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Dungeons & Dragons
(commonly known as D&D) is a fantasy role-playing
game (RPG) first designed by Gary Gygax and David Arneson in
the early 1970s. It was published by Gygax's company, Tactical
Studies Rules (TSR). Dungeons & Dragons evolved from the Chainmail
system of wargaming rules. D&D was one of the first role-playing
games and it is by far the most well-known and best selling.
D&D has exerted a massive influence over its imitators and successors,
in many ways defining what an RPG was — to some extent, the
game continues to define the RPG genre.
Gygax and Arneson designed Dungeons & Dragons to take place
in a fantasy fiction setting based upon popular fiction and
mythology. It was influenced by The Lord of the Rings, popular
Greek and Norse mythology, the pulp fiction stories of Robert
E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and many of the more contemporary
fantasy authors of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Jack Vance and
Fritz Leiber. The game solidified the RPG concept of a referee
(the "Dungeon Master" or DM) who creates the fictional world
of the game and writes the storylines for the other players
to explore.
The original D&D game allowed players to assume the roles of
fighters, magic-users (wizards), thieves, clerics (priests),
or elves. The players would embark upon imaginary adventures,
where they would battle all kinds of fictional monsters from
goblins to dragons to ten foot gelatinous cubes, while gathering
treasure and experience points as the game progressed. These
character classes, monsters, and fantasy world settings were
greatly expanded and improved with further editions of the game.
D&D took the world of wargaming by storm, creating its own niche
and giving birth to a multitude of role-playing games, based
on every genre imaginable. Science fiction, horror, superheroes,
cartoons, westerns, spies and espionage, and many other fictional
settings were adapted to role-playing games, with several of
these games also being published by TSR. However, "fantasy role-playing,"
loosely based on the world of D&D, continued to dominate the
field of role-playing games, and this state of affairs continues
to the present time (as of 2003).
Versions
D&D has gone through several revisions. The first edition
featured just a few character classes and monsters. Advanced
Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) was published between 1977 and 1979,
and greatly expanded the character classes, monsters and spells.
In 1980, Dungeons & Dragons was republished as a simplified
version of the game. During the late 1980s, AD&D Second Edition
was published, which revised the rules again, consolidating
the character classes, and revising the combat system somewhat.
In 2000, a third revision, simply called Dungeons & Dragons,
was published by the game company Wizards of the Coast, which
had purchased TSR two years earlier. This version has informally
been referred to by fans and players as a "third" edition of
D&D, often abbreviated as "3E D&D." It is based on a role-playing
system designed around 20-sided dice, called the d20 system.
It rationalizes movement and combat (especially ranged combat),
removes lots of arbitrary restrictions (now players can use
previously forbidden classes, such as a half-orc monk), and
incorporates skills and feats to allow players to customize
their characters. The d20 system is an open source version of
the D&D core rules that allows others to create D&D-compatible
content.
Other Mediums
A movie, Dungeons & Dragons, very loosely based on the gaming
conventions, was released in 2000. This was preceded in the
eighties by an animated cartooon series of the same name. Another
movie, Mazes and Monsters, also very loosly based on the gaming
conventions, was released in 1982. This made-for-TV movie was
the direct result from not only a popular 80s table-top game
whose players had trouble separating reality from fantasy, but
also from the social controversy surrounding the game players'
participation. The movie title was originally Rona Jaffee's
Mazes and Monsters.
A number of computer RPGs (role-playing games) such as Pool
of Radiance (1988), DragonStrike
(1990), Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures (1993),
Baldur's
Gate (1998), Planescape
Torment (2000), and Neverwinter
Nights (2002) use Dungeons & Dragons-based rules. Forty-nine
computer RPGs have been released and sold under the D&D license
as of October 2002. Some use licensed Second Edition AD&D rules,
while others use the more recent open-source d20 system for
game mechanics as well as trademarks licensed from Wizards of
the Coast. In these computer games, the rules are often modified
to enhance PC-based game play.
A number of console and arcade games such as Warriors of
the Eternal Sun (1992, Sega Genesis), Dungeons & Dragons:
Tower of Doom (1993, arcade), and Slayer (1995,
3DO) were created with the D&D theme in mind, all of which barely
touched on the dynamic role-playing nature of the D&D system,
but all of which were designed and marketed under the D&D license.
Seven console and two arcade games have been released and sold
under the D&D license as of October 2002.
Seven board games were also sold under the D&D license. One
of them, Dungeons & Dragons Computer Labyrinth Game
in 1980 was the original board game which was a computer/board
game hybrid and the first D&D licensed game that contained digital
electronics.
Other Settings
TSR created many fantasy worlds in which D&D games
can be based, although Wizards of the Coast has ceased
product development for some of them. These fantasy worlds
include:
Several competitors to TSR and D&D became successful
in their own right. A number of alternate role-playing
systems include Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium, Champions
by Hero Games, and GURPS by Steve Jackson Games. But D&D
was the first and most successful role-playing game, and
all of the RPGs of today can be traced back to the original
creation of Gygax and Arneson. (Interestingly, Call of
Cthulhu d20 was released in early 2002, using the core
rules of the D&D game.)
Many criticize Dungeons & Dragons for fostering unhealthy obsessions
with the occult and suicide. Often this connection is pointed
out when young people are indicted for crimes, such as a 2001
murder of a Robert M. Schwartz, a prominent scientist in Loudoun
County, Virginia. Nevertheless, studies conducted by Michael
Stackpole show that the suicide rate is lower among gamers than
non-gamers.
Magazines devoted to supporting Dungeons & Dragons include Dungeon
magazine and Dragon
magazine.
External links
The
d20 system at the Open Gaming Foundation
Wizards
of the Coast's D&D site
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