Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year. The tabletop role playing game (TTRPG) has gone through a slew of revised editions, expansions and hack ‘n’ slay imitators, weathered a Satanic panic or two, seen itself replaced in the hearts and minds of the nation’s nerds by games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon , only to experience a bold popular resurgence in recent years, thanks in no small part to so-called Actual Play TTRPG podcasts and web series like Critical Role , Dimension 20 and The Adventure Zone . In other words: As a pop culture phenomenon, it’s been hacked, but it still slays.
I played my first game of D&D in 1978, just four years after its launch. I was 10 years old; it was summer. My friend down the street invited me over to his house, which usually meant forcing me to play catch with him in his backyard (read: He’d whip a baseball at my face, I’d flinch and let it bounce off me, I’d pick it up and toss it back so it landed in the grass 3 feet in front of him with a woeful thud; repeat until dinner time).
On this occasion, to my surprise and delight, we sat on his screened-in porch as he took out what I have since learned was the box of rulebooks and polyhedral dice known as the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set . I loved it from the jump, largely because everything about the game was so deeply indebted to my beloved Tolkien (Wizards! Halflings! Orcs! That titular dragon on the box cover, atop its pile of gold!). But it didn’t last; my neighbor starte.