A D&D meme for 2022

and it has Greek Mythology in it as well

To celebrate the massive ballooning of (read: modest increase of) TIGM’s subscriber list, I give you a meme. Gratuitous commentary follows after the meme, but really, here at the start of 2022 all most of us need is a laugh.

Extra points for those of you who have enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons, and even more extra points if you are a teacher who uses it in the classroom.

Meme taken from here.

Gratuitous commentary

I loved this meme because it combined several ultra-nerdy things in one awesome package:

• the oral tradition of the composition of the Iliad

• the Iliad specifically and accurately, not just Achilles as vulnerable only in the heel

• Dungeons & Dragons dice-rolling jokes

Twenty-sided dice are the Fates of D&D. You use them to see if you successfully attacked an opponent, accomplished a spell, resisted an opponent’s spell, or made a feat of great agility.

A 20, the highest number, indicates the best outcome. It used to be called a “crit,” short for critical hit. Rolling a 20 against a dominant foe meant you had done the impossible, like shooting an arrow into the soft underbelly of a dragon. At worst a 20 would indicate “double damage” to an attack. Rolling a 20 is somewhat akin to getting a 7-letter Scrabble play on a triple word score.

A 1, on the other hand, was called a “fumble.” Nowadays I’ve heard people call it a “rock.” That means you did the opposite of what you were intending. Instead of shooting the dragon, you shot yourself, or a friend standing nearby. Your magic sword shatters against your opponent’s shield boss. And the like. A 1 gives the dungeonmaster’s imagination free rein for determining what kind of ridiculous fail your character has committed.

Dungeons & Dragons really is the type of game that ends up being an improvised adventure story. The students for whom I referee games have almost as much fun recounting what happened the previous week to those who weren’t there as they have with the actual game.

In the indie book publishing world as well I have seen what I consider to be large numbers of authors converting their D&D campaigns into fantasy novels. Sometimes that makes for a book that is much worse than it is a story, if that makes any sense at all.

My dream is to run a D&D campaign that is also a class about learning Latin and ancient Greek. The students are the players and their proficiency in the language, picked up by various means, correlates equally to their success in the game. Ideally, I would replace the 20-sided dice rolls with challenges in grammar, vocabulary, and creative wordsmithing.

That is my dream, alongside, of course, publishing TIGM to great fanfare and effect.

What is your dream?

Bonus meme, from the same source, if you have not clicked on the link yet. This one caused a mini-fervor on Twitter.