D&D Pride Flag

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Have been reading Levi Kornelson's series on modeling the play-style of D&D, which has been really fantastic and full of fun graphs! Each time ones comes out, though, my friends joke that each new graph is also a pride flag. With their help, I've finagled this beautiful work of art based on Levi's graphs and color scheme.

While I have a soapbox: one criticism I have of the articles, though I really enjoy them and have mostly agreed, is that the rows of the graph-turned-flag correspond to the frequency of ability scores and their applications. I feel like it would be more representative if they represented play activities instead, whether OSR modes of play or the modern notion of pillars (role-play, exploration, and combat). After all, the ability scores he discusses overlap in their applications between these play-contexts, and are not as specific to D&D as the game's play procedures are. Plus, too, I feel like magic is so strict because of how it must be highly regulated in those game contexts, especially combat.

Although magic should be its own row, anyway, because it's both its own thing and bleeds into all the gameplay activities. And because it's purple. And because it's sad that the purple stripe was cut from the rainbow flag.

The left-hand side represents the structural unity of the formal system and the dungeon master's rulings or house rules. The right-hand side represents the discourse between the players and dungeon master, the conversation which animates the game and the reality of the world imagined together by the participants. The stripes, again, I'm not sure of. My friend Vodka Gobalsky suggests reading them in order as Fifth Edition players, traditional players, storygamers, and the OSR.

Maybe instead, truer to Levi's original graph but with the handy dandy caveats I explained: social role-play (blue, free), exploration (green, wild), combat (orange, rust), and magic (purple, speaks for itself). That sounds like D&D, doesn't it? Anyway please don't crucify me. This is a bit.

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