Happy Birthday! Dungeons & Dragons Turns 40

Happy Birthday Dungeons & Dragons!

I’m not the greatest D&D player there is, yet by the guess of experts in the field, January 26th 2014 marks the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons (though as the author admits, it’s tough to nail down one specific day). Either way, that is certainly worth a little celebration!

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#1 – The First Game of Dungeons & Dragons!

Jon Peterson’s article, mentioned above, is a fun piece of research and well worth reading.

Here’s his conclusion of why he thinks January 26th should be the day: Because it is not unlikely that today, 40 years ago, the first ever game of Dungeons & Dragons was played.

… no contemporary source gives any indication of when, during the month of January, the game might have come out. Much later sources, for example Gary Gygax’s piece in the 1999 Collector’s Edition box set, assert that “the first sale of a Dungeons & Dragons game was made in late January 1974.” Is it plausible that it was in fact late in the month? Given Gygax’s February 27, 1974 remark that D&D was “just recently made generally available,” a date in the last week of January seems as good as any. If it had instead been earlier in January, would Gygax still say that the game had “just recently” come out?

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. As the El Conquistador advertisement above notes, Sunday was the day when Gary invited the world to drop by his house, at 1:30 PM, to have a first experience of Dungeons & Dragons. Since it’s a weekend, many of us can clear our schedules to revisit some classic tabletop. So this coming January 26th, 2014, do take the time to celebrate the birth of Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing games.

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#2 – Share a D&D Story!

On the miniatures-wargaming side of the hobby, Dungeons & Dragons is not a game I follow much. To be honest, even when I did play pen-&-paper RPGs more often, I was usually drawn to darker, more futuristic and angst-filled games than Dungeons & Dragons.

Still, I played my share of D&D-games at the time, and even if I hadn’t, well, it’s still Dungeons & Dragons!

Have you been Dungeon-Crawling with a D20 “back then”? Do you still roll-up a Fighter or Wizard once in a while? If so, let me know!

40 years and counting. Leave a Dungeons & Dragons Happy Birthday comment below!

Z.