Cover -- The Blackwell Philosophy and PopCulture Series -- Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy: Read and Gain Advantage on all Wisdom Checks -- Copyright -- Contents -- Abbreviations Used in the Text -- Introduction A Game Like No Other -- Part I Lawful Good vs. Chaotic Evil -- 1 Sympathy for the Devils: Free Will and Dungeons & Dragons -- Pity the Pit Fiend -- Damnation Without a Saving Throw -- Free Will in the Lair of the Succubus -- How Thorin Axebeard Randomly Defended the Bridge -- Four-Dimensional Dungeons and Powerless Dragons -- Free Will and Other Imaginary Monsters -- Notes -- 2 Paragons and Knaves: Does Good Character Make for a Good Character? -- The Good, the Bad, and the Legendary -- Taking Alignment Seriously -- Paladins and Trolleys -- The Ring of Gyges and the Arch-Lich -- Note -- 3 Is Anyone Actually Chaotic Evil?: A Playable Theory of Willful Wrongdoing -- No Dice -- Socrates, the First DM -- Aristotle - Unearthed Arcana -- Thomas Aquinas - 15th-Level Cleric -- Monster Immanuel -- Dietrich von Hildebrand - Third Edition Rules -- Hannah Arendt and the Campaign of Evil -- End of Round -- Notes -- Part II So Did You Win? Philosophy and D&D Gameplay -- 4 Save vs. Death: Some Reflections on the Lifecycle of PCs -- Death Be Not Proud -- Phaedo and Confronting the Reaper -- The Graveyard of Dead PCs -- Ability Scores: The Natural Lottery -- Notes -- 5 To My Other Self: Reflection and Existentialism in Dungeons & Dragons -- The Actor, the Author, and the Other -- In Word and Deed -- Mirror and Illusion -- Experience without EXP -- Notes -- 6 Player-Character Is What You Are in the Dark: The Phenomenology of Immersion in Dungeons & Dragons -- The Idea of Immersion Leads to Phenomenology -- What Is Phenomenology? -- Seeing Is Believing: Immersion as Visualization -- Am I My Character? Immersion and Identification.

Alea and Immersion: The Role of the Dice -- For Tyros and Grognards -- Notes -- Part III Crafting Worlds -- 7 Imagination and Creation: The Morality of Fiction in Dungeons & Dragons -- The Traditionalists (aka the "Lawful Good") -- D&D Rules! -- Lost in the Labyrinth? -- The Postmodernists (aka "Chaotic" and beyond Good and Evil...) -- A New Quest -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- 8 Dungeonmastery as Soulcraft -- The Essence of Fantasy -- The Magic of Morality -- The Consolation of Fantasy -- Worldbuilding as Moral Expression -- Missed Opportunities -- Notes -- Part IV Foray into The Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance -- 9 Menzoberranzan: A Perfect Unjust State -- The Myth of Gyges -- "Creatures of survival, not of principle" -- "I forgive your foolish thoughts … this time!" -- "What do you see that the rest of us cannot?" -- "His companions…viewed their surroundings through tainted eyes" -- "How I wish that one had learned his place, his values" -- Notes -- 10 Who Is Raistlin Majere? -- The Question and the Test -- Three Robes, Three Answers -- Taking the Test -- The Master of Past and Present -- Appendix : Tales of Raistlin -- Notes -- Part V The Ethics of Spellcasting -- 11 Expediency and Expendability: An Exhumation of the Morality of Necromancy -- From Killing to Kant: Exploring the [Evil] Descriptor -- The Ghost in the Machine: The Dualism of Dungeons & Dragons8 -- The [Evil]ness of the Undead: Euthyphro Revisited -- Necromancy for Fun and Profit: Some Examples Evaluated -- Hobbes, Machiavelli, and a Necromancer Walk into a Bar… -- Walk like an Egyptian: Necromancy as Taboo and a "Possible World" Argument -- Hug a Zombie: Recognizing and Moving Beyond Our Cultural Prejudice -- Notes -- 12 By Friendship or Force: Is it Ethical to Summon Animals to Fight by Your Side in Dungeons & Dragons? -- Mages and the Ethics of Summoning.

Wizards and the Ethics of Familiars -- Animal Ethics and Character Alignment -- Druids and the Ethics of Summoning Animals -- Trouble in the Druid Grove -- Notes -- Part VI Dungeons & Dragons Out in the Real World -- 13 "Kill her, kill her! Oh God, I'm sorry!": Spectating Dungeons & Dragons -- "Sixteen Diamonds' Worth of Dirt": Television and Dungeons & Dragons -- Legacies -- "Don't blow the Daily" Learning 2 Play -- Notes -- 14 Berserker in a Skirt: Sex and Gender in Dungeons & Dragons -- Sex and Gender -- Gender Games -- Fantasy and Imagination as Vehicles for Social Change -- Berserker in a Skirt -- Liberation and Laughter -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- 15 "Others play at dice"1: Friendship and Dungeons & Dragons -- WANTED -- WANTED -- "Someone pass the Mountain Dew" -- The Crusty Dagger: Food and Ale -- "The friendship of those who are good then, is friendship most of all" -- "I'm glad you're with me now at the end of all things" -- Notes -- Contributors -- Index.