Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, Dave. Hi, Hayden, my little tasty smash burger. Ah. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Yeah, oh, no, Happy New Year to you. Happy 2026. It's looking like it's going to be a real good one. Everything so far in America is just fine. It's good. There's nothing wrong. Yeah, I've heard that. I mean, because I was a little bit worried before, but now it seems real chill and sweet.
There's nothing to worry about. Good. Look. A hard-hitting topic on Flightless Bird today. It occurred to me that Dungeons & Dragons, the famous role-playing game, is 100% American, and so I'm going to do a deep dive into D&D. I'm wondering if my little nerdy friend Hayden Donnell grew up with D&D and New Zealander, if we didn't make it over.
Yeah, we do have D&D in New Zealand, but I didn't personally play D&D. I think that I had interactions with a whole bunch of spin-offs of it. Now, some of your listeners might remember an awesome board game named Hero Quest, which is kind of D&D adjacent. Maybe people will get angry at that. I don't know. Just please, I'm just a small man. Don't hurt me if you are angry when I say that.
But I also played my favorite computer games ever. are Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 in particular. And they are basically D&D offshoots. And I love Baldur's Gate 2 so much.
I think it's played on the same sort of rules and it's like a dice system to roll your stats at the beginning and everything.
So yeah. I think you've hit on a really good point that the giant influence of D&D on all sorts of things, including on the leisurely activities of Wayne Hayden Donnell in New Zealand.
The tendrils of America in all respects stretch everywhere.
We all hear about it. We all know about it.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of Dungeons & Dragons in American culture?
It affects us all. You invent a weird little nerdy game, we know. But I think those little dorks from Stranger Things were on it as well, eh? That was the whole thing. Yeah, that was like a big Stranger Things that kind of brought D&D back again for a whole new generation. Made it cool thanks to five seasons of that atrocious TV show. Just awful. Just fuck those guys.
I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now, for over 50 years, one relatively simple game invented in America has spread its influence into so many parts of pop culture, it's hard to keep count. Yes, Stranger Things is just the latest. Dungeons and Dragons was invented in the US back in 1974, 52 years ago.
Annoyingly, when I was a child, I wasn't allowed to play D&D thanks to an urban myth that D&D was a direct portal to the demonic realm. So here I was, decades later, realizing, holy heck, I've never played Dungeons and Dragons. I'd need to rectify this, and I'd heard about a man who's been playing the game for decades.
In fact, he's been playing the game, the same D&D campaign, since the game came out in 1974. Phil is now in his 80s, and I knew I needed to speak to this old man to find out what had kept him playing D&D for this long. So, grab your rulebook, character sheet, and a healthy dose of polyhedral dice. Or is that die? Rob, die, dice, I never know.
Because this is the D&D episode.
While the theme song was playing, you whispered, I think it's dice. Dice? Yeah, dice die. Multiple dice die.
maybe look we've got bigger fish to fry yeah no i um i don't have look we're very focused on the show i think it's one thing about the show is that we're that's a lot of dice that's a lot of die this is embarrassing because i don't have a handle on the english language when it comes to this stuff if you have thoughts on dice versus die flight the spread chat at gmail.com you wouldn't say hand me those dices no you'd say hand me those die or hand me those dice
Or hand me those die.
What? Hand me those die.
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Chapter 3: Who is Phil and what is his D&D journey?
Yeah, and what we'll do for that is we'll have an episode that we talk to five, six, seven, eight people. They pitch us their topic, and... Hopefully some of those turn into fuller episodes. And to submit to that, you're going to go to bit.ly slash fbfancy. We'll have a link in our description up on the screen. One more time, Rob? bit.ly slash fbfancy.
We love reading submissions that come into that because it just blows our minds about how much crazy shit is actually in this country. Secondly, we are looking for essentially a wonderful high school teacher who is really good at explaining history. Kind of like, if you think of Bill Nye Science Guy, think of this wonderful man who can just break down science concepts.
We're essentially looking for a wonderful high school teacher who can break down bits of America's history in a really lovely, compelling way.
Yeah. I mean, I had history teachers like that growing up.
They exist. Like in New Zealand, I had a history teacher who was just beautiful and entertaining and wonderful. And we want to find, we're going to incorporate them into the show, but we need to find that person.
If Mr. Pulser, who taught seventh grade at Carl Sandburg is listening, or I think Mr. Miskiewicz that taught high school history.
These people stick with you.
right yeah and so she might a listener or maybe you are that high school teacher yes but they need to be lovable likable charismatic yeah do you want to hear this person on a podcast breaking down american history to me at certain times think of that person yeah like or you've got a brother you've got a boyfriend you've got a friend that's a good history teacher we want to teach david about
the revolutionary war and what the chicago fire was he doesn't know what the chicago fire i know none of that shit you were taught at school and i have a feeling like a lot of americans increasingly don't know this stuff either yes so um this isn't going to become an american history podcast but we are going to look occasionally at certain things from the distant past and if you know that person you are that person it is flightlessbirdchat at gmail.com
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Chapter 4: How has D&D influenced friendships over generations?
Was it a friend that introduced you?
The first time I heard about the game was when I saw the package box in this toy store. I said, gee, that looks interesting. And I read the blurb on the box and this is something the kids might like.
And what year would have this been roughly?
1976.
He was in his early 30s at the time. Do you remember when you knew, oh, this is a game I think I'll go back to as opposed to just playing it once?
I don't think I ever went through that stage. We started playing and the kids loved it, and the neighborhood kids loved it, and the grownups loved it, and it just kept blossoming from there.
Phil loved being a dungeon master, running the game, and he wanted to spread the game beyond him and his kids. He worked as an English teacher and chess instructor, coming to teach at one particular school thanks to D&D.
I used to run games at the Jewish Community Center, had some kids who attended this private school. Some of the kids from that school were in my classes at the JCC, but they wanted to continue to play and their schedules didn't mesh.
So they talked to the school and got the school to contact me and see if I would be willing to run a game there, which I did for 17 or 18 of the 20 years I was there. So I was the chess instructor and the chess coach and also ran the D&D games.
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Chapter 5: What role does D&D play in education today?
I say a lot, D&D is probably why I ended up making video games. I mean, it really is kind of an American art form. Like Chainmail, I guess you could really call the precursor. Even that was influenced by other forms of wargaming and things like that coming down with, I think, somewhat European roots that very much influenced Gary Gygax.
And Chainmail was really that thing that led to first edition and all of those things.
Danny says it's interesting Phil was using D&D in the schools he taught at. That wasn't all that common back then, but today it is.
And there are a surprising number of schools that are using it. I did a brief stint in education before coming here, and I was really interested in how D&D can be used in education. So when I came here, I was really excited to dig into the education programs.
what we're hearing those clubs quickly fill up because kids are super interested and it doesn't have the stigma that it did when we were growing up where you hit it they fill up they run out of space very very quickly and it's either just for an after-school program or i know my kids school they use it for french language instruction like okay we're gonna play d d but it's gonna be in french so uh
And like anything, when you're having fun, you don't realize you're learning. But I think it just shows how much D&D and the perception of it has changed.
Phil has all his notes out, and we've been joined by some other players from the office. Phil hands us all character sheets, who we're going to be. I tell him this game was semi-banned when I grew up.
That's a shame. That same thing happened when I started to run games at the local Jewish community center. There were some parents who were concerned about what they'd heard, right? I said, well, the easiest way for you to find out is to sit in and watch the game. And I did that with the kids. And then the parents said, oh, what's that silliness all about, right?
As a matter of fact, one of the parents said he wanted to see if they could start an adult game. It never came to pass, but they were almost interested to the point where they wanted to play.
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Chapter 6: What are the misconceptions about D&D from the past?
Probably 15 years altogether. I started with the original, which was a little bit simpler, a little bit smaller, and then I redrew it to this size because I wanted this to be able to contain all the basic elements of the game. There are 21 different religions, or 22 if you count the old druid ways, and All of them are represented here in the city.
Nine of the 21 have their major temple or synagogue or whatever it is here. But this is probably my biggest accomplishment as far as how realistic it is. It has a civic auditorium. It has a library. It has schools.
And when you look at this, can you imagine and see what all this looks like?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's easy enough. It also has a 30-foot outer wall. which was done with magic, which is before their time, so that it is even impervious to most spells.
For someone that hasn't played this before, what is it that sets this game apart from, say, chess or some other board game that people are maybe thinking of?
First of all, there's usually an element of chance, which you don't have with chess. You know, chess is all logic. It's a sense of camaraderie and mutual cooperation. This is particularly true with the kids. The kids learn to cooperate because if they don't, they get into trouble. And it's fun to have people be able to step outside their own personality and create basically another person.
And it's really funny. Most people's characters are either very much like themselves or almost total opposites.
I wonder what that says about a person. That's quite funny.
I think it's fairly obvious. They've got another side that they would kind of secretly like to investigate.
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Chapter 7: How has D&D evolved in modern pop culture?
The boys got a gift for Christmas. It was like tacos and burritos was the game. And we were trying to play with my mom when she was in town. The rules, I was reading through them. They made no sense to me. And I was just like, I give up. I'm out. I don't even want to play this game.
It feels like that should be a game that should be very simple. It should be. It sounds simple.
I mean, it eventually... Yeah. Once we started playing with simple. Yeah. But it got so overwhelming that I was like, ah.
Yeah. The initial wall of rules is just makes you go, I don't want to do this.
And these are very arbitrary. It was like you're picking up a card from the dump and putting it in your taco or burrito. And then. Yeah. So it's nothing that logistically, like logically makes sense. It's just weird phrases and words happening. Like what's a taco? It's a burrito. Sounds like a real hit. We're finding out that I don't know about Mexican food today.
One cool thing, he bought all his old school D&D literature, because there's books around it, there's movies, but he had a list of things from the D&D universe, and I was just randomly flicking through this old book, because it smelled like an old book, it looked epic. And one of the things in the D&D universe which has been created is the flightless bird, which blew my mind. It's really cute.
I'll post this on our Instagram. And I don't know what any of this means, but its frequency is common. Its armor class is seven. Its move is 18 inches. All the, you know, number of attacks, one or one. Special attacks, nil. Special defenses, nil. So sort of like a shitty kind of a not very powerful thing.
I mean, This feels similar to Pokemon, right? Totally.
Pokemon's going to be semi-based on... Well, yeah, Pokemon probably wouldn't exist without all this shit. And in this book it said, these large avian creatures are typified by the ostrich, emu, and rhea. They live in warm climates in open grasslands. The ostrich-sized have three hit dice, emu-like birds have two, and rhea-sized types have one.
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Chapter 8: What is the connection between D&D and video games?
We waited in the line for Harry Potter for fucking ages. We ate a turkey leg. Amazing at that time that Rachel and her husband were there observing Rosabelle and I in line also.
And became a fan of the show.
And years later, this is 2018, years later, clocked it when they listened to the Rose Valley episode and wrote in. And I just think that's really remarkable.
That is wild.
And amazing. It's also a Universal trip where I did, there's a part of Universal where you do like a, you're on a tram and it's like a very long like backlot tour maybe.
Yeah, we did that for Calvin's birthday two years ago.
So I was in line for that ride. The line was maybe an hour. Going into that line, I was like to Roosevelt, I'm busting. I need to piss. She said, just hold on. You're a man. You can hold on. It's what we can do. If you're a man, you hold on. I held on for that whole hour. By the time we got on the ride, I was in pain, but there was nowhere to go and piss. On the ride, I was sitting there.
I turned to Roosevelt. It's like, I need to go. I either need to get off this ride and stop the driver, or I'm going to piss next to you in the seat. There's a part of the tour you get to where it's, I think it's, you're on a street and they, and this was, this is probably one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. They flood the street with water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that.
It's just, you're in, and if you know, if you're needing to go to the bathroom and you hear water coming. So this was this, but like the hell version where the whole street is essentially a river that's just running under you and around you and splashing on you.
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