‘Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary’ Rolls the Dice on Kickstarter

Ear­lier this week West­paw Films announced Dun­geons & Drag­ons: A Doc­u­men­tary , an upcom­ing film explor­ing the his­tory of the fan­tasy role-playing game all the way back to its hum­ble begin­nings in 1974. From cre­ators Gygax and Arneson’s orig­i­nal goal to “just sell 1,000 copies” of the game, to the for­ma­tion and tur­bu­lent his­tory of TSR, and how ulti­mately D&D became a world­wide phe­nom­e­non and major influ­ence on soci­ety and pop culture.

Now the project has come to Kick­starter, where the trio of filmmakers–Andrew Pas­cal, Anthony Savini, and James Sprattley–are hop­ing to raise $150,000 by Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 17.

Here’s the trailer:

And here’s a snip­pet from the film’s synopsis:

“In a very real sense, Dun­geons & Drag­ons changed the world. From its early years, Dun­geons and Drag­ons became a train­ing ground for careers in the realms the imag­i­na­tion and has influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of com­puter pro­gram­mers, design­ers, writ­ers, actors and many oth­ers. Its affect on soci­ety can be seen in every­thing from com­puter games to mod­ern teach­ing the­o­ries and treat­ment for PTSD. Through inter­views with pub­lic per­son­al­i­ties, psy­chol­o­gists and soci­ol­o­gists, D&D:AD will explore how this game has touched the lives of every­one, even if they have never played the game.”

Though I was never heav­ily into D&D beyond cre­at­ing one char­ac­ter and play­ing a few games (mainly because I never had any­one to play with–not to men­tion I’m like minus 15 in math IRL) as a gamer and all-around nerd I’m well aware of its influ­ence on pretty much every­thing I’m into–video games, movies, tele­vi­sion, books, col­lectibles, board games, art. What aspects of geek cul­ture  hasn’t D&D helped shape?

You can sup­port Dun­geons & Drag­ons: A Doc­u­men­tary by back­ing the Kick­starter project and fol­low­ing the film’s progress on Face­book .

More stuff and things!