Parents can learn a lot from the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game
By Shannon Carpenter, CNN
(CNN) — I was one of the kids in Keller, Texas, who grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons. My brother was always the dungeon master, and I was a wizard who cast fireballs in very enclosed spaces.
When the pandemic hit decades later, I started teaching my son and 15 other kids in our Kansas City, Missouri, neighborhood how to play the role-playing game that Gary Gygax cocreated in his basement in 1974. I was their dungeon master, the person in the game who creates the story and guides the players through the imaginary world.
I used Dungeons & Dragons to pass the time during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it became the best way I knew how to parent, with ethical discussions playing out during long campaigns typical of the game: Should the players talk to the barkeep or instead ransack his establishment? Would the kids be murder hobos, a gaming term for those who will attack and kill other characters?
Shelly Mazzanoble was not surprised that Dungeons & Dragons helped me parent. She’s making the same case in her new book, “How to Dungeon Master Parenting: A Guidebook for Gamifying the Child-Rearing Quest, Leveling Up Your Skills, and Raising Future Adventurers,” which will be released on November 12.
“Dungeon masters embody some of the best traits that human beings can have,” Mazzanoble said. “They’re very generous, they’re very kind, they’re very collaborative, they are open-minded. They have the coolest accessories.”
On the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, I talked with Mazzanoble to learn how parents can apply the game’s lessons to their parenting.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: How similar are the roles of dungeon master and parent?
Shelly Mazzanoble: D&D is a collaborative storytelling game, and you, the dungeon master, are leading this journey into the unknown. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m just here to make sure that you all are kept safe, that you all are having a good time and that you all are challenged but not too challenged. The unknown in that is exactly what (dungeon masters) love, and it’s exactly what parents fear. You just keep going as a dungeon master.
Around the time when my son was 5 or 6, I thought if only I could embody those same traits as a parent, I would (parent) so much better. Then it just occurred to me: Why couldn’t I think about parenting the way a dungeon master thinks about a game of D&D? Why couldn’t (parenting) be a collaborative journey? Why couldn’t this story be something that we both tell and that expands in front of us?
CNN: Where should a parent start?
Mazzanoble: Start at session zero, which for gamers is when the party comes together with the dungeon master for the first time, and you talk about the type of characters you want to play.
Session zero for parents is the same idea. You get together the people who will support you on your parenting journey. You talk about what it means to be parents together. What are your goals here? How do you want to raise this child? How are you going to discipline this child? It’s amazing how many people will say that they have never once talked about their kid using a pacifier or disciplining. Are we going to do time-outs, or are we going to ground them?
CNN: You say that everyone needs to be a generous collaborator. What do you mean?
Mazzanoble: I love the idea of working together. If I’m not a rogue — a character class in D&D known for their cunning, stealthy bag of tricks — I’m not going to try to pick that lock, but I can support the rogue by keeping watch or distracting a guard with my cool magic trick. They need to be supported. They will support me, the party’s wizard, by acting as a shield and getting out of the way when I cast fireballs.
Now do that with your children in your life. Include them in the conversation and some of the decision-making and give them some autonomy (and support them) as they grow.
CNN: Parenting can be very isolating. How do you find your fellow adventurers for the quest?
Mazzanoble: Finding your parenting tribe is key. These are people who know what you’re going through and do not care if you forget to respond to their texts. These are people that you can hang out with and bring your kid. They get you.
Your local hospital can often refer you to meetups and groups or look at the early childhood intervention groups. Some cities have new parent support groups, and you can join one of those groups. You’re building up this network of parents.
CNN: It can be overwhelming for new parents. We tend to judge ourselves too harshly. How can we regroup to parent for another day?
Mazzanoble: You embrace failure as an opportunity to tell a new story. Destigmatize the whole failure thing. I fail probably several times a day with my kid, but am I failing, or am I figuring him out? Now it’s just a really cool part of your backstory that you didn’t even know existed.
CNN: What is sandbox framing, and how does that apply to both Dungeons & Dragons and parenting?
Mazzanoble: It’s the idea that there is chaos, but there is control in that chaos. It’s a world that you get to create as you go along.
How do you navigate that sandbox world as a parent? A good sandbox team puts a bunch of toys in the sandbox and then just sits back and says, “I wonder which ones they’re going to play with and what they’re going to do.” You’re here to guide that story.
The same is true in parenting. You have created this world, the safe space for your kid to explore. Everything in the sandbox is approved. It’s safe. You sit back and you kind of see where this journey is going to take them.
You’re the sandbox lifeguard. You’re there to add something or to take things away — to make sure that they’re having fun and that they’re learning. They learn to have agency within their own life, which 100% is a habit and a skill that we need to build as parents.
CNN: Our kids will face challenges their parents never faced. Can role-playing help teach them the skills to grow?
Mazzanoble: Whether we’re in a game of D&D or not, we role-play all the time. This is how I teach my son empathy. I ask him, “What would you do in this situation? What if you’re a kid in class and you don’t have a lot of friends?” My son will say, “That feels terrible. I hate that feeling.” So, the next day he might go to school and ask a kid to eat lunch with him.
Through D&D, it works because he gets to see the consequences of those decisions. It’s all actions and consequences. You get to empower your kids to see how they imprint in this world and how their choices will affect other people, will affect other things, and how it will affect their futures.
Shannon Carpenter is a writer, author of the book “The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad” and married father of three.
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