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A Forgotten Variant: Loera, the Massively Multiplayer Tabletop RPG
The original Dungeons & Dragons rules invited fans to make their own additions and modifications to the system, and many early adopters took TSR up on that offer. While some of the unofficial...
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Vintage Ad: Slain Any Wicked Dragons Lately?
This D&D advertisement dates from the first half of 1977, a stopping point when TSR had wrapped up publishing the original Dungeons & Dragons game and hadn't yet put anything out to replace it....
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The Invention of Randomly Generated Dungeons
The debut issue of the Strategic Review carried the first expansions to Dungeons & Dragons to appear under TSR's imprint, including rules for solo gaming which Gygax credited to himself and George...
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D&D in the News (1977): You, Too, Can Be a Wizard
Leslie Kemp, in the summer of 1977, gives us a rare mainstream perspective on the progress of Dungeons & Dragons, this time in the city of Tampa, Florida, for the Tampa Tribune. She reports the...
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A Forgotten Variant: Catacombs and Caverns
The original Dungeons & Dragons books urged players to make the game their own, to devise their own characters, settings, and even rules. D&D was, as Games magazine mused in 1979, less of a...
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Vintage Ad: Think of TSR
By 1977, the three letters "TSR" had long since lost their original association with Tactical Studies Rules. This let TSR Hobbies play with the acronym as a mnemonic for its three product silos:...
View ArticleGary Gygax on "Tomorrow" with Tom Snyder (1979)
It was early in November 1979: the publication of the Dungeon Masters Guide had recently completed the core Advanced Dungeons & Dragons trilogy, and thanks to the "steam tunnel" incident, D&D...
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D&D in the News (1976): The Duke and the Evil Balrog
Early press about D&D rarely has the luxury of wading deep into the play of ongoing campaigns. That is what makes this piece by Philip Hilts in the Washington Post from August 9, 1976 so...
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A Forgotten Variant: Sir Pellinore's Game
Of the gamers who assembled and self-published variant fantasy role-playing rules in the 1970s, few showed the dedication of Michael Brines. Over the course of four years, he came out with three Sir...
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Vintage Ad: Does Your Shop Sell Military Miniatures?
Early in 1976, no one had any idea that Dungeons & Dragons would go on to transform the gaming hobby. It had then sold a little more than 4,000 copies, which made it TSR's bestseller. but TSR...
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War of the Empires (1969), Gygax's Space Conquest Campaign
Two years before Chainmail was released, and a year before there was a Castle & Crusade Society, Gary Gygax was something of a rocket man. When he took over development of the War of the Empires...
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D&D in the News (1976): You're either a Fighter, Magic-user, Cleric, or Thief
If anything could draw the attention of the mainstream press of 1976 to an obscure pastime like Dungeons & Dragons, it was the apparent endorsement of an elite university like Princeton. Is this...
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A Forgotten Variant: The X-Fragments
Gary Gygax explicitly called the Guidon Dungeons & Dragonsdocument the "first draft" of the game in a cover letter. In that draft form, the game circulated to a number of playtesters in the...
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Vintage Ad: 1980 Do-It-Yourself Edition (and Contest!)
Early in 1980, TSR Hobbies circulated a slender booklet containing graphics and copy for hobby stores to reuse when advertising TSR products. It was called the Print Advertiser's Source Book....
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From Arbela to Alexander: Gygax's Ancient Board Wargame
In the early days of gaming, a title could pass through a lot of hands before making its way to market. The original design of Arbela came from Dane Lyons, but Gary Gygax took it over by 1969 and...
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D&D in the News (1978): Funny Dice in Iowa, with Zeb Cook
"We're known down here as the strange people with the funny dice," begins Bob Waltman, describing the reputation of the group that met at the University of Iowa's Memorial Union. Before the game of...
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Mordenkainen, in 1974 and today.
This weekend at the Wizards of the Coast "Stream of Many Eyes" event I got my hands on a copy of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, which is "built on the writings of the renowned wizard from the world of...
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To-Hit Rolls in Individual Medieval Combat, from Phil Barker to Chainmail
Just months before Chainmail came out, when Gary Gygax put together the seventh issue of the Domesday Book, he included a ruleset submitted to the magazine without any indication of its author: a set...
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Dave Arneson's "Adventuring Is..." Cartoons
Sometimes you need to stop dissecting the roots of Chainmail for long enough to appreciate the humor that the authors of Dungeons & Dragons infused into the game. We see that playfulness on display...
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Missile Fire in Chainmail, courtesy of Charles Sweet
When it comes to unearthing the influences behind Chainmail (1971), Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren's medieval rules with a fantasy twist, you need to cast a wide net. Many authors (myself included) have...
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