Dungeons a
nd Dragons – most would argue the Daddy of all Role Playing Games (RPG’s) and was the first major type of this game released, aka as Table Top Gaming it would become huge throughout the World. First copies of the Game were released in 1974 by Dave Arneson and E. Gary Gygax’s TSR and was the first readily available Game of this type.
With this Game though there were problems, obviously not discovered till the Game went out to consumers were the teething problems found. This eventually led to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (ADnD) the 2nd Edition a much tighter version of the initial draft tightening up Rules and advancing Spells and Combat giving better structure to the Game itself.
TSR was eventually bought out by Wizards of the Coast to steady a sinking ship as Computer Games and such started the decline of sales of RPG’s. Wizards of the Coast was then sold on to Hasbro who reportedly paid over 300 Million Dollars for the franchise.
ADnD Released in 1989 saw the end and the Franchise was renamed well reverted back to Dungeons and Dragons on the release of its 3rd Edition, these Rules formed the basis of the D20 System which was now available to other Publishers due to the Open Game License. They did this to combat Bootleg versions, share the love was their motto. After that came Edition 3.5 in 2003 and the 4th in 2008.
As of 2006 Dungeons and Dragons was still the biggest game of its kind with only Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) a Tolkien based version of the Game using the Lord of the Rings story and surroundings came close to challenging their dominance. The popularity of DnD can be seen with their overall sales reaching 1 Billion Dollars World Wide.
I still love to game and play MERP every Sunday still today, preferring this system to ADnD, MERP just feels more real and in your face so to speak. I will be covering MERP next, hope you enjoyed the article and please contact me if you need any advice on starting your own Table Top Gaming sessions and above all enjoy.
