It’s hard for anyone who grew up in the ’80s not to be taken aback that Dungeons & Dragons, which parents were warned off during the Satanic Panic, is not only still thriving but actively embraced as a sanctioned youth activity. The game involves math and reading and no screens whatsoever…why did it take so long for schools to realize that?
Shelly Mazzanoble’s new book How to Dungeon Master Parenting goes even farther and suggests a little D&D experience might help kids’ parents as well. The volume’s premise is that the skills required to successfully lead a group of players through a quest are transferable to the real-life challenge of leading a child from birth to independence.
Mazzanoble’s challenge is that, as the author of a book that might be a fun baby shower gift or an impulse buy for new parents, she can’t necessarily assume that readers are strongly conversant with either dungeon-mastering or chid-rearing. Nor is the author herself, as she makes clear in the text, necessarily an expert at either. As D&D’s senior brand manager, she specializes in welcoming noobs without alienating hard-core gamers.
Parenting guides constitute a huge, if inevitably awkward, literary genre. How to Dungeon Master Parenting is the first parenting book that, as a new parent myself, I’ve actually finished. I appreciated Mazzanoble’s accounts of a less-than-enchanted experience with official parenting prep. (In particular, I share her befuddlement at how hospitals spend more time teaching parents how to decorate their intended birthing spaces than addressing the nearly one-third possibility that the delivery will happen in a C-section operating room.)
The author’s key insight is that a successful dungeon master knows how to balance freedom and constraint, crafting an experience that players will actually choose to participate in week after week. A kid can’t opt in to having you as a parent, but wouldn’t it be nice if, given the choice, they would?
Because How to Dungeon Master Parenting doesn’t get into the weeds, though, much of it reads like a parenting column with a light overlay of nerdy references. Mazzanoble is the loving mom of a happy kid, which is awesome (as we ’80s kids say), but not a professional qualification for parenting instruction. The book is largely drawn from amusing anecdotes and the hard-won wisdom of one person who has shepherded a child through a decade of life.
How to Dungeon Master Parenting is full of if-you-know-you-know connections between life and lore. Mazzanoble narrates the audiobook herself, but for all the audible engagement she brings to the job, the book isn’t particularly well-served by the audio format: it’s full of lists and headings, and the Dreamscape Media production team doesn’t do anything to help her with musical cues or other ways to signify the relationship between what the author is reading aloud and how the book is formatted.
Two-thirds in, the book takes on a new life with Mazzanoble’s account of introducing D&D as an enrichment activity at her son’s school. That yields real insights about managing kids’ experiences in a fantasy realm, and the author’s engagement is clear — in contrast to the fluffier sections of the book in which Mazzanoble compares kids to fantasy creatures, or otherwise draws connections between character sheets and parenting qualities.
A little of that goes a long way, but there’s something to be said for committing to the bit. When Mazzanoble starts to describe how kids can demonstrate various character alignments, she follows through all the way to chaotic evil.
How to Dungeon Master Parenting makes for an enjoyable light listen, but a more substantial book might have taken the D&D enrichment activity as a starting point and focused on gaming with kids, letting the broader life lessons emerge organically. After all, one thing that D&D’s most vocal ’80s critics most assuredly never tried to do was to serve as dungeon masters to a bunch of grade schoolers.
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