DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: A HISTORY

Our colleague, Ann DeVere who owns Plaza Books and we shared a customer last week who collected role-playing material, known to the trade as RPG Stuff. One of my students in Bookstore 102 wants to deal in this genre, also. Ann sent me this about the Father of D(ungeons) & D(ragons):

Gary Gugax was an insurance underwriter, making probability predictions based on data.

In his spare time, he and his friends played war games on a giant table in his basement.

In the late sixties, he changed the rules a bit, and created a new game called Chainmail. This was new and exciting only for a short time, He then decided to add new fantasy elements, with figurines depicting different characters, each with magic abilities. In 1971 he published a fantasy supplement to Chainmail.
 

Once this happened, players began experimenting with Chainmail, and with Gary Arneson, created another game called Blackmoor.  Instead of the traditional armies, controlled by one "general", Arneson got rid of the large armies and had each player assume the identity of a single character, rolling dice to determine character attributes. This was a dramatic change, and was the advent of  "Role-Playing". There were many revisions, to the game, making the characters harder to kill, allowing advancement to higher levels, adding strength characteristics, and allowing points to be carried to the next game.
 

The next level of play was reached when Arneson decided the play was going underground, into a dungeon of an old castle. This provided a wealth of scenarios, and expanded the role of the game host, who became the creative master of the game, part storyteller, part part guide, responsible for designing the dungeons and filling it with monsters and treasures. This was the birth of the Dungeon Master.

 

In the early seventies, Gary Gygax realized the commercial potential of this type of role-playing game, if it were more organized. His skill in reducing the game to coherent lists of monsters, character types weapons and spells, etc. resulted in the 150 page version that became the first commercial edition of the game.
Around the same time, Gygax solved the problem of the six-sided dice that limited options. He found 4, 8, 12 and 20 sided polyhedrons. This opened up possibilities for character enhancement.
 

It was a difficult task to interest publishers in this type of game. They had never seen one that had no real winners or losers, and no definite ending. Gygax decided to publish himself, raised money to found Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR, named it Dungeons & Dragons and released 1,000 copies in 1974.( Arneson received royalties, but did not join or innvest in TSR.)
 

The game immediately caught on with college students and spread mostly by word of mouth, since TSR had no money for marketing or publicity. The first printing sold out in just seven months. It bacame so popular that many bootleg copies were circulated. Gygax didn't mind because it gauranteed the spread of the game's popularity.
 

By 1979 TSR was selling more than $4 million worth of games, dice and other D&D accessories. Then scandal astruck when a Michigan State University student named James Dallas Egbert disappeared into the steam tunnels underneath the school. Rumors started that he was a D&D player and went there to experience a live game. In fact, he was  struggling with depression and addiction, and went there to commit suicide. This attempt failed and he hid out in a friend's apartment for a month before notifying the police that he was OK. The rumors gained national attention however, and tha game was demonized in the media, Ironically, this boosted sales of the game tremendously.
 

In the mid to late seventies, Gygax lost control of TSR, and he severed all ties with the company in 1985. By 1997 the company was in in debt and collapsing. It was acquired by Wizards of the Coast. Gygax developed other role-playing games, but none were as successful as Dungeons & Dragons. His health was declining, and he died in 2008 at the age of 69.

SUMMARY:

1977- The game was split into two versions, Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,

1989 -The second Edition of the game was published,

2000 - The original version of the game was discontinued, renamed Dungeons & Dragons 3rd. Edition,

2003 - Version 3.5 was released,

2008 - The 4th. Edition was released