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Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year, and there's a lot planned for it
"We have just fromed [sic] Tactical Studies Rules, and we wish to let the wargaming community know that a new line of miniature rules is available."
With this letter, written by Gary Gygax to wargaming zine publisher Jim Lurvey, one of the founders of what would become TSR announced that a January 1974 release for Dungeons & Dragons was forthcoming. This, plus other evidence compiled by Jon Peterson (as pointed out by the Grognardia blog), points to the last Sunday of January 1974 as the best date for the "anniversary" of D&D. The first sale was in "late January 1974," Gygax later wrote, and on the last Sunday of January 1974, Gygax invited potential customers to drop by his house in the afternoon to try it out.
You could argue whether a final draft, printing, announcement, sale, or first session counts as the true "birth" of D&D, but we have to go with something, and Peterson's reasoning seems fairly sound. Gygax's memory, and a documented session at his own house, are a good point to pin down for when we celebrate this thing that has shaped a seemingly infinite number of other things.
As with playing a good campaign, you've got a lot of options for how you acknowledge D&D's long presence and deep influence. The game system itself, now under Wizards of the Coast, will this year push "One D&D," a name the D&D leaders sometimes stick with and sometimes don't. Whatever the next wave is called, it includes new handbooks, guides, and Monster Manual books that are not exactly a new "edition," but also an evolution. Books like Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will be codified and unified by a new sourcebook at some point, but all of it will be compatible with 5th Edition material.
Also, at some point this year, stamps celebrating D&D's 50th will be available from the US Postal Service, at least if you rush. Ten different designs, leaning heavily on the dragons, were commissioned based on existing illustrations. There's a documentary from Joe Manganiello (still in pre-production, seemingly). And there's a 500-plus-page non-fiction book, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1976, with research help from the aforementioned Peterson, containing never-before-seen correspondence between co-creators Gygax and Dave Arneson.
[...] Take a moment on this occasion to look back through some notable D&Dcoverage at Ars:
- A preview of D&D "Next"in 2012, when the system started streamlining on its way toward 5th Edition
- A full review of 5th Edition in 2016, after a year that saw staggering sales based on warm reception
- D&D's entry into the Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong National Museum of Play, alongside such icons as the Frisbee, the Barbie doll, and the Atari 2600
- Annalee Newitz's review of Rise of the Dungeon Master, a graphic novel about Gygax's powerful creativity but also notable flaws
- Last year's controversy over Wizards of the Coast's attempt to rework its Open Gaming License, the exodus it fomented, and its eventual rollback.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 31 2024, @01:03PM (2 children)
My retrospective on half a century of DnD (despite not quite being half a century old) is a RAPID acceleration of prices, new editions, financial deals and low risk boring politics.
Prices used to be "high for a hardcover book" but now retail for $50 another couple financial deals and mergers and DnD books will cost more than college textbooks. They already do, on a per page basis.
The rate of new editions is increasing. Soon consoooooooomers will have to rebuy all their books annually. The 2028 edition will be in the trash by Jan 1 2029, repeat. Corporations love recurring revenue so subscription at some point is inevitable. Ready to pay $25/month to play DnD? This also fragments the ecosystem into the people who played "awhile ago" being spread across multiple intentionally incompatible editions and a small and every shrinking number of narrowcasted hyperconsumers who will pay anything to collect the current edition, but there's fewer of them every year. Kind of like every other form of boring corporate legacy media viewer.
Financial deals are wild. The days of DnD being small businesses are over. Just like legacy landline phone service, every time they company gets resold the price doubles to pay the middlemen, repeat until the customers leave. The inevitable result of nobody smaller than a billion bucks gets to sell in the market, is disney-fied boring formulaic ultra low risk stuff. This carries over into the political where bland and boring weaponized leftism that essentially no one likes and no one is permitted to criticize takes over. It used to be a hobby to be creative, no longer, only conformity is permitted. BORING! All the diversity of a Netflix original (aka, none). DnD is so boring... If you don't want bland furry hugbux simulator where the only magic is Trump Derangement Syndrome there's no appeal anymore. Boring! Its as exciting as a Hollywood formulaic sequel.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday January 31 2024, @02:59PM (1 child)
Let me introduce you to tabletop wargaming, ie Plastic-Crack. One tiny box of a miniature or two ~ $80; a complete army of units about $1000 if you pick one of the cheap once. A rulebook/codex have a lifecycle of at most a couple of years, datasheets for units even less then that. Then all the dice, rulers and templates. Oh and you also need to paint all the miniatures, the terrain etc etc. Plastic crack.
D&D, and most generic RPG:s, are cheap compared to say Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar or any of those games.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 31 2024, @09:14PM
Yeah I get it from the financial demand side argument that per hour those are pretty cheap rates. I myself spent some time in my youth painting W40K minis. Never even played much, but I sure liked detail painting.
Its just from the financial supply side, scraping up $50 is rough for a game book. Everything except AAA new release video games is cheaper than $50. The only mainstream-ish hobby still more expensive than DnD books is boomer live music tickets.
Another interesting problem I've noticed and forgot to mention is the collapse of reselling DnD books... retail is like $50/book, its about $50/book PLUS sales tax at barnes and noble, and the local half-price-books franchise sells copies used for about half retail or about $25. That's great. The problem is Amazon sells them new for handwavy $24 to $28 depending on length and random chance with 'free' prime shipping. You most certainly can pay more for a used book at half-price-books than for new on Amazon, which doesn't help resale. Given the usual markup for used book resellers, the people selling DnD books can't be getting more than $5 per book, so better off using them as firewood than selling them. And that's before the edition treadmill effect where they're worth pretty much firewood prices after the next edition release.
The problem with the edition treadmill is a generation of players were convinced "well, yeah, its $50 but I can play with it forever or for a decade anyway" then the corporation says LOL ha ha new edition every couple years, so the book goes from $4/year of fun to its $50 per book and you'll be tossing it out before its dusty.