Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), fantasy role-playing game (RPG), created by American game designers Ernest Gary Gygax and David Arneson in 1974 and published that year by Gygax’s company, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). The game was acquired in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. The game’s soaring popularity led to D&D-themed miniature figurines, books, television shows, and movies.

D&D has gone through multiple editions, with various changes to the rules and nomenclature. The game is set in a medieval fantasy world in which multiple players form a group that is led through an adventure by one player who assumes the role of the storyteller, or Dungeon Master.

Gameplay

The Dungeon Master makes up story events or chooses them from one of the published adventures, to which the players may respond in different manners to create a unique gaming experience. The other players each choose a race (human, elf, dwarf, halfling), a class (e.g., Fighter, Rogue, Wizard), and skills for their character, and they apportion a small number of points to different attributes (Constitution, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) that determine how effective a character is at performing various actions. As actions are performed successfully, characters gain experience points, allowing them to improve their abilities over time. Most complex actions have some probability of failing, which is determined by rolling one or more of the game’s polygonal dice (4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-, and 20-sided). Players often use a sheet marked with a grid and miniature figurines to represent their characters’ movements.

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The basic rules and milieu of Dungeons & Dragons has been adapted for many electronic RPGs, such as Baldur’s Gate (1998).

Editions and evolution

Five editions of D&D have appeared since 1974, alongside several parallel game lines, revisions, and offshoots. Each edition introduced new rules, artwork, and character options. Some of them redesigned the gameplay.

The original 1974 boxed set, now known as Original Dungeons & Dragons, offers three character classes: the Fighting-Man, the Magic-User, and the Cleric. Players could read the rules from three booklets—Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures.

In 1977 the game split into two lines. The Basic Set, originally edited by John Eric Holmes, included accessories such as dice and was aimed at a younger player base. At the same time, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was released as three hardcover rule books: the Monster Manual, Player’s Handbook, and Dungeon Master’s Guide. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons second edition appeared in 1989. In response to moral criticism, the developers renamed the game’s character types such as devils, demons, and assassins, while preserving their essential traits.

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The third edition, released in 2000, redesigned the game extensively around a system known as d20, in which most in-game actions are resolved by a roll of a 20-sided die. Released in 2008, the fourth edition prioritized combat, featured miniatures, and assigned roles to character classes. The fifth and current edition followed in 2014 after a public testing phase, streamlining the rules and balancing role-play, combat, and character creation.

Controversies and moral panic

Many of the game’s earliest character races imitated those of fantasy fiction writer J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, and in 1977 a law firm representing Tolkien’s literary rights sent TSR a cease-and-desist order; the company duly renamed “hobbit” to “halfling” and “ent” to “treant,” among other changes.

In the late 1970s D&D drew sustained criticism in the United States from some religious and parent groups, which argued that the game’s depictions of magic, demons, and the occult posed a danger to its young players. Two incidents lent the campaign much of its public momentum.

In 1979 a 16-year-old Michigan State University student, James Dallas Egbert III, disappeared. The private investigator hired by his family suggested that D&D might have played a role in his disappearance, and the suggestion was widely repeated in the press. Egbert was found alive in September 1979 but died by suicide in 1980; later accounts emphasized that he had been struggling with depression and drug addiction. Nevertheless, some critics continued to blame Dungeons & Dragons for his disappearance and death. The case became the basis of the 1981 novel Mazes and Monsters and a 1982 film of the same name starring American actor Tom Hanks. These works appeared amid growing anxiety over role-playing games and were received as cautionary tales.

A second case followed in 1982, when Irving Lee Pulling, another student, died by suicide; his mother, Patricia Pulling, concluded that the game was responsible. In 1983 she founded the campaigning group Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD), which lobbied through lawsuits, pamphlets, and media appearances, including a segment on the news program 60 Minutes, in which she debated D&D cocreator Gygax. The publisher later responded by replacing all references to “demons” and “devils” with invented terms—tanar’ri and baatezu—and the game’s marketing was reoriented away from monster-killing toward heroism and teamwork, positioning the new edition as suitable for teenagers. The BADD campaign was challenged on several fronts. Fantasy author Michael A. Stackpole published two rebuttal articles—“Game Hysteria and the Truth” (1989) and “The Pulling Report” (1990)—in which he documented factual errors in BADD’s claims and accused Pulling of misrepresenting her credentials as an expert witness. The Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGA), an organization that provided legal and personal support for players targeted during the panic, was founded in 1988. Pulling left BADD in 1990, and there is little evidence that the organization had any further direct impact on the public conversation about the game. The public alarm had largely faded by the mid-1990s.