Musings of a Nerd

On 4 March 2004 there was a greater disturbance in the force than when Alderaan was pulverized or even when the cosmos reverberated with the word “KHAAAAN!” Instead of the fictional world disturbing our one plane of existence, our reality had upset the multiverse; Gary Gygax, the “father” of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) had died. For this week’s class, the assigned reading was Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds by Gary Alan Fine. Fine explored the nascent emergence of Fantasy Role Play Gaming (FRPG), with a great deal of focus on Gygax’s D&D. Although very dated, it is a useful reference.

We teenagers referred to the world of D&D as an RPG because to us, it was THE only one and by definition the word Fantasy was redundant in the phrase.

http://4thehorde.deviantart.com/art/Alignment-Chart-194659958

When I started playing D&D from the Basic Rules Set there were only three classes; Cleric (the healer), Fighter (the tank), and Magic User (your sorcerer/wizard). Dragon Magazine and the 1st Edition of the series gave us the Rogue class ostensibly based on Hans from Thieves World anthologies, the Barbarian about the time of Schwarzenneger’s Conan the Barbarian, and the Monk class with unarmed martial arts combat. Various sources disagree on the origin and the editions where these classes emerged. Our teenage minds were afire with the worlds of Heavy Metal, Excalibur, John Norman’s Gor books, Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melinbone’, and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

I was a player and a DM (Dungeon Master, the person responsible for building the gaming world), and most of my books were from the Advanced (AD&D) version. The DM needed at least two books, the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. To flesh out our worlds of fantasy, many DMs also bought the Monster Manuals I and II to add a greater bestiary, Deities and Demigods to enrich the world of religions, even more books, an enormous collection of dice for character creation, combat, spells and what have you. Gygax’s company, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) churned out novels, guides, supplements, and all manner of products to expand the D&D multiverse. I find a little irony in that I learned about alternate realities from gaming long before Sliders.

(Incredibly long D&D video attached, recommend watching only a few minutes unless you really, really, are into it…)

I grew up, the books were relegated to the bottom of the closet, and pen and paper table top gaming evolved and passed me by with the likes of GURPS and Shadowrun. My world was soon filled with PCs, starting with the Commodore 64; there was a brief reunion when D&D had several games on 5¼” floppies and then D&D was set aside once again. Outside of my world, TSR sold the franchise to Wizards of the Coast and the editions continued to evolve while adding character classes (like the Paladin) and additional races. Wizards continued to change the rules up until version 5 (also referred to as Next). Finally, even they (arguably) more or less abandoned the world of D&D and offer a free set of Basic Rules on their website. The system is now an Open Game license (OGL) from which Pathfinder evolved.

My AD&D books now inhabit bookshelves, just as likely to be pulled out of curiosity as much as nostalgia now when I am not playing The Master Chief Collection. Several of the dice were appropriated for a box of Munchkin, or as I refer to it D&D Lite. My DM screens and painted lead figurines are long gone, graph paper is no longer used to create dungeons, but thankfully D&D itself lives on. If interested, you can find a group to get together and campaign at http://dnd.meetup.com. Most no longer purchase the dead tree-ware editions but rather use other character management or reference apps like the D&D Complete Reference, or visit the D20 PFSRD (Pathfinder OGL) website; Wizards even has a store locator for those who prefer to own hardcopy. A good reference comparing the various versions of D&D can be found at Stackexchange.

- Anon 302