they at one and the same time build bonds between their characters and between each other as players. The trajectory of these bonds often mirrors the trajectory of friendships we find in epic fantasy literature where the characters, at first suspicious of each other, in the end have developed true friendships and established peaceful kingdoms where chaos had reigned before. As we’ll see, Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship can help us to understand this development.

WANTED

New In Town and Looking to Join a Game

(Please)

Many of us begin playing Dungeons & Dragons when we are teenagers. We might chance upon it when someone in our school invites us to play, or we might seek it out because older siblings have played it, or, today, maybe our parents have been playing it since we were infants. Later, when we go to college or move on in life, we seek out others to game. Why do we go through such trouble trying to find other D&D players? Are we that desperate, and won’t we ever grow up? As an academic, I’ve moved around a bit chasing an MA, then a PhD, and finally a job. Each time I’ve sought and found a D&D group, and each time some of the people I gamed with became good friends. Some even became true friends.

If you’ve moved around a lot, you know the routine. You come to a new city, you troll Craigslist, hunt on Wizards of the West Coast boards, hang out at the closest gaming store, posting signs explaining what a great gamer you are and that you’re looking for a group. You’re even willing to be Dungeon Master if others take turns as well. How quickly you find a group varies: a week, several months, maybe a year or two. It’s much easier to find groups in college and grad school than it is outside of college, but eventually you find some group.

Initially, you meet the other players wondering who they are, what kind of gaming they like – hack-n-slash or more role-playing, or a good mixture. Such meetings mirror the way we meet others in a variety of situations – colleagues at work, people at church, a stranger at a party to which we’ve been invited. These initial meetings comprise a form of friendship that Aristotle calls friends of utility. Friendships of utility are often brief and motivated by some extrinsic good. They easily develop conflict, and do not add much to the search for virtue or flourishing. Yet they are necessary in life.

A friendship of utility is just what it sounds like. Two or more people come together to gain some advantage from each other. Aristotle calls this a friendship, though the least like true friendship. Each person in the friendship wishes something good for himself and for the others in the agreement, and some equality grounds the friendship. In the case of a D&D gaming group, you meet some other gamers to enjoy a game of Dungeons & Dragons. This group does not yet amount to a friendship of pleasure, because, initially, the members are not sure if they will in fact find any pleasure in the company of the other players.

Further, “accusations and blame arise in the friendship based on utility, either in it alone or in it especially with good reason” (1162b5–6). Until your gaming group has gamed together for a while and established house rules and some routine, players might squabble with each other or with the Dungeon Master. “How did he get an 18 strength?” or “The die was cocked!” The DM can often settle these disputes either by royal decree (“It’s my game, and that’s how I’m going to play it”) or by some compromise (“If we do it that way for your character, then my monster gets the same benefit”). Oftentimes, these decrees can leave various players upset with the DM or with other players and can create underlying strife in the group that leads to other conflicts.

Oftentimes, because the strife is too much, gamers choose to leave a group rather than adventure on. One group I played with was only marginally making it as a game. We had not switched into people who enjoyed each other’s company, which was surprising given that two of the players were married. It all came to a head one day, though, when the husband had to roll a D20 to avoid his sword being broken or his character defending himself, I forget which. His wife, who was new to the game, said the unthinkable: “Roll a 1!” He threw down his hands and threatened to divorce her if he rolled a 1. And, of course…

Great D&D groups (and great marriages) do not form overnight.

WANTED

Adventurers to Investigate the Perfectly Safe House up the Road where All the Maidens Keep Disappearing

A group of adventurers does not coalesce into a group of fast friends over night. We all know the standard trope for any gaming group. We meet randomly in some village or city looking for adventure and answer a call: a poster wanting hired adventurers, a mayor or prince seeking someone to rescue his missing daughter/gold/magic ring, or a wizard looking for protection as he goes to examine the dark ruins of some long-lost kingdom. Our characters have never met, but we willingly join each other for the gold held out in payment. Our characters often do not trust each other at first: the elves mistrust the dwarves, who mistrust the goblin, and the paladin only barely trusts the cleric. And no one trusts the poor burglar, who in turn trusts no one else and has all of his goods tied down and hidden amongst his baggage.

The rogue holds an interesting position in this group. If the person playing the rogue is new to the gaming group, no one knows exactly how she plays her rogue – whether she willingly steals from other player-characters, whether she turns and runs in a battle, or whether she will stab someone in the back for a jewel. Likewise, the characters do not trust anyone dressed in leather, carrying a dagger and not much else in weapons, and all too quiet on her feet. The player and the player-character rogue represent the embodiment of Aristotle’s friend of utility. No one wants a rogue around, but everyone needs a good rogue.

Our characters mirror the heroes of our favorite fantasy novels. In The Lord of the Rings, Gimli and Legolas do not trust each other when they meet in Rivendell, and Boromir has little time for Aragorn. No one knows what to make of the hobbits. The Fellowship of the Ring is not a fellowship until Gandalf has fallen in Moria, Boromir has died with a thousand arrows in him, and Frodo has escaped to desolate lands. Before then, Boromir joins the group only because they are headed in the general direction of Gondor, and he tries his best to convince Frodo to use the ring in Gondor. In The Princess Bride, our heroes start out as enemies and only become friends through a need for each other to defeat the Prince and the Six-Fingered Man. The same happens in every Shannara novel: a group of people, brought together by a druid, begin a quest for a sword, some elf stones, some forbidden knowledge. They do not know each other beforehand, but they come to trust in each other as the story progresses. The druid sets them up as friends of utility, and we see right away that frustration mars their relationship. Many epic fantasies are tales of individuals who start out as friends of utility and turn into true friends. Just as many D&D groups begin as friends of utility, and, if fortune is with them, become true friends. Before that happens, though, they first become friends of pleasure.

“Someone pass the Mountain Dew”

Four of us huddled in the stairway during lunch break. I played a paladin; I don’t remember what the others were playing any more.

“So you’ve captured an orc. What do you do now?” the DM asked.

“How many of you are there?” my paladin asked.

“The orc spits in your face.”

Everyone laughs. Well, everyone except for me.

“Okay,” Jamie says. “I take out my rope of climbing and tie my dagger to it. Then I put the point right at his anus.”

I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure my paladin objected. I might have been too stunned for my paladin to react. For years, I lost track of Jamie, but I always remembered that scene. Even today, when I communicate with “Jamison” on Facebook about something Marx said, or some argument or other over property or virtue or whatever, I remember him as Jamie, the rope-of-climbing trickster. I would never have thought of Jamie as a good friend back then, but I certainly took pleasure in his company, and, presumably he did in mine as well since we continued to game together the rest of that year.

We had reached, as many gaming groups do, a different stage of friendship – friends of pleasure. Friendships of pleasure involve friends who receive something similar from each other. D&D gamers receive the same kind of pleasure from each other – a love of Dungeons & Dragons, good role-playing, a shared idea about the right amount of role-playing versus hack-n-slash gaming. They enjoy the roll of the dice and the fact that they can come together and be someone different. They remain together because they receive pleasure from one another’s gaming. “Those who love on account of pleasure feel affection for the sake of their own pleasure” (1156a16).

Once a D&D group has reached this level of friendship, division becomes less common. “There are also not many accusations in the friendships based on pleasure either, since both parties come to possess simultaneously what they long for, if they delight in going through life together” (1162b13–15). At this point, most rules-arguments have been settled. The players have established a routine, and know who is going to show up on time and who will show up late, who will bring what kind of snacks to share, and what everyone likes on their pizza. The DM has hit his stride and tries to work in something for each player-character in the game.

At the same time, the characters are getting along better as well. They have established watch cycles, they know who’s going to go into the dungeon first, and they know who the weakest and strongest members are so that they can work together to beat the necromancer or vampire (we’re not quite up to dragon-hunting yet). They can even gain a little pleasure from what each does in the game.

One time, Torodemo, my ranger, was being questioned by the bad guys – at that point in the game, nameless people who’d kidnapped him – about what he’d been doing and where he was going. Torodemo said, “I was visiting a girl with breasts like those mountains over there – firm and high.” The kidnappers laughed.

Another time, Savros, another ranger (I’d long since left behind paladins and other refined goody-two-shoes), wanted to impress Ariel, a cleric who was leading our group – two paladins, a sorcerer, and Savros. He went into the woods, hunted down a mighty deer, skinned it, cleaned the skin, and brought the skin back to the church where we were staying. When Ariel came out, he bowed to her and handed her the deerskin. The paladins guffawed at the gesture, at the same time taken aback by the fresh deerskin. Our character personas, if we are truly role-playing, develop their own attitudes, likes, and dislikes. We play these out in the game in ways that might mirror or might differ completely from how we would act in real life. The point is that the characters develop relationships that mirror the relationships we develop with other players.

The Crusty Dagger: Food and Ale

In the Lord of the Rings, the friendship of Gimli and Legolas evolves from one of utility to one of pleasure. In the mines of Moria, Gimli waxes loquacious about the beauty of the mountain, and in Lothlorien, Legolas talks of the wonder and beauty of such forests. They agree that if they survive, they will each take the other to see some of the best caves and forests in Middle Earth. In The Princess Bride, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya play a game of rhyming words. In part, this game is to help Fezzik remember things, but it also brings the two together in wordplay that lays the foundation for a greater friendship to develop. The foundation of the Symphony of Ages series (by Elizabeth Haydon) is based on a friendship of pleasure – two teenagers, Gwydion and Emily, are thrust together for a night, fall passionately in love, and then lose each other through some mysterious person’s manipulation of time. Much of the first three books of the series focuses on their attempt to reunite in a distant land a thousand years in the future of their world. As a final example, in A Game of Thrones, Eddard Stark, on becoming Hand to King Robert Baratheon, is both maddened by and delightfully reminiscent of Robert’s love of food and the hunt. Robert wants to have by his side someone he used to do pleasurable things with when younger before being king – hunting, drinking and carousing, and fighting. This pleasure cements both Eddard’s loyalty to Robert and his eventual beheading.

Gimli and Legolas, on the one hand, and Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon, on the other, testify to some of what Aristotle says about friends of pleasure and true friends. All friendship, for Aristotle, requires some equality. Gimli and Legolas are equal in that they voluntarily join the Fellowship of the Ring to guide Frodo as far as he will let them. Originally, they gain something from each other in equal parts – a companion on the road, another sword in a fight, and a sharing of the burden of caring for Frodo. Eventually, their equality becomes richer, as they begin to share a love for forests, when they first enter Lothlorien. Legolas is superior in his knowledge of forests, but he wants to make Gimli love them equally. In the first instance, Aristotle would see a friendship of utility, and in the second, a friendship of pleasure.

Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark are not equal – Robert is king and demands that Eddard return to King’s Landing. Yet Robert tries to treat Eddard as an equal once they’ve returned – he wants his old hunting buddy back. Yet the reader sees in that desire a stark difference in moral virtue between Robert and Eddard. Robert has no time, patience, or desire to rule his kingdom. He does not perform his duty. Eddard, on the other hand, follows Robert out of a sense of duty. He is the more virtuous of the two. On that basis, Aristotle would contend that Robert and Eddard could never be true friends – even if they once were. True friendship occurs between those who are equally virtuous and love the good. The reader sees Eddard reflect on this very fact a number of times as he waits for Robert to perform some duty necessary to keep the kingdom running, and he laments the Robert he used to know. In contrast, Robert’s tomfoolery gets him gored by a boar, and Eddard’s loyalty gets him executed by Robert’s son.

Interestingly enough, one reason Aristotle believes people need friends is that only through friendship can one exercise certain virtues that are necessary for leading a flourishing life. One such virtue is loyalty. Gimli and Legolas show a fierce loyalty, at first to their own people (for they join the Fellowship as representatives of their people), secondly to Frodo, and finally to each other. Eddard shows a strong loyalty to Robert, but Robert is incapable of loyalty. He no longer lives a life of virtue, and thus he cannot achieve flourishing. He can only live a life of pleasure, from which he dies. Eddard believes he is flourishing, but because of his own loyalty he cannot see the deception plotted by Littlefinger (despite the fact that it’s written on the stars for the rest of us). Bereft of friends and surrounded by base people, Eddard becomes a tragic hero whose flaw is loyalty itself. For Aristotle, the flaw rests in the lack of friendship. Loyalty is a virtue only for true friends – that is, those who are virtuous – and not something to be given to those who are base.

In our D&D games, our characters likewise will remain merely friends of utility or friends of pleasure unless they share equally in virtue and value the good life. No one thinks that the paladin and the rogue can become true friends, and often the ideas about the good that the druid has conflict too much with those of the dwarven fighters. Still, friends of pleasure prove necessary for life because everyone desires pleasure.

“The friendship of those who are good then, is friendship most of all”

The morning sun gleamed off the paladins’ armor. Savros had killed the king of the were-rats with their help, but greater trouble was brewing.

“It’s our old master. He has turned to evil, and we need help stopping him,” Henri said.

Ariel was nowhere around, but I knew she would be helping. They were her knights after all. Still, I didn’t belong here. I was thousands of miles from home, a home that needed rebuilding after the army of were-rats had gone through destroying everything, killing everyone, including my parents. I’d been gone for over a year.

Kronin shifted, his armor rattling. I shook my head. How many times had I cursed these paladins and their loud armor when I was quietly preparing to ambush someone? Still, I’d grown to care for them. They were not family, but they were brothers. And we might not agree exactly on methods – what use is law when marauders kill everything in their path? Yet, we loved the same things: Ariel, first of all, but peace and justice too.

I nodded. “I will be there with you.”

Aristotle said that “there is also need of passage of time and the habits formed by living together, for as the adage has it, it is not possible for people to know each other until they have eaten together of the proverbial salt, nor is it possible, before this occurs, for them to accept each other and to be friends until each appears as lovable and is trusted” (1156b26–29).

When players play together long enough, their characters pass through a variety of adventures. Good role-playing allows the characters to develop attachments, not only to the other characters, but to their individual quests. They have indeed eaten of the proverbial salt together by fighting the same enemy. They did not start out for the same reasons: some wanted fame, others gold, others to serve their god. Yet as the story in the game progressed, so did their interest in the world of the game and the good and evil as seen by each other. They come to share some understanding of what the game-world is like.

They do not do this overnight or even after a few months of gaming. It takes some time. Players need a chance to share the troubles of their everyday lives with the others around the gaming table. Experienced gamers know that the game doesn’t start when all the players show up. First, players shoot the breeze and talk about their week. Now, after playing together for a long time, they want to know what’s going on in their lives: what trouble they’re having in a class, or the new girl or guy someone is dating, or how the interview went last week. This sort of debriefing is a sign that the players are on the verge of true friendship brought about through sharing the proverbial salt.

True friendships, however, develop only rarely: “Yet friendships of this sort are likely to be rare, since people of this sort are few” (1156b25). What sort of people? Aristotle believes that only good people can become true friends: “But a good person is lovable and choiceworthy” (1157b29) both because she truly is good and pleasant in an unqualified sense and because she is good and pleasant to the friend. Anyone who is good enjoys being around someone else who is truly good – virtuous and flourishing. That virtuous and flourishing person is good and pleasant, and so choiceworthy in herself and not simply for some advantage or pleasure she brings. Yet the virtuous and flourishing person is good and pleasant to the friend. That is, not only is such a person choiceworthy in herself, but she does good things and is pleasing to her friends. Savros found Henri and Kronin both good people and valued them simply because they were good, regardless of any benefit they brought to him – saving his life sometimes. Yet he also valued them because they were good to him – helping him find ways to impress Ariel – and were pleasant to him – inviting him to join them in a drink or two.

When we are lucky, the people we game with can become true friends in this way. We value other gamers not simply because they are good to us – offering rides to a game or letting us slide on paying for pizza some week, or helping us move. We also value them occasionally because we think they are good people, people that we think the world needs more of. Such friendships do not develop with every gamer. We have to discover that the other gamer is someone who is good – which means someone we see as equal in virtue to ourselves. They have to be equal in virtue to us because the reason we think the world needs more people like them is that they are virtuous. Further, if we are not virtuous ourselves, we are unlikely to find them valuable in themselves.

I met Brandon in grad school. He was a year ahead of me, so we didn’t attend the same classes. We managed to hang out and be friendly to each other, though. Then, we started gaming together – at first with Chris and Pam. Pam moved on, leaving grad school, but Ben took her place. For a period of three years, we were more than friends of utility or pleasure – we were true friends who valued philosophy most of all, but also valued Dungeons & Dragons, discussed justice, and supported each other in our struggles writing our dissertations. Had it not been for D&D, we would never have been as close. D&D brought us together once a week, and we were able to talk about the most important things in our lives. This encouraged us to find other reasons to be together – movies mainly, but also philosophy lectures and the philosophy graduate student association meetings.

In finding a true friend we are in fact finding another self. “For such people wish in similar fashion for the good things for each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in themselves. But those who wish for the good things for their friends, for their friends’ sake, are friends most of all, since they are disposed in this way in themselves and not incidentally” (1156b10–12). We want our true friends to have the best in the world – that is, what is truly good, a career in which they flourish, a spouse/partner with whom they share happiness and burdens equally, healthy and good children, and all those little things that add a little joy to our lives.

I’ve stayed in fairly constant contact with Brandon since grad school, and only sporadic contact with Ben and Chris. I can’t explain why, except perhaps that Brandon and I were similar. We are both from Kentucky and both worked under the same dissertation director concerned with topics that were related to each other (whereas Chris and Ben worked on topics not quite in the same sub-field as ours and under different directors). Today, Brandon is trying his hand at writing urban fantasy, which I had tried once long ago. The point of course is not to say what great friends I have, but to say that D&D brought us together in way that other things might not have. Through Dungeons & Dragons, we forged a friendship of shared values and shared meanings – which is the very definition of true friendship for Aristotle.

“I’m glad you’re with me now at the end of all things”

In the Lord of the Rings, Gimli and Legolas become true friends. They are equally brave in the battles that rage through The Two Towers and The Return of the King. More importantly, they wish for each other to be victorious in battle, and they wish to spend their lives together traveling Middle Earth after Aragorn has taken his throne in Gondor. Likewise Samwise Gamgee moves in with his master, Frodo Baggins. It is difficult for us readers to imagine that the heroes of our fantasy novels go their separate ways in the end. We expect them to want to be together because of the friendships they’ve formed. According to Aristotle, our desire here recognizes an important element of true friendship: “For since they wish to live with their friends, they pursue and share in those things in which they suppose living together consists” (1172a7–8).

At the end of Rhapsody: Child of Blood (in the Symphony of Ages series), Grunthor and Achmed build a small place for Rhapsody to live in within their mountain kingdom. They have spent a thousand years together traveling through the center of the world to reach their new home. At first, Achmed wanted to kill Rhapsody, but through their trials and tribulations they became friends of pleasure and then true friends who cared about the world. One thing they share is a concern for educating the Firbolg (a race of barbarian half-giants), a concern to prevent the darkness that seems to be threatening their new home, and a love for each other. They have grown from originally selfish desires to something deeper.

“Since friendship consists more in loving than in being loved, those who love their friends are praised, loving seems to be a virtue of friends” (1159a4–5). Achmed, Grunthor, and Rhapsody, Sam and Frodo, Legolas and Gimli all share the virtue of love, which is a virtue particular to true friendship. For Aristotle, one lives a flourishing life by living virtuously. Virtues help one to control one’s desires and passions, and thus act voluntarily to pursue what is truly good. Because true friendships form between good people, having good friends constitutes, in part, the good which people pursue. Such people are good in themselves and choiceworthy for who they are. Sam loves Frodo because of who Frodo is and for no other reason. His love has nothing to do with the fact that Frodo owns Bag-end or carried the One Ring to Mount Doom. Legolas loves Gimli for who he is – a dwarf of virtue and goodness. Rhapsody loves Grunthor and Achmed because she sees their true good – their dedication to eradicate evil, despite the fact that they claim otherwise.

Just as friendships of utility and friendships of pleasure can transform in the fantasy novel to true friendships, so likewise, those who begin playing D&D as friends of utility or pleasure can transform into true friends who care for each other through thick and thin. I would argue that Dungeons & Dragons functions as a practice that allows such friendships to develop. A practice is “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and the human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.”² In short, a practice is a set of activities that allows people to seek the good together and develop their virtues.³

In arguing that D&D comprises a practice in which individuals learn the virtues and pursue the good, I do not mean to say that everyone who plays D&D will become a virtuous, flourishing individual, just as I would not say that everyone who enters the army becomes brave, or that everyone who has a family becomes a great parent. Rather, I mean that D&D can be one of those things through which people develop a variety of virtues, especially loyalty and love, and learn a little bit about what the flourishing human life involves. D&D players know a lot about friendship and the value of friendship in a person’s life, despite the popular depiction of gamers. Through D&D, individuals have the opportunity not only to learn about friendship, loyalty, and love, but also to develop those rare true friendships in which they live a life valuing loyalty and love.

Notes

1. “Others play at dice . . . each passing their days together in whatever they are fondest of” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1172a5–6). All quotes, except where otherwise noted, are from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2012). Page and line references are to the standard Bekker translation of 1831 and are included in text.

2. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 187.

3. “Eucharist and Dragon Fighting as Resistance: Against Commodity Fetishism and Scientism,” Philosophy and Management 7 (2008), pp. 93–106.