Dungeons and Dragons turns 40 this Sunday

The Game Room
41

I have fond memories of BECM (Beginner/Expert/Companion/Master set) D&D and all the various editions of AD&D (Particularly 2nd and 3rd) but most of my interest in the hobby these days is the various story-driven games that have grown out of the strange and confusing framework that D&D first provided. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff out there that really demonstrates how much potential there is for this type of game.

It doesn’t hurt that most of them are much leaner, quicker, and easier to prepare for and play than D&D has ever been, either.

42

I still have a copy - with the Lovecraft characters in it.

My first copy of D&D wasn’t the white box, but the “Basic Set”, complete with the “pointy” D4. I have heard two different reasons why these were replaced with D4s with blunt, or even flat, vertices; (a) they don’t “roll” (and they don’t; once they land on a face, they stop), and (b) somebody high up stepped on one once.

I was at a seminar given by Lou Zocchi last year where he showed us a copy of the orange-covered early edition of module B3 (yes, with the creatures that were caricatures of TSR executives).

43

40 years of being the most effective, non-intrusive contraceptive ever. Gygax deserves a Nobel prize - think how many children his game prevented!

Almost as if pre-emptively acknowledging this, I once named one of my mages “Chastity Bolt”.

44

I almost got to be in a Gygax game his last year at GenCon–I was a mod over at ENWorld, and he ran a game for all the mods, but I wasn’t able to make it up there that year. Very sad.

I haven’t played D&D in a few years, but I did play Pathfinder, D&D’s first cousin offshoot, yesterday, a session in a long campaign. I freakin’ love the game; it keeps my brain occupied in a good way.

45

I haden’t realized 1974, I thought it was closer to 1981 when I was 11 and my best friend got the basic set in the red box. Soon after the expert blue box. Lining way out on the edge of nowhere it helped us while away hundreds of hours.

I’m looking at one of my bookcases right now with all my 1st ed. AD&D hardcovers that have circled the globe with me.

Funny story, aroung late 1989 or early 1990 I was in the Navy and had my Mom box up all the hardcovers and send them to me so we could play on the ship in the evenings to pass the time. We opened the box all excited and… she missed the Dungeon Masters Guide.:eek: