From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/apr/11/it-crawled-from-below-50-years-ago-how-the-150m-dungeons-dragons-empire-began-in-a-basement

It crawled from below 50 years ago: how the global Dungeons & Dragons
empire began in a basement

The fantasy tabletop role-playing game was conceived of by friends at
the heart of WisconsinrCOs gaming community, and has evolved to become a global phenomenon

Keith Stuart
Thu 11 Apr 2024 13.00 CEST

There are 15 of us crammed into a cellar beneath a nondescript house in
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. To the uninformed observer, thererCOs nothing to
see down here: just two low rooms, bare breeze-block walls, a ceiling
lined with pipes. Yet werCOre all looking about the place in hushed awe,
like tourists staring up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The
people IrCOm with are journalists, bloggers and historians, most of them specialising in table-top games, and werCOre here because this is not an ordinary basement. It sits beneath 330 Center Street, the one-time home
of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax. And in February 1973
something happened here that would change the world of gaming, culture
and entertainment for ever.

Across town, at the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa, Gary Con XVI is in full
swing. The annual convention organised by Luke Gygax in honour of his
father has been taking place every year since Gary died in 2008. It
started with a few hundred devoted fans, but now several thousand come
to play D&D and many other wargames, board games and role-playing games.
They pack out the buildingrCOs many conference rooms and corridors,
hunched in groups around large tables laden with character sheets, dice
and snacks; they dress up as warriors and wizards and attend talks. Many
have clearly been playing for decades.

This year is special rCo itrCOs the 50th anniversary of D&D. It was early
1974 that the first edition was launched; a brown wood-grain box
containing three slim rulebooks. One of the big announcements of the
event is that Wizards of the Coast is publishing a range of nostalgic half-century celebrations, including two new campaigns based on classic
D&D adventures from the 70s and 80s, Vecna: Eve of Ruin and Quests from
the Infinite Staircase. ThererCOs also a 500-page tome entitled The Making
of Original D&D: 1970-1977, which reprints the original manuscript of
D&D, complete with handwritten annotations.

WhatrCOs immediately clear is how modest and homespun the project was at
the beginning. rCLIrCOve been gaming my entire life, itrCOs in my DNA,rCY says Luke Gygax, presenting a welcome panel. rCLI was patient zero for D&D. In
the early days at 330 Center Street, we helped to assemble the games. I
tested a lot of adventures rCo Against the Giants, Lost Caverns of
Tsojcanth, The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun rCo and I helped to create monsters, magic items and spells. It was just a part of playing the game
with my dad.rCY

The Gygax home was a focal point of the wargaming community in late
1960s Wisconsin. Gary was a founding member of the International
Federation of Wargamers and in 1968 he set up the societyrCOs annual Gen
Con event at the Lake Geneva Horticultural Hall. At this time, people
were playing board-based wargames such as Gettysburg and Stalingrad, or miniature wargames, which used models of soldiers and vehicles on large tabletop maps. Both sought to simulate historical battles with dense
rules. At his home, in the cellar, Gygax met up every weekend with his
local group, the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association, to play games
and plan their own variations and rules.
The basement in which Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson planned Dungeons &
Dragons. The sand table is a reproduction of one used for miniature
wargaming

Meanwhile, 300 miles away, University of Minnesota student Dave Arneson
was also deep into the wargaming scene, playing a variety of games with
his own highly experimental group, the Midwest Military Simulation Association. rCLThey were already messing around with some interesting variants of a game called Diplomacy,rCY says Michael Witwer author of the
Gary Gygax biography Empire of the Imagination and several books on the history of D&D. Diplomacy was a first world war wargame in which players
each commanded the forces of a different country. Uniquely, however, it wasnrCOt just about combat; players also had to form alliances and secret plots. rCLIt is a really interesting game,rCY says Witwer. rCLLots of interpersonal activity, subterfuge and negotiation.rCY

Gygax and Arneson met for the first time at Gen Con in 1968. Arneson
brought with him some miniature ship models herCOd made and Gary was impressed. The two hit it off, kept in touch and later made a Napoleonic
naval wargame together named DonrCOt Give Up the Ship.

But a year later, an even more important meeting took place. rCLItrCOs Gen
Con 1969 and werCOre down in GaryrCOs basement rCo Gary, Dave and me,rCY says Bill Hoyt, a member of DaverCOs old gaming group who, in his late-80s, is still running wargames. rCLWe started talking about games, what could we
do with them rCo and the idea of medieval gaming came up, knights and
castles and all that. Gary said, rCyyes, letrCOs do that! WerCOll collect some figures, find some rules, and werCOll come back to Gen Con next year and werCOll play the game togetherrCO.rCY

Gary formed the Castle & Crusade Society in 1970, for gamers interested
in exploring medieval wargaming. Dave Arneson joined in April. The group
had its own fanzine, The Domesday Book, where they swapped ideas rCo
vitally, they even formed their own imagined medieval realm, the Great Kingdom. They wrote to each other in character as knights and lords,
informing each other of news from their areas of this fantasy domain.
Already, the story-telling and character-embodiment elements of D&D were coming into play; the kernel of an idea casually bandied about in GaryrCOs basement was taking on a life of its own.

Gygax went on to co-create a medieval wargame named Chainmail, which
created rules for man-to-man fighting with armour and swords, and
brought in some innovative new ideas such as superhero characters who
took a number of hits to defeat. At the same time, Dave Arneson was
messing about with an experimental project named Braunstein by David
Wesely, a Napoleonic wargame inspired by Diplomacy. Instead of
controlling armies, players took on the roles of individual characters
in the fictional German town of the title, all with their own personal objectives.

Inspired, Arneson created a campaign variation named Blackmoor, in which players worked together as individual characters to explore a medieval
town, including its castle and dungeons. It brought in the concept of
hit points, so that characters could take damage without dying, and used ChainmailrCOs combat system for fights with non-player characters. Gary
read about this in DaverCOs own fanzine, Corner of the Table, and asked
him to come down to Lake Geneva and run a game for him and his group.

ThatrCOs how, in February 1973, Dave Arneson and fellow game designer Dave Megarry came to take the long road trip down from Minneapolis to Lake
Geneva to play Blackmoor in GaryrCOs basement. rCLIt seems to me, looking at the remnants of those sessions, that Blackmoor was the first game that
someone from today would look at and recognise as a role-playing game,rCY
says Witwer. rCLGaryrCOs intent was to see this Blackmoor thing that
everyone was talking about and how it worked. They played all weekend,
and Gary lost his mind over it rCo it was so innovative and different,
herCOd never seen anything quite like it.rCY

Things moved fast after this. Determined to formalise their sketchy
concept into a fantasy game that could be published, Gygax spent several
weeks typing out a 50-page ruleset in his home office. He sent this to Arneson, who posted back amends. Eventually the document reached 150
pages. They had a game rCo of sorts. You still needed a copy of Chainmail
to play it, and the many-sided dice were sold separately, but it was
ready. This was Dungeons & Dragons.

The finished product was printed in early 1974. Only a thousand were
made, each selling for $10. The customers were people who were already
deep into wargaming, reached through fanzines and conventions. At the
time, there was little money in it, but Gygax set up a company named
Tactical Studies Research to publish D&D, taking a $1,000 loan from his
friend Don Kaye. TSR was run from Gary and DonrCOs homes for a year or so
as the sales trickled in, but gradually word got around about this crazy
new game where you pretended to be adventurers in a medieval-themed
kingdom. It found is way onto university campuses; in 1975 the UK
company Games Workshop started distributing it in Europe. By the end of
1975, TSRrCOs turnover was $60k rCo by the early 80s it was $20m a year and growing fast.

rCLThat meeting between Gygax, Arneson and Megarry in 1973 was the
culmination not just of their experiences of gaming, but of decades of experimentation and game design and wargaming,rCY says Witwer, who later
takes us on a sightseeing tour around the town. rCLAll kinds of crazy
ideas came to roost in that moment; they started piecing together things
that had never been put together before.rCY

Before I leave Gary Con I bump into Hoyt again and our conversation
almost inevitably leads back to that basement. rCLI travelled down to the
Gen Con convention in 1974,rCY he says. rCLI met up with Dave Arneson and we went over to GaryrCOs house. We were in the basement and they were opening
up the second printing of the game. And Dave says, rCyYou want to buy one, donrCOt ya?rCO Well, werCOd driven all the way from the Twin Cities and werCOd had two idiots driving rCo they loved to speed, so we were paying money
for their speeding tickets all the way up. I had 25 bucks left for the
whole weekend. But I bought it anyway.rCY HerCOs been playing ever since.

What was it, I ask him, about playing the first version of D&D in that basement that caught hold of you and wouldnrCOt let go? He thinks about
this for a while. His mind is wandering back to that room, 50 years ago,
Gary rolling the dice, Dave Arneson poring over tables of random
encounters. rCLItrCOs the story rCo thatrCOs the whole thing,rCY he says. rCLItrCOs
about sharing stories. Some people canrCOt grab that, theyrCOre too concrete rCo those people will never play. But people with imagination? Oh yeah, theyrCOll play rCa TheyrCOll play.rCY

In the creative process, place is important. Whether thatrCOs the garage
where a punk band first performed together, or the bedroom in which two brothers wrote their first ZX Spectrum game, the environment feeds into whatever is made there. It is somewhat poetic then, that a game about exploring dark, subterranean spaces should have been born in a basement,
long, long ago.

Thanks to Michael Witwer for his help on this article. Keith Stuart accompanied other journalists on a press trip to Gary Con. Accommodation
and travel expenses were covered by Wizards of the Coast.
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