Magic Ampersand

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The essential element of this trope.
Ampersand Law #1. Early RPGs always had names in this format: [Something] & [Something Else That Usually Begins With The Same Letter]. (Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, Villains & Vigilantes, Chivalry & Sorcery, etc.)
—RPG Cliche List

Any fictional roleplaying game can be recognized as such, because it will have a title consisting of two alliterative plural nouns suggestive of its genre separated by an ampersand. A writer in need of a fictitious parallel to Vampire: The Masquerade, for instance, would probably dub it something like "Cloaks & Coffins". Bonus points if the two nouns are a place name and a monster name.[1]

The Magic Ampersand form serves the same instant-identification purpose for ad hoc roleplaying games that the Chest Insignia does for ad hoc superheroes. It's also frequently used to make jokes about fictional creatures playing a roleplaying game based on our own mundane lives.

Of course, sometimes there is Truth in Television: Bunnies and Burrows, Castles and Crusades, Mutants and Masterminds, Villains and Vigilantes, Tunnels and Trolls... all paying homage to the mother of them all, Dungeons & Dragons. In real life, the Added Alliterative Appeal is optional but common.

(Note: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility are aversions of this trope, being Jane Austen novels that predate tabletop RPGs.)

Compare The Noun and the Noun.

Examples of Magic Ampersand include:

Real-World Examples

Tabletop Games

As mentioned above, the Ur Example is Dungeons & Dragons. Other examples include:

  • Axis & Allies, the most famous World War II wargame franchise of them all.
  • Bunnies & Burrows, where the player-characters are rabbits and hares.
  • Castles & Crusades
  • Catacombs and Caverns was one of the earliest D&D variants (1976).
  • Chivalry & Sorcery
  • The superhero RPG Mutants & Masterminds.
    • And the supplements for different comic book genres: Wizards & Warlocks (sword'n'sorcery comics) and Mecha & Manga (guess).
  • The (unnecessarily complex, at least for this first-edition AD&D veteran) Powers & Perils fantasy role-playing game, published by Avalon Hill, if you can believe it.
  • Starships & Spacemen
  • Two different games called Swords & Sorcery; one by SPI, one by White Wolf.
  • More creatively named Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
  • Tunnels & Trolls
  • Villains and Vigilantes, one of the oldest superhero RPGs (and one that dares to be different by using the word "and" instead of an ampersand).
  • Hellcats and Hockeysticks, "A Role-Playing Game of chaos, anarchy, and decidedly unladylike bahaviour". (Presumably, either they chose not to or they could not get a license for St Trinian's.)
  • Steel & Flame
  • Spitfire & Straightlace
  • Blasters and Bulkheads

Video Games

Fictional Examples

Comic Books

  • Wizards & Warriors (not one of the real ones listed above), in DC Comics' Robin.

Fan Works

Film

Literature

  • Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters.
  • Neal Stephenson's The Big U explicitly compares the LARP Sewers and Serpents, played by characters in the novel, to Dungeons and Dragons.
  • Esther Friesner's fantasy novel Majyk by Hook or Crook has a brief mention of a game called Palaces & Puppies.

Live-Action TV

  • A fictional roleplaying game/laser tag hybrid called Aliens & Asteroids appeared in an episode of War of the Worlds
  • Another Wizards & Warriors, in an episode of Quantum Leap.
  • Yet another Wizards & Warriors was a summer replacement TV series in the early 80s. It parodied many themes and tropes from fantasy stories and FRP games. One episode even featured the hero gathering a "Dungeons and Dragons"-style party of specialists to go on a quest.

Newspaper Comics

Recorded and Stand Up Comedy

Tabletop Games

  • The Dungeon Master's Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons actually parodied itself, with an insert cartoon showing several fantasy characters playing a "mundane life" RPG titled Papers & Paychecks.

"We're pretending we're workers and students in an industrialized and technological society."

Video Games

  • "Grottos and Gremlins" from the video game Bully.
  • In Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All The Girls, a group of students at Sorcerer University is always playing "Malls & Muggers".
    • And they're still playing - with no evidence of having stopped at any point in the year between games - in the next game. One of the tasks that your would-be fratmates have to accomplish in order to get through hazing week (which you can watch) is to make them stop.
  • Simon the Sorcerer II features a group of characters interested in a game called "Apartments and Accountants". Since Simon the Sorcerer is a fantasy series, A&A simulates real life.

Web Comics

Campaign Comics

Web Original

  • From the web series, "Gold": Goblins & Gold

Western Animation

  • An episode of Dexter's Laboratory, (Itself called D & DD) features the titular character running a game of "Monsters & Mazes". Dee-Dee replaces him as the Game Master, with amusing consequences.


It eventually came to the fans' attention that while Dungeons & Dragons had Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine, one niche remained glaringly empty. Here you go: & Magazine!
  1. ↑ Coffins & Cadavers
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