“...Both of these types of stories are reactions to the Industrial Revolution, and specifically the worsening of quality of life associated with that for many people. The quaint English countryside is being choked by mills and smog, and there’s public fascination with figures like Jack the Ripper, all of which come about from the increased alienation of industrial population booms. So you have on the one hand strangers and murder mystery and gaslighting. And then a reaction to that which tells stories like ‘what if a little rat and a little mole had a nice picnic in the field.’ Combining those two things is interesting, because these genres actually did grow out of the same soil. But there’s also something so interesting and dissonant about them, because of what their reactions to the culture of their origin were.” —Brennan Lee Mulligan, Dimension 20: Brennan Lee Mulligan Unravels the Mystery of Mice & Murder by Alexander Sowa
Dnd shows like Dimension 20 and role-playing games in general have become increasingly popular as the pandemic continues to disrupt people’s lives. With factors like “increased alienation” and general instability parallel to that of the Industrial Revolution, crafting a story with both the cultural reactions of an applicable time period and the format of a cultural reaction from ours is such an interesting way to explore how history and culture and storytelling all intersect with one another.
In Mice & Murder’s source material, the base reaction was a fatalistic, doomsday outlook of violence and grief and suffering, which then spawned hopeful, simple children’s stories. The cultural implications of both are still felt today (For example, spring has brought out the Peter Rabbit picture books in our house; meanwhile I am watching an adaption of The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie), but are usually kept separate in modern interpretations.
Dnd, already, is an amalgamation of these two genres’ base purposes. On one hand, dnd adventures tend to involve fighting a powerful evil—a societal injustice or a government or, most of the time, just a monster—and characters get hurt, compromise on their beliefs, and die. But dnd also has those fun, goofy, sweet moments of friendship and family that characterize the mass appeal of the game. Through improv, groups decide the balance they want of each, but it’s nearly impossible to make it through a whole campaign without one hilarious or heartwarming moment.
By purposefully calling back to opposing Industrial Revolution genres, and incorporating details of them in a format that’s having its own cultural renaissance—which already has elements of these two opposed types of fiction—the backdrop of Mice & Murder creates both a rich, comedic world, but also an important historical parallel. A parallel which is,, just,, so incredibly cool.
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