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Looking Back At Dungeons & Dragons

Posted by Soulskill on from the lightning-bolt dept.

An anonymous reader sends in a nostalgic piece about Dungeons & Dragons and the influence it's had on games and gamers for the past 36 years. Quoting: "Maybe there was something in the air during the early '70s. Maybe it was historically inevitable. But it seems way more than convenient coincidence that Gygax and Arneson got their first packet of rules for D&D out the door in 1974, the same year Nolan Bushnell managed to cobble together a little arcade machine called Pong. We've never had fun quite the same way since. Looking back, these two events set today's world of gaming into motion — the Romulus and Remus of modern game civilization. For the rest of forever, we would sit around and argue whether games should let us do more or tell us better stories."

11 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. But unfortunately... by dushkin · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... nobody wants to play D&D with me now that we have video games (THANKS FOR NOTHING, PONG). :( does /. want to play?

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    o hai
    1. Re:But unfortunately... by derGoldstein · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Few people born after 1990 will likely want to touch D&D, or any other pen-and-paper RPG. I kind of feel sorry for their imaginations. At some point the saturation of visual media will reach a point where practically everything is a close derivative of some other work the artist has seen, and you'll have very little artwork that's created simply by the mind of the designer. This has implications, IMHO, that reach further than just how people draw elves and orcs. D&D made us look up at the *ceiling* and try to imagine a creature, a place, a situation, and the interaction of things that we've never encountered. Kids seeing Avatar today will be, in some way, imagination-impaired.
      (damn, I sound old)

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      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    2. Re:But unfortunately... by nkh · · Score: 4, Funny

      I click on "Reply to This" and type my answer. I eagerly await your next command while sipping some coffee. My program compiled with 5 errors and 12 warnings that I fix as fast as possible. I commit my changes with a quote from Edgar Allan Poe, and click on the Submit button to finish.

    3. Re:But unfortunately... by derGoldstein · · Score: 5, Funny

      A troll appears on the discussion thread. He has not noticed you yet, but he's causing some damage to the surrounding environment. Remember that you'll need fire or acid to cause him permanent damage -- just modding him down won't work.

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      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    4. Re:But unfortunately... by LordLucless · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Really? I asked around at church, and we got so many people interested, we had to rope in another DM and organise two games. Most of the people who play are in the 18 - 24 bracket. Although our assistant minister joined us for one game as a cleric of atheism.

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      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    5. Re:But unfortunately... by LordLucless · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Really? You don't think a minister could get a helluva lot of kicks putting words into the mouth of a proponent of atheism?

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      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    6. Re:But unfortunately... by Sandbags · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I completely agree. "Pen and Paper" has been replaced with digital character sheets on laptops, an electronic map displayed on a big-screen TV (including FoW) to let players know where they are in relation to objects and creatures, and some still prefer real dice but command-line rolling using macros is much more efficient.

      MapTool from RPTools.net is by far the core tool we use. We have custom macros for all the powers each player is using, and it's not that hard to keep them up to date (players only level up about once a month, and don't get new powers every level, and the macros are pretty easy to write). the DM's notebook runs 2 instances of it, one for the DM's view and another on the second screen (TV) for everyone to see. The maps themselves for pregenerated campaigns are available online, though more recently, we've been making our own (from scans mostly).

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      There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
  2. Rogue-like by VincenzoRomano · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Rogue-like games are here since 1972!
    And you have been killed by a troll!

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    Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
    For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
  3. Re:Nothing more fun? by imakemusic · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just as the players themselves paled in comparison to their peers.

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    Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
  4. Re:DND had it's issues by khallow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Huh, I learned quite a bit about medieval history. Not just of Europe, but other cultures of the time. This sparked a general interest in history that I keep to this day. And D&D helped get me into reading a wider variety of fantasy and science fiction than I had before. D&D was my first practical application of combinatorics and probability. I now have a PhD in math, in part due to this game (and subsequent RPGs that I played). It helps develop basic record keeping and arithmetic. Anyone who has DMed successfully has picked up a little experience in managing groups.

    Frankly, even just learning to draw nice is a useful skill. Simple things like learning how to correct mistakes or to come up with a drawing style unique to yourself can carry over to other activities than merely drawing. And I fail to come up with useful activities that I would have done in place of role playing. Maybe you could have learned more in a comparative religion or practical art class, but would you have? Methinks, there'd be some other distraction.

  5. Re:Well, Pong is earlier then 1974 by Ihmhi · · Score: 4, Funny

    And all of these are predated by the 0.27.452a Alpha version of D&D, commonly known as Chess.

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    Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)