Dungeons and Dragons is 40 Years old!

Last weekend – Sunday 26th January  was the 40th anniversary of the launch of a game that would change the world.  On 26th January 1974 Gary Gygax launched the original set of rules for Dungeons and Dragons.  It was not the first roleplaying game but it was going to have the greatest impact on the hobby.  A few years earlier in 1971 Gygax had published Chainmail. This was a set of skirmish rules for tabletop wargaming. They evolved out of medieval wargame rules but took the critical step of introducing fantasy elements to the combat.

A friend of Gygax called Dave Arneson saw that the mechanics for combat in the chainmail rules could be added to. You could infact create a whole fantasy world along the lines of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, populate it with monsters and treasure and suddenly you had a place ripe for adventures.  Arneson created this world and called it Blackmorr.  What was needed now was a set of rules that did not just include combat and fighting but allowed the players to interact with the world – to travel around it, to buy stuff and to set out on adventures.

That is what the original Dungeons and Dragons rules were designed for. You actually also needed a copy of chainmail to play the original version but very soon reprints and new versions were on the way.

From these humble beginnings a world wide game of massive  proportions has evolved. Dungeons and Dragons has gone through several editions.

Each developed the game, added more depth and at times disputes  over which version was better. Currently the gaming community is split between the “Official 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons”

And Pathfinder which is a massively updated revision of 3rd Edition:

For outsiders who have never played a game it can seem baffling with it weird shaped dice and its sets of rules that can rival a small library at times:

Yet at its heart Dungeons and Dragons like all the other roleplaying games that have developed since (Traveller -Science fiction, Call of Cthuhu -horror, Dr Who -time travel and others) is a big exercise in make believe and story telling. I think that is why as an author I enjoy it so much. Or why I became an author maybe. One of the players is the gamesmaster, Dungeon Master, GM, Umpire or whatever. He creates the world, describes it and populates it with characters. The players are like readers but much better than that. They don’t just read of the adventures – they go on the adventures.  they create their own characters full of flaws and strengths and interests and motivation. They interact with the other players and the GM’s world and together the adventure is taken forward.

Its like a book where the author is only in charge of part of it. The players fill in the rest.  Roleplaying is just damn good fun and usually laugh out loud fun at times.

Roleplaying Captain Scarlet at UK Games Expo

D&D has had bad press at times. The bible belt in the US got panicky that it would lead to people worshipping Satan. But they said the same thing about Harry Potter.  Its just make believe guys. My fire ball spell really doesn’t work alas.

I tried it on a patient and he didn’t go boom!!

If you want to know more about what all the fuss its about all this gaming – come to best Games Convention in the UK UK Games Expo.