＂Masters of the Wild＂: Animals and the Environment in Dungeons & Dragons

This essay will engage in detail with the environmental aspects of fantasy role-playing games-particularly Dungeons & Dragons-from the perspective of contemporary ecocriticism and animal studies. In their eclectic cannibalization of various cultural others, these games instantiate the forms of late capitalist, postmodern culture. Nature plays an important part in this exotic simulacrum. Within fantastic worlds, druids, rangers, and other nature-oriented characters engage a multitude of animals, monsters and humanoid creatures, as described in the animal catalogue of the Monster Manual. This bestiary pairs an assortment of exotic images with a rigorously quantified set of biopolitical rules. Through violently mastering this state of ”bare life,” player-characters can advance in prestige and power. The proliferation of hybrid creatures means, however, that the ”human” is not uniquely privileged-thus provoking the question of the position of the ”animal” amid this seemingly subversive mélange of monstrosity.