Published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in a hand-assembled run of a thousand boxes (1974)
Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson; the first print run sold out within a year
General knowledge · Film, TV & games
Dungeons & Dragons
First published 1974
Games — the first commercial tabletop role-playing game
The first commercially published tabletop role-playing game, created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and issued in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in a hand-assembled run of a thousand boxed sets. It grew out of Gygax's medieval miniatures rules Chainmail (1971) and Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, in which players controlled a single character rather than an army. One player, the Dungeon Master, describes the world and adjudicates; the others play characters whose actions are resolved by rolling polyhedral dice, above all the twenty-sided die.
How to spot them
- ▸A Dungeon Master behind a screen, a party of characters, and six polyhedral dice
- ▸Character classes and races, alignment on two axes, hit points and experience points
- ▸Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; Tactical Studies Rules; later Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro
- ▸A moral panic in the 1980s, and a nostalgia boom from the 2010s
Key facts
Grew out of Chainmail, a 1971 medieval miniatures wargame, and a campaign called Blackmoor (1971)
Chainmail was by Gygax and Jeff Perren; Blackmoor was Dave Arneson's innovation of one player, one character
A twenty-sided die, with five others of four, six, eight, ten and twelve faces
The five Platonic solids plus the pentagonal trapezohedron used for the ten-sider
The disappearance of a student into Michigan State's steam tunnels in 1979, and the panic that followed (1979)
James Dallas Egbert III; the game was wrongly blamed, fuelling a decade of accusations of occultism
Tactical Studies Rules sold to Wizards of the Coast in 1997, and on to Hasbro two years later (1997)
TSR had nearly collapsed; the third edition followed in 2000
An Open Game License issued in 2000 that let rival publishers build on the d20 system (2000)
An attempt to withdraw it in 2023 provoked a revolt among players and publishers
Four boys in a Hawkins basement in 1983, naming a monster after one in the rulebook (2016)
Stranger Things, whose Demogorgon and Mind Flayer are taken straight from the Monster Manual
Honor Among Thieves, a 2023 film with Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and a shape-shifting druid (2023)
Directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley; far better received than the 2000 film
Quick-fire facts
- •Created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson; first published in 1974 by TSR in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
- •It developed from Chainmail (1971), a medieval miniatures wargame by Gygax and Jeff Perren, and Arneson's Blackmoor campaign
- •The standard set of dice is d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20
- •Advanced Dungeons & Dragons appeared from 1977, with the Monster Manual, Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide
- •The 1979 disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III was wrongly blamed on the game, helping to start the 'satanic panic'
- •TSR was sold to Wizards of the Coast in 1997; Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast in 1999
- •The third edition (2000) came with the Open Game License, allowing others to publish compatible material
- •The fifth edition was published in 2014 and revised in 2024
- •Gary Gygax died in 2008 and Dave Arneson in 2009
- •Popular settings include Gygax's Greyhawk, Arneson's Blackmoor, Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Ravenloft
Drill it — 8 cards
1 / 8new card
Sources
- David M. Ewalt — Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons
- Michael Witwer — Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons