D&D History Page #1

This is the History of Dungeons & Dragons according to TSR/Wizards of the Coast/Hasboro.

E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were tabletop wargamers; that is, they used lead miniatures to reconstruct historical battles or construct their own battles. Their favorite era to set their battles in was the medieval period.

Gygax, with Jeff Perren's help, codified a set of rules for conducting both individual and group combat. They and Brian Blume published these rules through Guidon Games (which consisted of Gygax and the others and was run out of Gygax's basement) in 1969 under the as the Chainmail game.

At some point, their battles received an injection of fantasy. (Dave Arneson, possibly under the immediate influence of a Star Trek episode, is usually credited with actually starting the ball rolling.) Originally, the fantasy elements were limited to special military units for wizards and heroes. Eventually, however, the basic concept behind the existing idea of the play-by-mail military campaign, where each player took the part of a ruler who sent out armies as well as engaged in diplomacy and intrigue, was soon combined with the game. Soon, the wizard and hero "units" were removed from the battlefield and sent upon individual quests of mythic scope, as Gygax and Arneson discovered that playing a single character was as much or more fun than playing an entire military unit or army.

One of these first times a group of heroes and wizards took on a fantastic mission took place in 1970 when Dave Arneson created a scenario in which a group of adventurers had to sneak into a castle and open the gates from the inside. He brought his scenario to Gen Con 4 (1971). Gygax, who already had some individual adventuring guidelines of his own, was one of the people who played it. Gygax and Arneson then pooled their efforts to create a game specifically intended for fantasy adventuring.

The concept of character advancement was added to the game via experience points, levels of proficiency in combat and spell use, and a few other refinements. Thus individuals could grow in personality and power instead of just being anonymous members of battle units.

This game had now grown far beyond wargaming or even the Chainmail rules. The group called it The Fantasy Game and proceeded to take it around to all the game manufacturers, including Avalon Hill. Every single company turned the game down, usually because it seemed too open-ended and did not incorporate a way to win.

Gygax and Don Kaye, later joined by Blume and Arneson, were not about to let mass rejection stop them. In 1973, they formed their own company, which they named Tactical Studies Rules after a local wargaming club, the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association. This company was formed to market the "fantasy wargame to be played with paper and pencil" that they renamed Dungeons & Dragons (after a suggestion by Gygax's wife, Mary). The game first appeared at the 1973 EasterCon, had a limited availability throughout 1973, and the first print run of 1,000 copies was officially released (in a white box) in January of 1974. It sold out within the year.

The game consisted of three booklets: Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasure, and Wilderness & Dungeon Adventures. It was also recommended that owners get a copy of Chainmail as well as the Avalon Hill game Outdoor Survival. There were three classes: Fighting Man, Magic-User, and Cleric. The terms were intentionally vague and much research was done to prevent putting anything into the game that actually resembled real-world magic systems. The authors eventually decided to base the game's magic system on the fantasy writings of Jack Vance. Thus, Magic-Users must memorize spells daily, and once cast, the spells are erased from a Magic-User's mind and must be memorized again. There were also four different races: human, dwarf, hobbit, and elf. Objections and legal complaints from the Tolkien estate caused the "hobbit" race to be changed to the "halfling" race later. Humans could be any class and could attain any level of proficiency. Dwarves and hobbits were limited to being Fighting Men and were restricted in the levels they could reach. Elves could alternate between Fighting Man and Magic-User, but they could only switch classes at the beginning of an adventure. Finally, there were three alignments based on the fantasy writings of Michael Moorcock: Law, Neutrality, and Chaos. The original intentions of the game equated law with good and chaos with evil.

At this point, both Gygax and Arneson were running their own campaigns using the game. When the game started getting somewhat popular after the first year or so, they decided to publish some of the details of their campaigns along with some expansion rules for the game. This product was the original Greyhawk. It introduced the Thief character class and had notes on magic, monsters, and more. Then they published Blackmoor, which introduced the Monk and Assassin classes and included the very first module: Temple of the Frog. Then came Eldritch Wizardry, which introduced the Druid class and psionics. The last book of this series was Gods, Demigods, and Heroes, which listed several pantheons for use with the game. During this period, Tactical Studies Rules also began publishing two magazines. In the spring of 1975, it started The Strategic Review (note the creative acronym), and in the summer of 1976, it first published The Dragon (soon renamed to Dragon® magazine).

In 1975, Arneson and Gygax parted ways, and Don Kaye had a fatal heart attack. Kaye's wife decided, along with Gygax and Blume, to break up the company. Gygax and Blume went on to create TSR Hobbies, Inc. later that year.

At this point, the game was comprised of many rules spread throughout numerous books, supplements, and magazines. In addition, Gygax had amassed a pile of campaign notes and new rules that he wished to add to the game. It was decided that a new edition of the game should be released, but instead of calling it a second edition and discontinuing the first, TSR launched Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This expanded and updated version commenced with the release of the Monster Manual in 1977. It was followed in 1978 by the Player's Handbook and in 1979 by the Dungeon Master's Guide. TSR continued to produce the slightly renamed Basic Dungeons & Dragons.

AD&D was originally intended to be a standardized system that combined all of the new and updated rules into one location. It would therefore be the version of choice for tournaments, as everyone using it would be able to easily follow the same set of rules.

The "Advanced/Basic" D&D game lines were apparently executed in an attempt to work around some legal difficulties. When Arneson and Gygax had parted in 1975, Arneson, under the terms of the original partnership, still held some royalty rights to the D&D game. When Gygax went ahead with the new edition, Arneson took TSR to court. The matter was settled in 1981 when both parties signed a mutual agreement.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons skyrocketed in popularity. TSR came out with sourcebook after sourcebook and published many of the now-classic adventure modules set in the world of Greyhawk®. The first issue of Polyhedron newszine was published in 1981. In 1984, TSR released the Dragonlance® saga, a grand epic detailed in both novels and a series of adventure modules. This was followed in 1986 by the first issue of Dungeon® magazine. The very next year, the world that saw birth in Ed Greenwood's home campaign was published as the Forgotten Realms® campaign setting.

By the end of the 1980s, the AD&D was enormous. Its rules and the campaign information for the many fictional places in which characters could exist sprawled across more products than when AD&D was first created. TSR (by this time, the word "Hobbies" had been dropped from the name) decided to once again create a new edition and roll a lot of the new rules into the core books, as well as regularizing, clarifying, and revamping many of the existing rules. Gamers would again have all of the necessary rules in one place, tournament players could once again have a common rules foundation to base play on, and new players could locate a clear starting point into the game. Thus was 2nd edition AD&D born in February 1989.

However, just as it had previously, the game ballooned out over succeeding years as players' demands for new information and more options drove the release of additional sourcebooks and several new campaign settings. In 1995, TSR revamped the look of the 2nd edition AD&D core books and came out with three sourcebooks designed to be optional changes to the system. These optional rules provided players with different ways to create characters, to resolve combat, to have their characters think about and use magic, and to play high-level characters.

In 1997, Wizards of the Coast, Inc., publishers of the wildly popular Magic: The Gathering® trading card game, acquired TSR. In 2000, Wizards of the Coast will publish the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the wholly reworked successor to 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The Player's Handbook is scheduled for release in August, the Dungeon Master® Guide in September, and the Monster Manual in October.