Dungeons & Dragons

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Dungeons & Dragons
RPG published by Wizards of the Coast (TSR originally)
Authors	Gary Gygax Dave Arneson
First Publication	1974 (D&D Original) 1977 (Holmes Basic D&D) 1977–79 (AD&D 1st Edition) 1981 (Moldvay BX D&D) 1983-1986 (Mentzer BECMI D&D) 1989 (AD&D 2nd Edition) 1991 (Rules Cyclopedia D&D) 2000 (D&D 3rd Edition) 2003 (D&D v.3.5) 2008 (D&D 4th Edition) 2014 (D&D 5th Edition)

Dungeons & Dragons began as a crossover project by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in the early 1970s. Arneson's concept was to take the individual hero from Chainmail and tell his story. Gygax and Arneson collaborated on a project to realize this goal, and at Gen Con in 1974, they sold copies of the resulting game, Dungeons & Dragons. The game contained three small books in a brown box with white labels.

People often confuse the nearly identical white box (1978) with the actual original; the White Box was labeled with Original Collectors Edition to differentiate it from the newer Basic set being released around that time. In any case, this spawned the roleplaying game genre as we know it.

Versions

Original Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons was directly linked to Chainmail in many ways. The Chainmail books even fit in the D&D box. By adding multiple hero types to play and focusing on the aspect of the individual rather than the unit of the army, Gygax and Arneson kickstarted the Role Playing Game industry. People were no longer content to read tales of high fantasy in a book, not when they could control what the characters did. Dungeons & Dragons was released as a core set of 3 books and supplements were to follow later.

Dungeons & Dragons Contents

• Men & Magic - Allowed you to create a character and to learn the magic system.
• Monsters & Treasure - Pretty much exactly that. Rules for monster encounters and appropriate rewards for such.
• Underworld & Wilderness Adventures - The meat and potatoes of exploring overland and dungeon.
• Reference sheets - A stapled collection of pages with cross referencing tables and charts on them.

Supplements

• Supplement I Greyhawk - Introduced the setting of Oerth, new classes, spells, items, and optional rules.
• Supplement II Blackmoor - Introduced TONS of items, and optional rules mostly for underwater. The Blackmoor-specific stuff is the module Temple of the Frog. (Judges Guild would later publish the actual Blackmoor setting as run at this time.)
• Supplement III Eldritch Wizardry - A lot of new magic rules and classes
• Supplement IV Gods, Demi-Gods, & Heroes - Rules for immortals, more classes, introduced the Paladin class.
• Supplement V Swords & Spells: More combat and magic rules, more game mechanics. This would be incorporated into AD&D later.

Basic Dungeons & Dragons

See Basic Dungeons & Dragons.

The Dungeons & Dragons Game

Classic D&D Game Box

The replacement for the Basic Set, covering levels 1–5. This box set was a comprehensive guide to roleplaying. It came with dice, a map, and a detailed book that guided you through an adventure to generate your character and learn the fundamentals of role-play (Zanzer Tem's dungeon). Players were supposed to continue to the Rules Cyclopedia.

D&D Rules Cyclopedia

The Rules Cyclopedia was, essentially, a compiled version of all the rules in the first four Basic D&D sets and some of the Known World Gazetteers. While the book does cover Immortal level play very slightly, almost all of the actual rules for it was reworked into the book Wrath of the Immortals. There were some other minor rules tweaks, but nothing drastic.

Since 2018 one can acquire the Rules Cyclopedia as a print-on-demand book from DMs Guild/DriveThru RPG.

Nicknames

There have been a wide variety of names used to distinguish these first iterations of D&D from their successors. As indicated above, Original D&D (or "OD&D") is used for the original sourcebooks that formed the first stepping-stones between Chainmail and the BECMI set, although it can sometimes be misused for both the Original books and the subsequent Basic Edition books.

That secondary iteration is commonly called BECMI, an acronym used internally for the different box-sets that made it up, but it has many other names. One of the more common is "Basic Dungeons & Dragons" (or "BD&D"), a direct counterpart to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ("AD&D"). Another common name for it is "Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition". This is inaccurate, as, amongst other things, AD&D was the first D&D iteration to be explicitly divided into 1st and second editions, but because there is a much wider gap between Basic and Advanced (plus, AD&D 2nd edition ran longer than AD&D 1st edition), and all subsequent editions of D&D have numbered themselves from 3rd edition onwards, the idea of BECMI as D&D 1e remains entrenched. It's even used here on this website!

The complete list of acronyms identifying D&D's early iterations

Dungeons & Dragons (1974):
Original D&D, OD&D, 0th edition, 0e, The White Box, The Little Beige Books, The Three Little Books

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977):
Holmes Basic, Holmes Edition, The Blue Book

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set/Expert Set (1981):
Moldvay Basic, Moldvay Edition, Basic D&D B/X Edition, B/X (probably the most common nickname), Otus Edition (from the cover illustrations by Erol Otus)

Dungeons & Dragons Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortal Set (1983):
Mentzer Basic, Mentzer Edition, Basic D&D BECMI Edition, BECMI, The Red Box, Elmore Edition (from Larry's cover illustrations of the Basic Set books)

Movies

There was a Dungeons & Dragons movie back in 2000. If you were not aware of this, that's because this movie was largely forgettable and had little to no impact on the rest of the franchise. Its few memorable moments include:

• Jeremy Irons acting at his hammiest yet
• Marlon Wayans acting at his most annoying yet (also he's named "Snails" for some reason)
• The bald lackey of the BBEG has this weird blue lipstick and a disturbing brainworm scene
• Several dungeon scenes are blatantly stolen from various Indiana Jones movies

To the surprise of nobody, the movie was a commercial and critical failure. And yet, for reasons that defy logic and common sense, this film spawned not one but two direct-to-video sequels. Like their progenitor, both of these are also terrible movies that aren't even worth watching for the D&D references.

Most recently, a new movie was announced, currently titled "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves." Thankfully, this film appears to be completely unrelated to the previous films.

Animated Series

Way, way back in 1983 there was an official Dungeons and Dragons animated series, which incredibly ran for 3 seasons. A joint TSR/Marvel/Koei production, it was ultimately pretty standard 80's cartoon fare featuring animation and storytelling that were generally on the poorer side of average. Of course, just like half of the cartoons of that whole era it featured Peter Cullen and Frank Welker in the main voice roles.

Pretty much nobody who was a kid then remembers much about this series, and thus it is now mostly forgotten except as a footnote. However, with the resurgence of DND in recent years the cartoon has somewhat begun to re-enter the social consciousness in the form of memes.

Gallery

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See also

• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition
• Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
• Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Settings
• List of D&D PC Races
• you rolled a 1
• D&D skills
• Standard Fantasy Setting, which D&D helped codify.