Magic Ampersand

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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.

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 and Dragons.

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

Compare The Noun and the Noun.

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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
• 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.
• Tunnels & Trolls
• Villains and Vigilantes, one of the oldest superhero RPGs.

Video Games

• The computer RPG Might and Magic
• Sword & Sworcery[sic] by Superbrothers
• Two unrelated video games titled Swords & Serpents: one by Imagic for the Intellivision, another by Interplay for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
• Wizards & Warriors, a trilogy of video games developed by Rareware for the NES.
• Another Wizards & Warriors, developed by David W. Bradley for the PC in the style of his earlier Wizardry games.

Web Comics

• Benders and Brawlers, a Campaign Comic based on Avatar: The Last Airbender
• D&DS9, a Campaign Comic based on Star Trek
• Jutsu and Jinchuriki, a Campaign Comic based on Naruto
• Wizards and Wands, a Campaign Comic based on Harry Potter

Fictional Examples

Comic Books

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

Comedy

• Firesign Theatre: Ah, I don't wanna play Dungeons & Vikings!

Fanfic

• Ogres and Oubliettes, set in a My Little Pony universe.
• Cities & Cyclists, an RPG played in the Rosario + Vampire/Ranma ½ crossover fic Big Human on Campus: After School. The monsters try playing perfectly ordinary human beings going about their daily lives. It goes hilariously wrong.

Film

• A sketch in The Onion Movie featured the game Wizards & Warbeasts.

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
• 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

• FoxTrot had a series of strips where Jason and Marcus were playing Houses & Humans, which is pretty much what it sounds like.

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 are workers and students in an industrialized and technological society."

• • Robot Chicken had a similar parody in one of its small in-between scenes.
  • One college comedy magazine in the US had another "mundane life" RPG called Driveways and Desk Jobs.
  • Kingdom of Loathing has "Cubicles and Conference Calls".
• In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, one rival to Black Dog Games' Talespinner system and World of Shadow setting (a Self-Parody of The World of Darkness) was the venerable Labyrinths & Lamiae, formerly owned by LSD Inc, and later by Magicians of the Bay.
• Black Dog themselves produced Axes and Arcana, parodying White Wolf's Swords & Sorcery.

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

• Darths and Droids.
  • Due to the Celebrity Paradox, in the Darths & Droids universe, the makers of Darths and Droids are working on a similar comic about an RPG version of Harry Potter: Wands & Warts. Every 50 episodes, they add a new burrow to this little rabbit hole.
  • In the Wands & Warts universe, the makers are working on a screencap comic about The Sound of Music: Notes & Nazis
  • In that universe universe, the Irregulars are making Mutants & Miscreants. (X-Men)
  • In THAT universe, they're writing Enlisted Men & Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (Aliens).
  • Then Magicians & Munchkins, based on The Wizard of Oz
  • Sandals & Spartans, based on 300, for the 300th strip.
  • Avatars & Avi-Fauna, based on Avatar
  • Terminators & Temporal Paradoxes, based on Terminator.
  • Carcasses & Carcharadons, based on Jaws.
  • Trenchcoats & Turncoats, based on Casablanca.
  • Amphibians & Anthropomorphisms, based on The Muppet Movie.
  • Heists & Hypnagogic Hallucinations, based on Inception.
  • Barnacles & Bilgewater, based on Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • Docs & Deloreans based on Back to The Future
  • Hypnotoads & Hyperchickens based on Futurama
  • Chocolates & Chumps based on Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory (1971)
  • Ids & Idiots, based on Forbidden Planet
  • Egons & Ectoplasms, based on Ghostbusters
  • Hellenes & Harryhausens, based on Jason and the Argonauts
  • Misadventures & Marionettes, based on Thunderbirds
  • Arks & Archaeologists, based on Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • Theme Parks & Theropods, based on Jurassic Park
  • Darcies & Diaries, based on Bridget Jones's Diary
  • Marmosets & Meerkats, based on David Attenborough's The Life of Mammals
  • Gags & Griswolds, based on National Lampoon's Vacation and Terminator 2
  • Elliotts & Extraterrestrials, based on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• The webcomic Dungeon Damage had a group of Dragons playing "Humans and Houses".
• Something Positive of course, has its own take on it.

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.

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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!