Happy 40th D&D!

[bayonetbrant]

D&D turns 40 this month...


Here's an interesting article from Salon about it

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/21/all_i_needed_to_know_about_life_i_learned_from_dungeons_dragons/

When Dungeons & Dragons appeared in January 1974, 40 years ago this month, it was a fun twist on traditional war gaming. No one guessed it was also revolutionary.

For sure, endless homespun cops-and-robbers-style "make-believe" games existed, as did charades and improv theater. Vast tabletop war games also enacted battles with hundreds of miniatures. But no one had married these concepts into a single game, in a box, with rules for role-playing a single character — paladin, thief, wizard, barbarian, elf, dwarf, holy man — giving a personal stake for the player who controlled him or her.

"Those war gamers who lack imagination," the game's co-founder, Gary Gygax, wrote in the game's first introduction, "will not be likely to find Dungeons and Dragons to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers."

The idea was this: You don't play D&D on a board. The game is played on graph paper, using dice, maps and books. But mostly it takes place inside the players' heads. You enact the quest of a character and lead him or her through a series of imaginary adventures, all referred by a fellow player, called the Dungeon Master.

I played a lot of D&D back in the 1970s and 1980s. After conquering me, D&D went on to transform geek culture. Not only had D&D invented a new genre of entertainment — the role-playing game — but it practically gave birth to interactive fiction and set the foundation for the modern video game industry. Into "Halo" or "Call of Duty"? You're playing an incredibly sophisticated version of a D&D dungeon crawl.

After a long hiatus, I play the game again now, as a 47-year-old, mostly grown-up person. Today, with my +5 Goggles of Hindsight, I can see how D&D was subtly helping me come of age. Yes, it's a fantasy game, and the whole enterprise is remarkably analog, powered by face-to-face banter, storytelling and copious Twizzlers and Doritos. But like any pursuit taken with seriousness (and the right dose of humor), Dungeons & Dragons is more than a mere game. Lessons can be applied to the human experience. In fact, all I really need to know about life I learned by playing D&D.

follow the link for the list of lessons :)

[Double Deuce]

Doesn't seem like its been that long.

[Martok]

Nice tribute article.  Thanks for the link, chief.  :) 

Doesn't seem like its been that long.

+1 

[airboy]

I started playing with some memeographed rules sheets from a guy who was a Michigan State Undergrad whose family lived in North Carolina.  I was a Sophomore in High School - so this was 1978.

When I went to College in Fall of 1980 I was a DM and started a group.  I met my (future) wife that semester.  We will be married 29 years this Fall.

[BanzaiCat]

Geez, I bought my first D&D module in 7th grade from a B. Dalton's in the mall. It was the blue cover with the dragon in the center and the backs of the mage and warrior in the foreground. I still have it, actually.

Forty years...sigh. Better go buy a bastard sword or halberd or glaive - so I can chase more punks off my lawn.

[Nefaro]

Geez, I bought my first D&D module in 7th grade from a B. Dalton's in the mall. It was the blue cover with the dragon in the center and the backs of the mage and warrior in the foreground. I still have it, actually.

Forty years...sigh. Better go buy a bastard sword or halberd or glaive - so I can chase more punks off my lawn.

Heh!


I ordered a few sets of "precision" dice awhile back.  Ya know.. the old-school light plastic ones you had to fill in with a crayon or marker? 

After attempting to do the crayon thing, I found that I didn't have a silver crayon to go with my white.  So I just ordered some Very Fine Paint Markers.  Hopefully much easier to get my nostalgia fix.

[MetalDog]

I got the Basic Set in 1980.  The girl who baby sat for us got two for her birthday and gave me one.  It covered levels one to three.  You had to get the Blue Expert box in order to cover levels four through twelve, iirc.  I love that game. 

[BanzaiCat]

I miss D&D. I haven't played it in probably ten years.

I first heard it in math class in 6th grade...I just happened to look over and this kid was describing a room and three orcs coming into it and shooting someone with arrows. I thought, "WTF," and as he kept going the guy was telling him what he was doing...then they tried to quietly roll some dice...it was fascinating to me.

At my last job there was a guy on the team that was part of the D&D Next playtesting group, although that wasn't exclusive at all - you'd sign up and download the content, which I did but didn't have a lot of time to get into. This guy is 28 years old and would go on and on about "Yeah, D&D Next is like the old-school D&D stuff" like he was THERE, man.

He wasn't there, he doesn't know what it was like, with orcs in the treeline waiting in ambush, climbing through jungles in full kits while 2d6 bugs bit at you every other round, looking everywhere at once for the Random Encounter^TM that you knew was coming, like the trees had EYES, man, thinking of that trippy Jimi Hendrix Bart the Bard's haunting melodies playing in the back room while groping 1d4 wenches and losing 1d20 gold every ten rounds...man, he just wasn't there, getting that 1,000-yard RPG stare...you gotta earn that sh*t.

[bayonetbrant]

There's a company that's casting all of the monsters from S1 Tomb of Horrors and running the campaigns on Kickstarter

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/centerstageminis/tome-of-horrors-complete-ii-more-monsters-from-the

So yeah, you get the specific monsters from one of TSR's most famouns monty-haul dungeon crawls.

[bayonetbrant]

And Cat, you know you want this one :)

(sfw)

[bayonetbrant]

the coolness of some of these items might melt your monitor...

[BanzaiCat]

And Cat, you know you want this one :)

(sfw)

That reminds me of the D&D "Carnal Knowledge" manual that seemed just a wee bit too much for an RPG. The target market must have been mommy's little 40-somethings living in their basements.

[MetalDog]

the coolness of some of these items might melt your monitor...

That is a healthy collection of nerd-vana!  While it doesn't carry the same weight as those in the video, I don't think there is very much from my youth playing D&D that I DON'T still have!  Of course, noone will ever make a video of the artifacts I kept from the careers of Warmonger, Asendril and Deodis, but, it makes me feel like I am not the only one pack rattish or nostalgic enough to keep all that stuff.  I did learn something else from watching that video, gay guys like to play D&D, too.

[skeptical.platypus]

There's a certain kind of nerd cred that can only be earned by referring to your old gaming scribbles as "The Maynard Fragments."

[eyebiter]

.