ClassicNotes: Emily Brontë explains how the Brontës created something that sounds shockingly like Dungeons & Dragons:
Life at home was much better for Emily and her siblings: in their isolated childhood on the moors, they developed an extremely close relationship partly based on their mutual participation in a vibrant game of make-believe. In 1826 their father brought Branwell a box of wooden soldiers, and each child chose a soldier and gave him a name and character: these were to be the foundation of the creation of a complicated fantasy world, which the Brontës actively worked on for 16 years. They made tiny books containing stories, plays, histories, and poetry written by their imagined heros and heroines. Unfortunately, only ones written by Charlotte and Branwell survive: of Emily’s work we only have her poetry, and indeed her most passionate and lovely poetry is written from the perspectives of inhabitants of ‘Gondal.’ For Emily, it seems that the fantastic adventures in imaginary Gondal coexisted on almost an equal level of importance and reality with the lonely and mundane world of household chores and walks on the moor.
Each child chose a miniature soldier and gave him a name and character. Then they created a complicated fantasy world. If only they had funny dice…