17 ms·

Dungeons and Dragons turns 50 today

154 points by wyclif 3y ago

password4321 3y ago
As someone with relatively little exposure I enjoyed the recent film and I believe it's still available "for free" on Amazon Prime Video.
- bovermyer 3y ago
  It's a good movie, and mirrors the game in a great many ways, both overt and subtle. You should give the game a chance if you have the opportunity.
  - emmet 3y ago
    The number of missed attacks in the film definitely mirrors my experience anyway.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
> "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings". The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105
- sfc32 3y ago
  remove the "fantasy role-playing game" part and you have great description of youtube, tiktok, facebook etc
  - justinclift 3y ago
    "a which uses demonology, witchcraft, ... " ?
  - Lutzb 3y ago
    > But in the 1980s the game came under an extraordinary sustained assault from fundamentalist religious groups who feared its power over young minds. > ... > Pulling described D&D as "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings". It could be said that the source material for the religious groups contains far worse stories. I wonder if the irony was lost on the people back then.
    - austin-cheney 3y ago
      It can go both ways. One of the cofounders of the Dragon Lance stories and games used his religious expertise (LDS) and knowledge of an Indonesian language learned from his religious mission to help develop story plots and the pantheon of gods.
  - lucozade 3y ago
    In fairness, if you remove fantasy role-playing game, it's not a terrible description of the Old Testament.
- ourmandave 3y ago
  To me the best change they made in all that time was getting rid of the 1 gp = 1 xp mechanic. It toned down the murder hoboing a lot.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Was there a different xp mechanic between AD&D's gp = xp and 3+'s only killing is xp? Because I don't see how the switch to that could possibly reduce the incentive to murder.
  - amp108 3y ago
    xp for gold means you get less for killing a monster than you do for robbing it, and encourages a more careful exploratory approach. Modern D&D is much more of a tactical combat game than the original, where encounter design is "balanced" based on the assumption that players will be able to kill what they run into.
    - jghn 3y ago
      > Modern D&D is much more of a tactical combat game than the original Kind of ironic when one thinks about it! Also, depending on how one defines "the original" this statement can be impossible to be true. (not at all disagreeing, it's one of the things I don't like about the modern game)
- CodeAndCuffs 3y ago
  Ironically, I think every single one of these is in the bible. ...Maybe not cannibalism.
  - damnitpeter 3y ago
    Isn't one of the sacraments a little bit cannibalistic?
  - thedailymail 3y ago
    2 Kings 6 24And it came to pass after this, that Benhadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria. 25And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver. 26And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king. 27And he said, If the LORD do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress? 28And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. 29So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son. 30And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. 31Then he said, God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day.
  - toyg 3y ago
    Cannibalism is symbolically re-enacted by practicing Christians every Sunday, when they literally eat the body of Christ at the end of mass.
    - erehweb 3y ago
      Figuratively eat, unless you are a Catholic, who believe they literally eat the body of Christ (transubstantiation).
      - 3y ago
- einpoklum 3y ago
  > satanic type rituals... sadism... demon summoning Wow, they sure didn't like C++ template metaprogramming back in the day!
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Still don't. But they used to too.
INTPenis 3y ago
Only 50? I'm shocked. My sister is 47 and I remember her and her friends playing D&D when I was too young to play, so they put me infront of a computer where I could play Wolfenstein 3D instead. ;)
emmet 3y ago
I'm sure I'm not the only one who is eternally grateful for this game. It's given me years of regular social engagement and strangers have turned into great friends. All because it's weird enough that you usually have to seek out new people rather than play with your existing friends. My only issue is that I've grown a massive addiction to clicky math rocks.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bovermyer 3y ago
Coincidentally, after many months of not playing, running, or writing anything for RPGs, tomorrow I'll be running the first session of a new campaign of advanced 5E. The timing is auspicious!
- thom 3y ago
  Good luck! I’m slightly ashamed to say this but I have found ChatGPT 4 an absolute godsend to design small quests and encounters when I’m pushed for time (or more regularly when my party decides to do something utterly random). Your mileage may vary, of course.
  - bovermyer 3y ago
    For years I've worked on a generator website to handle stuff like this. I don't think I'll ever use AI for it. See: https://ironarachne.com https://ironarachne.com
    - thom 3y ago
      That’s really useful, ta! The advantage of ChatGPT is that I can ensure a certain kind of setting or flavour, or push it to include particularly thematic actions or terrain. Or if the party arrives at a marketplace in a new city, I can quickly spin up ten characters with different backgrounds and potential side quests for them to talk to (and dig in deeper if something particularly fun comes up). I know this makes me weak and feeble but I only have so much time to prepare each session sadly (and my players regularly go off the beaten path).
      - bovermyer 3y ago
        I wouldn't say this makes you "weak and feeble." If the tool is solving a problem for you, then it's doing its job. Just because I won't use AI for this doesn't mean I think others are bad for using it. Now... _selling_ work that was produced with AI, that's a different story.
thom 3y ago
I DM for my son and his friends after school on Fridays. Every week is the same: I try and prepare some grand sweeping conspiracy to uncover, some memorable encounters, a few funny accents. I sort out the relevant terrain tiles, prepare the right miniatures. We painstakingly level up their characters and choose some new spells. Then they spend several hours setting up a street food stall or Rickrolling local dignitaries, laughing until they cry. The greatest game ever conceived.
polotics 3y ago
Reminder for anyone who missed it last year: the movie "Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves" is funny, slick, and does convey a good feeling of what the experience would be to play a game run by an imaginative if whacky Dungeon Master.
- nazgulsenpai 3y ago
  I was quite shocked at the muted reception this movie received. I watched it on a whim after seeing the ad on a Redbox of all places, and I thought it was fantastic. Its a shame it did so poorly because I was hoping for more!
Euphorbium 3y ago
Time to rerelease 1st edition books, for like 100000€ per book. Call it 50th anniversary edition. Worked well for mtg.
- Loughla 3y ago
  The problem is they're still around in great numbers. I'm looking at a first edition dm's guide right now on my shelf. D&D people seem to keep everything, for some reason.
  - dartos 3y ago
    Well the DND books weren’t made with scarcity as a selling point, unlike mtg.
  - dagw 3y ago
    Are you sure you're not confusing D&D with AD&D? Pretty sure, the original D&D didn't have the player guide/dm guide split. There are also at least two version of the core first edition AD&D books, with the first edition (published late 70s)[1] being a lot more rare than the updated version (early 80s)[2]. The second print editions of the 1st edition AD&D books are the ones you tend to see everywhere. [1] This cover: https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/a9/66/a966921d1917875597245433577444341587343_v5.jpg https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/a9/66/a966921d191... [2] This cover: https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/07/36/07369d286b34242597274467277444341587343_v5.jpg https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/07/36/07369d286b3...
    - RugnirViking 3y ago
      huh. I have one of those first cover ADND ones. Matching players handbook and a few supplements from the time. What do you say they're worth? it would be a shame to sell them, I love the weirdness, but it would be nice to know at least.
      - dagw 3y ago
        I'd guess they're worth $50-70 each if they've been reasonably (ab)used and maybe $200-250 if in very good condition.
rpgvanwinkle 3y ago
I played in the 80s and left for a couple decades. Got back into it and was more obsessed in my late 40s! Being a DM is still too hard. Started a little side hustle to help DMs leverage expert advice to prep and play better games http://rpgvanwinkle.Etsy.com http://rpgvanwinkle.Etsy.com
zubairq 3y ago
50 years!!! Can hardly believe it!!! It feels like only yesterday I was playing D&D at a friends house when I was a kid!
mnky9800n 3y ago
I got fed up with DnD (and roleplaying games in general) for the following reasons: * The Emperor has no clothes. Dungeons and Dragons suffers from the very thing that makes it great, all you actually need is imagination. Any rule set and you simply can know in your mind and explain to players. There are many open rule sets if you want a rule book. Thus, there is literally no reason to buy any of the books, figures, etc. unless of course you want them. But then, this is exactly why Wizards of the Coast tried to kill the open source gaming license retroactively. Because they sell a product that is simply a shiny veneer over a person's imagination. I would say games like shadowrun and vampire: the masquerade do a much better job at this because they have created a rather interesting world for characters to participate in. While dnd has scenarios, i never found them all that engaging compared to whatever it is the DM or myself would create. * I started traveling and doing fun things in the world we live in and I stopped having fun in the imaginary world of dungeons and dragons. Simply put, it takes a lot of time to play dnd and I could be doing something else. I have had a lot of fun playing dnd throughout my life but it takes a special group of friends to play with and that only comes along when it comes along. Simply playing for the sake of playing is not fun. * all of the online tools, apps, and all of the various technology that people want to bring into the game destroys the game for me. Why? Because every single piece of technology, even the technology of pen and paper and books takes away from the improvisational collective imagination that occurs in the game. Of course character sheets give players artifacts that represent their players and helps them feel connected to the game. But most other things, other than dice always seem to rip people out of the game and suddenly you are searching a book, app, etc. to find the rule to figure out how to do the thing instead of simply relying on the DM to decide how it should be done. Maybe I have become overly opinionated about this having played an enormous amount of dungeons and dragons, shadowrun, vampire, starwars saga, and every other system that someone wanted to try sometime because it either was attached to some kind of show/movie (although i never played a star trek rpg) or it was a new system that promised to engage the imagination more. But I dunno, I kind of gave up. Also, I DM'ed every game I've played for the 15 years. Maybe I just became jaded. Anyways, essay over.
- rookderby 3y ago
  I would suggest experimenting with a rules-light system like Fate (if you havent) if you ever find yourself interested and have the time to role-playing. Personally, I find myself reading RPG books for the setting (Eclipse Phase, Star Trek, Tunnels&Trolls, Traveller ...) and for their mechanics. I agree that the technology mostly gets in the way of the improv. Also, find a group that lets you play! Stop DMing everything. Maybe check out the Mythic Game Emulator which can take on a lot of the directing part of being a DM. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422929/Mythic-Game-Master-Emulator-Second-Edition https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422929/Mythic-Game-Mast...
Artgor 3y ago
Last year, I started playing DnD with 5e rules and lots of homebrew content for the first time. It is an online game with my friends on Discord. We have character sheets, roll a dice using a bot, and so on. This is really fun, we had some crazy adventures and this campaign is just at early stages :)
xtiansimon 3y ago
Someone else here mentioned how using the books to lookup rules was anti-climactic. Have the makers of D&D ever produced digital tool to help with managing the game and referencing rules? Seems like an ideal use case for a modern chat-based search of the rule books.
- Capricorn2481 3y ago
  DnD Beyond is what people use for 5e
- nervousvarun 3y ago
  Sounds like D&D Beyond?
- Ekaros 3y ago
  There are quite many virtual table top. Or VTT softwares around. Some more official, some less official. So really there is plenty of choice. Still it takes a bit of managing as fully automating everything is quite complex.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  > Seems like an ideal use case for a modern chat-based search of the rule books. With that we're 1/3 of the way to a ChatGPT DM, aren't we?
SeanLuke 3y ago
I am effectively a Stranger Things kid, playing AD&D from 10-14 years old in friends' basements in the early 1980s. A little younger than the pimply nerds in the Dead Alewives skit, but their depiction was pretty accurate, sans Mountain Dew. When my sons were 6 I decided to introduce them to the game. The 5e Starter Set had just come out and it was so similar to the original Basic Box of my youth. The rules were very different and often not in a good way: it was too sterile and formal, not as shaggy and weird as AD&D. But it was fun, and they loved it. I imagine there will be a time, 40 years from now, when they teach it to their sons.
- ozarker 3y ago
  My dad played AD&D as a kid like you, and introduced it to us when we were young (like your kids). We got our cousins into it and we spent every summer adventuring. When 5e came out we tried it a couple times and really didn’t like it for the reasons you mentioned. Coming back to D&D as an adult (coworkers play during lunch once a week) has been strange. The new style of play feels rigid. I can understand the standardization to try and create a uniform experience but it feels like a little of that AD&D magic is lost. Also I’m an adult now haha
  - kaashif 3y ago
    What do you guys mean specifically when you say AD&D is less sterile?
    - SeanLuke 3y ago
      There's a famous table in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide where, if you came across a prostitute, you could determine what kind of prostitute it was. AD&D was weird and arbitrary and unbalanced and a mess. It was also... more fun to explore.
  - tarsinge 3y ago
    I don't think the rules have changed in spirit (especially in 5e) but the mindset has. Basic D&D was very ridig if you followed the rules (like a video game, with codified turns, see "Sequence of play" in B/X https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1509982170193.pdf https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1509982170193.pdf). AD&D already had a rule for everything. But the mindset was DM were loosely following the rules apart from character tables and were making their own house rules for everything. Everybody had a different understanding, sometimes were young, and there was no internet to check if it was correct, as long as it was fun to play.
bsenftner 3y ago
I was 9 then DnD was "released", and me and my friends were already playing "dungeon" for years. We looked at the advertisements, one of the guys got the game kit, and we hated it. Dungeon (our game) was pure imagination, where the DnD was RULES and looking crap up and arguments. And spending money. We argued for a day about it, and never played the official DnD again. I continued playing the pure imagination, no maps, everything vocal and conveyed live, like impromptu jazz, through the 80's, until my career ate my life.
ankaAr 3y ago
Ok guys, roll for Initiative.
kemotep 3y ago
If you aren’t interested in playing (or supporting) modern DnD, for the past few years there was been bit of an Old School Renaissance. Modern reprintings of classic Basic/Expert rule sets in Basic Fantasy RPG or Old School Essentials are easy ways to get in. To say nothing of Dungeon Crawl Classics and of course getting your hands on the original TSR books. There are dozens of kickstarters, fan zines, and self-published indie works out there, expanding, building, remixing, and making new experiences with the classic rule sets. Feels like there is easily another 50 years to this hobby, if you look beyond Wizards of the Coast releases.
- stolenmerch 3y ago
  What's crazy is that the OSR movement itself is now 20 years old and is probably no longer a renaissance or revival but simply a bona fide style of D&D that people play for its own sake.
- jghn 3y ago
  Something I've wondered about the OSR movement, watching from afar. My observation has been that the "typical" D&D play style has changed. By that I mean it seems a lot more common now than it used to be to lean into the actual role playing portion, getting in character, etc. Whereas as an 80s kid, most people I knew would treat it like a narrative at most, "my character swings his sword" type stuff. Are OSR players generally playing the more theatrical/performative style of play but with the older spirit/rules? Or is this also part of the renaissance?
- wintermutestwin 3y ago
  As someone who started playing in 1980, I really don't get this OSR. I remember wanting to play a wizard to cast spells but then realizing that I spent 95% of my turns throwing darts because there were no cantrips. As I have gone through the progression of the DnD editions (and of course many other TTRPGS), I have never felt the urge to look back to those earlier weak versions. I have to wonder if people are being nostalgic for things that have nothing to do with the ruleset.
  - pierat 3y ago
lofaszvanitt 3y ago
Didn't they restrict the sales of the monster compendiums in the US? Because demons and the like? Btw, the current 5th edition D&D is a horrible mess. Bring back negative THAC0!
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  I lived in a small town in the deep south during the 80s and had no problem buying anything D&D, including the Monster Manual, Deities & Demigods, Fiend Folio, and the variations. I don't doubt there were some communities where such things were restricted, either through pressure on the mom and pop stores or because of social pressure killing demand, but in general the panic over the D&D panic was as overblown as the D&D panic itself. But it was incredible free advertising for D&D.
wsc981 3y ago
In the spirit of this event, perhaps it's nice to know some AD&D themed games are currently for sale on GOG. Seems like a nice mix of different game types (RTS, flight sim, platformer, ...) - Silver Box Classics: https://www.gog.com/en/game/silver_box_classics https://www.gog.com/en/game/silver_box_classics - Dragonstrike: https://www.gog.com/en/game/dragonstrike https://www.gog.com/en/game/dragonstrike - DeathKeep: https://www.gog.com/en/game/deathkeep https://www.gog.com/en/game/deathkeep Apparently DeathKeep is pretty bad, but the other 2 could be interesting. If you can get over the (sometimes) ancient graphics and/or sounds.
- jghn 3y ago
  Let's not forget Eye of the Beholder [1] where if you do the wrong thing (with no way to know!) earlier in the game you can't possibly beat it. [1] https://www.gog.com/en/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_one https://www.gog.com/en/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_co...
bkail 3y ago
> For all the reasons listed above, it's probably impossible to narrow in on one date and say with any certainty that this is when the game was released. But if we need to celebrate somewhere in the neighborhood of late January, then the last Sunday of the month (this year, the 26th) seems like the best candidate. The post seems to suggest that it be a "floating" day of celebration rather than "fixed" on January 26th of every year.
drewcoo 3y ago
A blog called "Grognardia" that's not by or for old grogs, but mostly about fantasy sorcery stuff? Hmm. Did the term "grognard" shift meaning on me? I hope I'm not in for another "what timeline am I in" day.
chasd00 3y ago
my friend and i use to play in middle school, at the time i lived in Abilene TX during peak satanic panic so we played at school and kept all our stuff hidden from parents/teachers. He was a DM and loved making up these crazy stories and maps and all that. I just played along and had a lot of fun. One time we met up at a friend's house with some HS kids playing as a group. They took it so seriously the experience was miserable for me. a while later, my friend made up a football game modeled after DND. It was amazing, you would roll for pass completions or quarter back sacks and other things. He was a bright kid but fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up dropping out of HS, not sure what he's doing now. edit: the satanic panic thing was hilarious. I was a skater in middle school Abilene TX and in Baird TX there was a concrete drainage ditch we use to skate in. My friends and I would beg one of our older skater friends who had a driver's license to drive all of us out there to skate. One time someone spray painted a pentagram on the ditch and it was front page news in Abilene, the headline read "Scared in Baird!"
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FiatLuxDave 3y ago
I turn 50 in a few days myself, and I've been playing D&D (and other similar RPGs) since the Basic Set. I still DM two weekly groups, one high magic, one low magic. D&D has been such a big part of my life that it is hard for me to imagine how my life would have been without it. It's truly been a constant companion. I've been gaming with my best friend since 1985. I met my first girlfriend in a game in 1990. I met the first woman I proposed to (but didn't marry) in a game in 1991. I became friends with my first business partner largely through gaming together, and playing D&D after hours was part of the culture at our startup. I once ran a 30 year campaign (1987-2017) which ran for 50,000 years of in-game time and finished with a time loop from the end to the beginning. Yeah, trying to DM with time loops and keeping everything consistent is a nightmare, I'm never doing that again. Nevertheless, it was pretty epic and fun. I'm pretty sure that I was always going to be an imaginative person, but I'm thankful that D&D gave me the tools to share my imagination with my friends. It helped me to make a good social life for myself and not just be a loner living in my own mind. So, thank you to D&D! Here's to the next 50!
6R1M0R4CL3 3y ago
[dead]
hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
I was a troubled soul during my sophomore year in the University back in the early 2000s. Somehow I found several Dragonlance novels and in turn found a lot of AD&D documents online at the Candlekeep website. They satisfied my imagination of escaping into some fantasy world and pulled me away from depression. I'm not a people person so I read the rules, modules and novels all by myself. My favorite settings are Dragonlance, Ravenloft and Planescape but FR has the best novels and computer games. I still have a half-completed Ultima spinoff game based on Dragonlance. Maybe I'll complete it one day.
8bitsrule 3y ago
Some details on the early days of D&D, from a now MIA 2008 Boing Boing post, based in a recycled Joel Johnson 2003 Gygax interview (originally posted in kcgeek.com it says): https://web.archive.org/web/20080305152326/http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/03/04/dungeons-dragons-cre.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080305152326/http://gadgets.bo... " Undaunted, he raised $1000 with his long-time friend and fellow gamer, the late Don Kaye, and formed TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1973. Together, they hand-assembled 1000 copies of the rules..." (10 years ago: https://www.blackgate.com/2014/01/28/40-years-of-adventure/ https://www.blackgate.com/2014/01/28/40-years-of-adventure/ )

154 points by wyclif 3y ago

As someone with relatively little exposure I enjoyed the recent film and I believe it's still available "for free" on Amazon Prime Video.

bovermyer 3y ago
It's a good movie, and mirrors the game in a great many ways, both overt and subtle. You should give the game a chance if you have the opportunity.
- emmet 3y ago
  The number of missed attacks in the film definitely mirrors my experience anyway.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

> "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings". The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105

sfc32 3y ago
remove the "fantasy role-playing game" part and you have great description of youtube, tiktok, facebook etc
- justinclift 3y ago
  "a which uses demonology, witchcraft, ... " ?
- Lutzb 3y ago
  > But in the 1980s the game came under an extraordinary sustained assault from fundamentalist religious groups who feared its power over young minds. > ... > Pulling described D&D as "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings". It could be said that the source material for the religious groups contains far worse stories. I wonder if the irony was lost on the people back then.
  - austin-cheney 3y ago
    It can go both ways. One of the cofounders of the Dragon Lance stories and games used his religious expertise (LDS) and knowledge of an Indonesian language learned from his religious mission to help develop story plots and the pantheon of gods.
- lucozade 3y ago
  In fairness, if you remove fantasy role-playing game, it's not a terrible description of the Old Testament.
ourmandave 3y ago
To me the best change they made in all that time was getting rid of the 1 gp = 1 xp mechanic. It toned down the murder hoboing a lot.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Was there a different xp mechanic between AD&D's gp = xp and 3+'s only killing is xp? Because I don't see how the switch to that could possibly reduce the incentive to murder.
- amp108 3y ago
  xp for gold means you get less for killing a monster than you do for robbing it, and encourages a more careful exploratory approach. Modern D&D is much more of a tactical combat game than the original, where encounter design is "balanced" based on the assumption that players will be able to kill what they run into.
  - jghn 3y ago
    > Modern D&D is much more of a tactical combat game than the original Kind of ironic when one thinks about it! Also, depending on how one defines "the original" this statement can be impossible to be true. (not at all disagreeing, it's one of the things I don't like about the modern game)
CodeAndCuffs 3y ago
Ironically, I think every single one of these is in the bible. ...Maybe not cannibalism.
- damnitpeter 3y ago
  Isn't one of the sacraments a little bit cannibalistic?
- thedailymail 3y ago
  2 Kings 6 24And it came to pass after this, that Benhadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria. 25And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver. 26And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king. 27And he said, If the LORD do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress? 28And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. 29So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son. 30And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. 31Then he said, God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day.
- toyg 3y ago
  Cannibalism is symbolically re-enacted by practicing Christians every Sunday, when they literally eat the body of Christ at the end of mass.
  - erehweb 3y ago
    Figuratively eat, unless you are a Catholic, who believe they literally eat the body of Christ (transubstantiation).
    - 3y ago
einpoklum 3y ago
> satanic type rituals... sadism... demon summoning Wow, they sure didn't like C++ template metaprogramming back in the day!
- thfuran 3y ago
  Still don't. But they used to too.

INTPenis 3y ago

Only 50? I'm shocked. My sister is 47 and I remember her and her friends playing D&D when I was too young to play, so they put me infront of a computer where I could play Wolfenstein 3D instead. ;)

emmet 3y ago

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is eternally grateful for this game. It's given me years of regular social engagement and strangers have turned into great friends. All because it's weird enough that you usually have to seek out new people rather than play with your existing friends. My only issue is that I've grown a massive addiction to clicky math rocks.

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bovermyer 3y ago

Coincidentally, after many months of not playing, running, or writing anything for RPGs, tomorrow I'll be running the first session of a new campaign of advanced 5E. The timing is auspicious!

thom 3y ago
Good luck! I’m slightly ashamed to say this but I have found ChatGPT 4 an absolute godsend to design small quests and encounters when I’m pushed for time (or more regularly when my party decides to do something utterly random). Your mileage may vary, of course.
- bovermyer 3y ago
  For years I've worked on a generator website to handle stuff like this. I don't think I'll ever use AI for it. See: https://ironarachne.com https://ironarachne.com
  - thom 3y ago
    That’s really useful, ta! The advantage of ChatGPT is that I can ensure a certain kind of setting or flavour, or push it to include particularly thematic actions or terrain. Or if the party arrives at a marketplace in a new city, I can quickly spin up ten characters with different backgrounds and potential side quests for them to talk to (and dig in deeper if something particularly fun comes up). I know this makes me weak and feeble but I only have so much time to prepare each session sadly (and my players regularly go off the beaten path).
    - bovermyer 3y ago
      I wouldn't say this makes you "weak and feeble." If the tool is solving a problem for you, then it's doing its job. Just because I won't use AI for this doesn't mean I think others are bad for using it. Now... _selling_ work that was produced with AI, that's a different story.

thom 3y ago

I DM for my son and his friends after school on Fridays. Every week is the same: I try and prepare some grand sweeping conspiracy to uncover, some memorable encounters, a few funny accents. I sort out the relevant terrain tiles, prepare the right miniatures. We painstakingly level up their characters and choose some new spells. Then they spend several hours setting up a street food stall or Rickrolling local dignitaries, laughing until they cry. The greatest game ever conceived.

polotics 3y ago

Reminder for anyone who missed it last year: the movie "Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves" is funny, slick, and does convey a good feeling of what the experience would be to play a game run by an imaginative if whacky Dungeon Master.

nazgulsenpai 3y ago
I was quite shocked at the muted reception this movie received. I watched it on a whim after seeing the ad on a Redbox of all places, and I thought it was fantastic. Its a shame it did so poorly because I was hoping for more!

Euphorbium 3y ago

Time to rerelease 1st edition books, for like 100000€ per book. Call it 50th anniversary edition. Worked well for mtg.

Loughla 3y ago
The problem is they're still around in great numbers. I'm looking at a first edition dm's guide right now on my shelf. D&D people seem to keep everything, for some reason.
- dartos 3y ago
  Well the DND books weren’t made with scarcity as a selling point, unlike mtg.
- dagw 3y ago
  Are you sure you're not confusing D&D with AD&D? Pretty sure, the original D&D didn't have the player guide/dm guide split. There are also at least two version of the core first edition AD&D books, with the first edition (published late 70s)[1] being a lot more rare than the updated version (early 80s)[2]. The second print editions of the 1st edition AD&D books are the ones you tend to see everywhere. [1] This cover: https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/a9/66/a966921d1917875597245433577444341587343_v5.jpg https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/a9/66/a966921d191... [2] This cover: https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/07/36/07369d286b34242597274467277444341587343_v5.jpg https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/07/36/07369d286b3...
  - RugnirViking 3y ago
    huh. I have one of those first cover ADND ones. Matching players handbook and a few supplements from the time. What do you say they're worth? it would be a shame to sell them, I love the weirdness, but it would be nice to know at least.
    - dagw 3y ago
      I'd guess they're worth $50-70 each if they've been reasonably (ab)used and maybe $200-250 if in very good condition.

rpgvanwinkle 3y ago

I played in the 80s and left for a couple decades. Got back into it and was more obsessed in my late 40s! Being a DM is still too hard. Started a little side hustle to help DMs leverage expert advice to prep and play better games http://rpgvanwinkle.Etsy.com http://rpgvanwinkle.Etsy.com

zubairq 3y ago

50 years!!! Can hardly believe it!!! It feels like only yesterday I was playing D&D at a friends house when I was a kid!

mnky9800n 3y ago

I got fed up with DnD (and roleplaying games in general) for the following reasons: * The Emperor has no clothes. Dungeons and Dragons suffers from the very thing that makes it great, all you actually need is imagination. Any rule set and you simply can know in your mind and explain to players. There are many open rule sets if you want a rule book. Thus, there is literally no reason to buy any of the books, figures, etc. unless of course you want them. But then, this is exactly why Wizards of the Coast tried to kill the open source gaming license retroactively. Because they sell a product that is simply a shiny veneer over a person's imagination. I would say games like shadowrun and vampire: the masquerade do a much better job at this because they have created a rather interesting world for characters to participate in. While dnd has scenarios, i never found them all that engaging compared to whatever it is the DM or myself would create. * I started traveling and doing fun things in the world we live in and I stopped having fun in the imaginary world of dungeons and dragons. Simply put, it takes a lot of time to play dnd and I could be doing something else. I have had a lot of fun playing dnd throughout my life but it takes a special group of friends to play with and that only comes along when it comes along. Simply playing for the sake of playing is not fun. * all of the online tools, apps, and all of the various technology that people want to bring into the game destroys the game for me. Why? Because every single piece of technology, even the technology of pen and paper and books takes away from the improvisational collective imagination that occurs in the game. Of course character sheets give players artifacts that represent their players and helps them feel connected to the game. But most other things, other than dice always seem to rip people out of the game and suddenly you are searching a book, app, etc. to find the rule to figure out how to do the thing instead of simply relying on the DM to decide how it should be done. Maybe I have become overly opinionated about this having played an enormous amount of dungeons and dragons, shadowrun, vampire, starwars saga, and every other system that someone wanted to try sometime because it either was attached to some kind of show/movie (although i never played a star trek rpg) or it was a new system that promised to engage the imagination more. But I dunno, I kind of gave up. Also, I DM'ed every game I've played for the 15 years. Maybe I just became jaded. Anyways, essay over.

rookderby 3y ago
I would suggest experimenting with a rules-light system like Fate (if you havent) if you ever find yourself interested and have the time to role-playing. Personally, I find myself reading RPG books for the setting (Eclipse Phase, Star Trek, Tunnels&Trolls, Traveller ...) and for their mechanics. I agree that the technology mostly gets in the way of the improv. Also, find a group that lets you play! Stop DMing everything. Maybe check out the Mythic Game Emulator which can take on a lot of the directing part of being a DM. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422929/Mythic-Game-Master-Emulator-Second-Edition https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422929/Mythic-Game-Mast...

Artgor 3y ago

Last year, I started playing DnD with 5e rules and lots of homebrew content for the first time. It is an online game with my friends on Discord. We have character sheets, roll a dice using a bot, and so on. This is really fun, we had some crazy adventures and this campaign is just at early stages :)

xtiansimon 3y ago

Someone else here mentioned how using the books to lookup rules was anti-climactic. Have the makers of D&D ever produced digital tool to help with managing the game and referencing rules? Seems like an ideal use case for a modern chat-based search of the rule books.

Capricorn2481 3y ago
DnD Beyond is what people use for 5e
nervousvarun 3y ago
Sounds like D&D Beyond?
Ekaros 3y ago
There are quite many virtual table top. Or VTT softwares around. Some more official, some less official. So really there is plenty of choice. Still it takes a bit of managing as fully automating everything is quite complex.
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
> Seems like an ideal use case for a modern chat-based search of the rule books. With that we're 1/3 of the way to a ChatGPT DM, aren't we?

SeanLuke 3y ago

I am effectively a Stranger Things kid, playing AD&D from 10-14 years old in friends' basements in the early 1980s. A little younger than the pimply nerds in the Dead Alewives skit, but their depiction was pretty accurate, sans Mountain Dew. When my sons were 6 I decided to introduce them to the game. The 5e Starter Set had just come out and it was so similar to the original Basic Box of my youth. The rules were very different and often not in a good way: it was too sterile and formal, not as shaggy and weird as AD&D. But it was fun, and they loved it. I imagine there will be a time, 40 years from now, when they teach it to their sons.

ozarker 3y ago
My dad played AD&D as a kid like you, and introduced it to us when we were young (like your kids). We got our cousins into it and we spent every summer adventuring. When 5e came out we tried it a couple times and really didn’t like it for the reasons you mentioned. Coming back to D&D as an adult (coworkers play during lunch once a week) has been strange. The new style of play feels rigid. I can understand the standardization to try and create a uniform experience but it feels like a little of that AD&D magic is lost. Also I’m an adult now haha
- kaashif 3y ago
  What do you guys mean specifically when you say AD&D is less sterile?
  - SeanLuke 3y ago
    There's a famous table in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide where, if you came across a prostitute, you could determine what kind of prostitute it was. AD&D was weird and arbitrary and unbalanced and a mess. It was also... more fun to explore.
- tarsinge 3y ago
  I don't think the rules have changed in spirit (especially in 5e) but the mindset has. Basic D&D was very ridig if you followed the rules (like a video game, with codified turns, see "Sequence of play" in B/X https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1509982170193.pdf https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1509982170193.pdf). AD&D already had a rule for everything. But the mindset was DM were loosely following the rules apart from character tables and were making their own house rules for everything. Everybody had a different understanding, sometimes were young, and there was no internet to check if it was correct, as long as it was fun to play.

bsenftner 3y ago

I was 9 then DnD was "released", and me and my friends were already playing "dungeon" for years. We looked at the advertisements, one of the guys got the game kit, and we hated it. Dungeon (our game) was pure imagination, where the DnD was RULES and looking crap up and arguments. And spending money. We argued for a day about it, and never played the official DnD again. I continued playing the pure imagination, no maps, everything vocal and conveyed live, like impromptu jazz, through the 80's, until my career ate my life.

ankaAr 3y ago

Ok guys, roll for Initiative.

kemotep 3y ago

If you aren’t interested in playing (or supporting) modern DnD, for the past few years there was been bit of an Old School Renaissance. Modern reprintings of classic Basic/Expert rule sets in Basic Fantasy RPG or Old School Essentials are easy ways to get in. To say nothing of Dungeon Crawl Classics and of course getting your hands on the original TSR books. There are dozens of kickstarters, fan zines, and self-published indie works out there, expanding, building, remixing, and making new experiences with the classic rule sets. Feels like there is easily another 50 years to this hobby, if you look beyond Wizards of the Coast releases.

stolenmerch 3y ago
What's crazy is that the OSR movement itself is now 20 years old and is probably no longer a renaissance or revival but simply a bona fide style of D&D that people play for its own sake.
jghn 3y ago
Something I've wondered about the OSR movement, watching from afar. My observation has been that the "typical" D&D play style has changed. By that I mean it seems a lot more common now than it used to be to lean into the actual role playing portion, getting in character, etc. Whereas as an 80s kid, most people I knew would treat it like a narrative at most, "my character swings his sword" type stuff. Are OSR players generally playing the more theatrical/performative style of play but with the older spirit/rules? Or is this also part of the renaissance?
wintermutestwin 3y ago
As someone who started playing in 1980, I really don't get this OSR. I remember wanting to play a wizard to cast spells but then realizing that I spent 95% of my turns throwing darts because there were no cantrips. As I have gone through the progression of the DnD editions (and of course many other TTRPGS), I have never felt the urge to look back to those earlier weak versions. I have to wonder if people are being nostalgic for things that have nothing to do with the ruleset.
- pierat 3y ago

lofaszvanitt 3y ago

Didn't they restrict the sales of the monster compendiums in the US? Because demons and the like? Btw, the current 5th edition D&D is a horrible mess. Bring back negative THAC0!

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
I lived in a small town in the deep south during the 80s and had no problem buying anything D&D, including the Monster Manual, Deities & Demigods, Fiend Folio, and the variations. I don't doubt there were some communities where such things were restricted, either through pressure on the mom and pop stores or because of social pressure killing demand, but in general the panic over the D&D panic was as overblown as the D&D panic itself. But it was incredible free advertising for D&D.

wsc981 3y ago

In the spirit of this event, perhaps it's nice to know some AD&D themed games are currently for sale on GOG. Seems like a nice mix of different game types (RTS, flight sim, platformer, ...) - Silver Box Classics: https://www.gog.com/en/game/silver_box_classics https://www.gog.com/en/game/silver_box_classics - Dragonstrike: https://www.gog.com/en/game/dragonstrike https://www.gog.com/en/game/dragonstrike - DeathKeep: https://www.gog.com/en/game/deathkeep https://www.gog.com/en/game/deathkeep Apparently DeathKeep is pretty bad, but the other 2 could be interesting. If you can get over the (sometimes) ancient graphics and/or sounds.

jghn 3y ago
Let's not forget Eye of the Beholder [1] where if you do the wrong thing (with no way to know!) earlier in the game you can't possibly beat it. [1] https://www.gog.com/en/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_one https://www.gog.com/en/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_co...

bkail 3y ago

> For all the reasons listed above, it's probably impossible to narrow in on one date and say with any certainty that this is when the game was released. But if we need to celebrate somewhere in the neighborhood of late January, then the last Sunday of the month (this year, the 26th) seems like the best candidate. The post seems to suggest that it be a "floating" day of celebration rather than "fixed" on January 26th of every year.

drewcoo 3y ago

A blog called "Grognardia" that's not by or for old grogs, but mostly about fantasy sorcery stuff? Hmm. Did the term "grognard" shift meaning on me? I hope I'm not in for another "what timeline am I in" day.

chasd00 3y ago

my friend and i use to play in middle school, at the time i lived in Abilene TX during peak satanic panic so we played at school and kept all our stuff hidden from parents/teachers. He was a DM and loved making up these crazy stories and maps and all that. I just played along and had a lot of fun. One time we met up at a friend's house with some HS kids playing as a group. They took it so seriously the experience was miserable for me. a while later, my friend made up a football game modeled after DND. It was amazing, you would roll for pass completions or quarter back sacks and other things. He was a bright kid but fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up dropping out of HS, not sure what he's doing now. edit: the satanic panic thing was hilarious. I was a skater in middle school Abilene TX and in Baird TX there was a concrete drainage ditch we use to skate in. My friends and I would beg one of our older skater friends who had a driver's license to drive all of us out there to skate. One time someone spray painted a pentagram on the ditch and it was front page news in Abilene, the headline read "Scared in Baird!"

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FiatLuxDave 3y ago

I turn 50 in a few days myself, and I've been playing D&D (and other similar RPGs) since the Basic Set. I still DM two weekly groups, one high magic, one low magic. D&D has been such a big part of my life that it is hard for me to imagine how my life would have been without it. It's truly been a constant companion. I've been gaming with my best friend since 1985. I met my first girlfriend in a game in 1990. I met the first woman I proposed to (but didn't marry) in a game in 1991. I became friends with my first business partner largely through gaming together, and playing D&D after hours was part of the culture at our startup. I once ran a 30 year campaign (1987-2017) which ran for 50,000 years of in-game time and finished with a time loop from the end to the beginning. Yeah, trying to DM with time loops and keeping everything consistent is a nightmare, I'm never doing that again. Nevertheless, it was pretty epic and fun. I'm pretty sure that I was always going to be an imaginative person, but I'm thankful that D&D gave me the tools to share my imagination with my friends. It helped me to make a good social life for myself and not just be a loner living in my own mind. So, thank you to D&D! Here's to the next 50!

6R1M0R4CL3 3y ago

[dead]

hnthrowaway0328 3y ago

I was a troubled soul during my sophomore year in the University back in the early 2000s. Somehow I found several Dragonlance novels and in turn found a lot of AD&D documents online at the Candlekeep website. They satisfied my imagination of escaping into some fantasy world and pulled me away from depression. I'm not a people person so I read the rules, modules and novels all by myself. My favorite settings are Dragonlance, Ravenloft and Planescape but FR has the best novels and computer games. I still have a half-completed Ultima spinoff game based on Dragonlance. Maybe I'll complete it one day.

8bitsrule 3y ago

Some details on the early days of D&D, from a now MIA 2008 Boing Boing post, based in a recycled Joel Johnson 2003 Gygax interview (originally posted in kcgeek.com it says): https://web.archive.org/web/20080305152326/http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/03/04/dungeons-dragons-cre.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080305152326/http://gadgets.bo... " Undaunted, he raised $1000 with his long-time friend and fellow gamer, the late Don Kaye, and formed TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1973. Together, they hand-assembled 1000 copies of the rules..." (10 years ago: https://www.blackgate.com/2014/01/28/40-years-of-adventure/ https://www.blackgate.com/2014/01/28/40-years-of-adventure/ )