In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, I came across a call for submissions looking for academic and creative writing about Dungeons & Dragons; the initial CFP was for an edited collection called Roll 4 Initiative. I decided to write something for the collection and submitted a poem entitled “Dice.” The poem offered brief vignettes of playing D&D for the first time as a high schooler, what those initial experiences meant to me, and how they would shape me in the years to follow. Luckily, the poem was accepted. Unfortunately, the collection would suffer a few challenges and stalls and stumbles, and years would go by. In 2023, I reached out to Suzanne Richardson, who was then heading the project solo, and asked if I could help. After a few discussions, she agreed to bring me on as co-editor, and we were off to the races. We worked diligently over the past two years, and now I am proud to present the finished book retitled Roll with Advantage: Creative, Collaborative, and Critical Responses to Dungeons & Dragons (Play Story Press, 2025).
Thank you to Suzanne for being such a great collaborator and partner. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute a Coda to the whole book, in which I muse on why playing tabletop games like D&D creates conviviality, connection, and possibility:
This book is for you, for me, for us, and sometimes not. That’s okay. This is the enduring spirit of the collectives and communities we call D&D gamers, party members, game masters, tables, clubs, home brews, all-nighters, rules lawyers, storytellers, one-shotters, dice hoarders, lorekeepers, explorers, mapmakers, mini painters, artists, crafters, actors, dancers, singers, streamers, fans, forums, conventions, cosplayers, larpers, watchers, significant others, collaborators, experimenters, thinkers, critics, and even edited collections. Let us focus on playing together, playing for one another, playing reciprocally. In other words, it’s about playing reparatively, and according to Trammell, repairing play is “play that remembers, play that speaks truth to power, and play that is conscientious of its own debts.”[1] Reparative play is hopeful play, and I hope to live in a world where D&D is reparative and restitutive.
Thank you to Play Story Press for giving a home to the book. And thank you to all of the contributors for their ideas, words, and worlds. Here’s the table of contents:
Foreword
I Look Good in Fish Scales
A Letter from Former Co-Editor Daniel Shank Cruz
Introduction
What It Means to Play
Suzanne Richardson
Dice
Edmond Y. Chang
An Introvert’s Spellbook for Playing D&D
Shelly Jones
Streamers and Kids: An Interview with Jim Zub about Dungeons & Dragons
and Comic Books
Toben Racicot and Jim Zub
What D&D Teaches Us About Story
Samantha Tetangco
Roleplaying or Rule Playing? Experiences in Early Dungeons & Dragons
Graham Head
Original Dungeons & Dragons: 0e
Gary Charles Wilkens
The Ranger
Emily Rose Cole
Monster Manual, First Edition
Laura Bandy
Goblematic: Problematizing the Goblin, Edition to Edition
E.C. McGregor Boyle III
Save vs. Nostalgia: Dungeons & Dragons, Race, Gender, and
the Imaginary Past
Michelle E. Parsons-Powell
Rol(l)ing Up Characters: Conceptual Blending Theory, Casting, and
Character Construction in Dungeons and Dragons
Jessica Hautsch
Rot Grubs as Artistic Experience
Jason Cox
An Uncozy Burrow
Jason Cox
The Books with the Orange Spines
Deb Fuller
The Artificer
Emily Rose Cole
In Defense of the Dice: Chance, Free Will, and Quantitative Storytelling
Jacqueline Patz DiPiero
The Monstrous Races of Dungeons & Dragons
Christopher LeCluyse
D&D as Transmedia, Subcreational Phenomenon
Stephen J.N. Bauhart
Lost Initiative
Mordecai Martin
RP
Crystal Odelle
Song of the Nameless One
Megan Condis
Smilla the Relentless
Laura Bandy and Sarah Bandy-Norris
No Change of Death (A Journey into Animal Crossing and D&D)
Jocelyn Heath
Reparative Play in Dungeons & Dragons
Giuseppe Femia
Anything Can Be Attempted
Evan Torner
Why Am I Talking to a Sword Shaped Like Waves?
Andrea Clausen
The Cleric
Emily Rose Cole
Campaign
Suzanne Richardson
Coda
Help Action
Edmond Y. Chang
The book is open access and downloadable for free as a PDF. But, I encourage everyone to get a hardcopy–it’s very pretty (I think so myself since I did the layout) and the cover by Hannah Carr-Murphy is gorgeous.
[1] Trammell, Repairing Play, 103.