Ewalt begins by explaining the concepts behind a D&D game. Unlike a board game, where the action is very predictable – you move forward one square and may land on another square that always tells you to "Lose a turn" – a D&D game can be different every time. Each player portrays a different character, usually a traditional fantasy archetype like an elf or dwarf, while a player who is known as the Dungeon Master gives the players instructions. The DM has thought up the storyline for the game already – for example, the players go into a cave looking for treasure. A storyline can go on for a very long time. D&D-ers sometimes decide to have their game be a "campaign," meaning that the story they're acting out through the game will continue the next time they meet up. Campaigns can go on for months or years, says Ewalt. "Players are both audience and author in D&D," he writes. "They consume the DM's fiction but rewrite the story with their actions."
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
