A brief history of Dungeons & Dragons
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In its 40 year history, there have been a lot of changes to the world’s most popular role playing game. Here’s why the fifth edition of Dungeon & Dragons is a big deal.
#history #Dungeons #Dragons
A brief history of Dungeons & Dragons
50 Comments
50 Comments
First time I heard about D&D was when I was a kid and watching Dexter’s Lab on CN. Didn’t knew it was an actual game until now.
Would have enjoyed a little more substance given the production value
Being an 80’s kid, I didn’t really play D&D that much (just a few hours basically), but ANKH, Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Blood Bowl and Cyberspace (by I.C.E.) were our games of choice. Pretty much in that order. We dabbled a bit with Cyberpunk, WH40K games and Rolemaster too.
(A)D&D was more of a computer game for me, spent countless hours playing Pools of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds and Secret of the Silver Blades. So damn awesome.
Thanks for a cool history lesson 🙂
That was a beautiful peace of cinematography.
The Pathfinder bit was not quite like that.
I’ve been playing D&D since the ’70s and I don’t think a lot of this video is correct. D&D 3rd Ed was much less convoluted than AD&D, and Pathfinder was based off 3.5 ED, not the older D&D. Also, I never remember them taking out Demons, at least we never did.
community
sooo… this whole video is an ad for that particular fifth version of D&D?
Abed.
Was this about chips, or D&D? I’m confused..
nerds
That was crap. No education, entertainment, nor intellectual value in this video whatsoever. Literally they said “First there was this edition, then there was that edition, then they made another edition.” C’mon, Verge. You’re better than this. #clickbaitsucks
Half of what you said was wrong lol
Is that Dave Snider?
When did those figures come in?
Feels like D&D is a lot harder to start playing compared to card games like Magic and Vanguard.
I suppose these tabletop games are like physical versions of Starcraft and Warcraft?
Yeah, glossing over 3rd and 4th Edition like they were some terrible games creating a pseudo-wasteland of D&D is hardly accurate. You failed to mention how 3rd Edition introduced the Open Gaming Licence (OGL) that meant the core rules were available to anyone and everyone online as well as opening up the potential for other publishers to make their own games using the 3rd Edition ruleset. This counter-intuitive strategy made 3rd Edition massively profitable for Wizards of the Coast and drew a ton of people into the game, myself included.
Pathfinder was designed not because the creators disliked 3rd Edition, but because when Wizards of the Coast started on 4th Edition they also stopped printing new 3rd Edition books. Paizo, the creators of Pathfinder, simply filled the vacuum left behind by Wizards of the Coast, since a lot of players didn’t like the new 4th Edition rules because they were incompatible with 3rd Edition rules, whereas Pathfinder is very similar to 3rd Edition and you can mostly use the two sets of rulebooks in tandem.
4th Edition also brought a lot of people to the game, and while it was quite different from the previous editions it was the first edition to really get combat balanced for every character class. In most editions of D&D magic users have a clear and substantial advantage over purely ‘martial’ characters, but in 4th Edition the gap was much smaller if not completely gone. While 4th Edition certainly sacrificed a few staples of D&D such as spell slots and used a unified combat system for every class, making many of them feel depressingly similar to play, it also made combat cleaner, classes more focused in their scope and abilities, and gave every single character a whole bevy of fun and interesting options in battle. In short, it was two steps forward, two steps back, but it doesn’t deserve its reputation as the ‘worst’ edition.
5th Edition, in contrast, has a whole slew of problems, and I feel that I’ve stood on a soapbox long enough. To summarize by opinion of 5th Edition as it currently stands, it is a game with the potential to be innovative and fun, but it is so shackled to the notion of old-school gameplay and ‘classic’ sword and sorcery that it chokes off any really interesting ideas that might have otherwise emerged. It once again succumbs to the notion that only spellcasters get to have nice things, and that warriors should shut up and be thankful that they weren’t made any worse by this edition. If you really want to play an old-school D&D game, play 2nd Edition instead. As the video pointed out (and one of their few spot-on points), it was an era where many interesting campaign settings were introduced. Pick up the one you like the most and play it with your friends.
Not on iphone/ipad won’t get 5/5 stars on iverge.
The Verge Produces a fun, short, and simple rundown of D&D’s history, and everyone complains that it’s some kind of click bait that points to nothing but doom for the integrity of journalism. Hooray for Internet!
Please.… if you’re actually interested in this subject look at my four part retro review of the first four editions of the game… the information here is scant at best and borders on flat out inaccuracy.
If this guy made a video about British history it would go like this:
“England was founded by the celts when they arrived there by boat, coming from france, fleeing from the franks. Soon the celts realized they should become britons, and because of that the romans decided to conquer them. But the romans had to go back home when the visigoths and viking started raiding and left the Saxons in charge. There was a lot of new features they introduced such as longbows and tea, but the most important one was becoming a kingdom led by Frenchmen. That’s when horses were invented to carry knights. In 1950 Henry the VII defeated hitler and his armored knights in the battle of the two roses, thanks mostly to the Royal air force and their deadly longbows. With this victory, Henry the VII sold England to a company called the British Empire. But the British Empire had many colonies and people were fighting over which one they liked best, so they made a new one called ‘The United States’ to try and make people join in. It looks more like the Roman time england, with more focus on violence and homossex. If it manages to bring people back we could see the rise of the celts again.”
This just came off as a commercial rather than informative. Thumbs down.
Great production, but I still have no idea how DND works now …
for someone who played D & D in the 70’s — i actually like this “brief history”… 🙂 brings up the question of whether or not 5th Edition will be worth playing and the only way to find out is to play! Let’s see how all of us older Dungeon Masters like it. … 🙂
Sort of missed some of the initial history behind why it turned into an RPG from a strategy game. Also, the simplification and despite the dislikes, the general motivations behind 3.x and 4e were glossed over to a great extent. The whole OGL part of 3.x had a major impact and while 2nd edition can be called a Golden Age, it wasn’t so incredibly golden that it could stop TSR from going broke.
The adventure of interaction in the games was a necessary competitive advantage sought after electronic gaming became far more pervasive because everyone understood, electronic gaming did a great deal to push tabletop gaming out of the picture.
Overall, this felt like a version of history told by someone looking back without doing much research.
This is so in accurate.… It goes before Chainmail existed. 1964 MMSA formed. The rules for Game Mastering under Dave Wesely stepped up. Then He also created the first Role-playing situation with a wargame senario. (Note Chainmail did not come into being until 1971, and only as a 4 page outline.… As a WARGAME. Instant death.)
Dave Arneson with Dwayne Jenkins started messing with the rules of Wesely and incorporated monsters, magic, and other elements. Dwayne was into Vampires and westerns, Arneson went Medieval. Now setting up the combat rules was pulled by Dave Arneson & Mike Carr’s Don’t Give Up The Ship.… THAT is where the combat rules came from. And it matches.
Chainmail was tried later on, 3 games only… rejected. Instant death was too much. And did not fit in. Only some of the WARGAME or mass combat ballistics was adopted.
Still Gary showed interest and had Dave Arneson and Megarry come over and show them their game. They had worked with C&C together and the conversation had at one point turned to Dave ‘tried’ chainmail, and failed… but Gary ignored that bit.
They were addicted after one weekend of intense gaming.
I repeat CHAIN MAIL was NOT the origin.
I’m play fourth edition d&d and it is the best eddition no matter what anybody says
That was a great video! Gave exactly the kind of information overview I was looking for and was visually interesting and creative to boot! Thanks!
D&D didn’t cause the moral panic but was a key element in it. There were lots of elements to this that built over a period of years.
This video starts out great and then glosses over years of history and things.
I’m Catholic & I think that people who call everything that’s in pop-culture they don’t understand “witchcraft” are f**k’n insane
Weak.
He just glosses over 3.5 which is one of the versions people still play and one of the version that led to 5e. Someone please revoke his nerd licence; lol. 😛
AD&D forever , just wish i still had the original players handbook and deities and demigods . still have basic and expert rule books after 40 years
SO… 3.0, 3.5 were considered the “bad years?” These are still my favorite versions of D&D…
1:51 You already know what’s happening.
The fact the you glossed over the 3.0/.5 ed marking them as the devil is hilarious xD everybody knows that’s the best edition and wizards of the cost published new editions just to make a greater public approach to the game and make more profit out it ( totally understandable) the 4th was a total flop and WoC published the 5th heavily based on Pathfinder which is a slimmer version of 3.5 . The fifth is far too slim especially for character customization. TO ALL OF THE NEW PLAYERS EAGER TO START! PLAY PATHFINDER AND TRY 3.5! AND REMEMBER THAT DND IS NOT A VIDEOGAME! YOU DON’T NEED TO BE THE BEST AT EVERYTHING! THE BEST DND STORIES BEGIN WITH A CRITICAL FAILURE XD
4 years later: yes it was a success, the franchise is alive and rich
I saw “Mazes and Monsters” and remember the panic. So stupid…
Now pass the dice so I can serve the Dark Lord!
👹
Are you kidding you skipped 3rd edition which was the best and offered custom stories
1:08 well that’s because nerds be awkward and stuffs
This video was phenomenal. Great job! Who knew potato chips could be so artistic?
And thats what happened
Ya need to do a video on the OSR (Old-School Revival).
I learned nothing.
Come back when you know a tiny bit more and have at least played a few sessions.
Gamma World was a good game. I used to collect Ral Partha lead figures.
D&D racism: The malevolent Drow, a race of dark skinned Elves ruled by a religious matriarchy. Drow were all inherently evil, their culture cruel and murderous, and as such we were given free reign to kill as many of them as we wanted. If you’re not seeing the problem of dismissing an entire race of beings as evil, much less a race of dark skinned beings, well… teenager me didn’t immediately get it either.
Ngl that’s a good mindflayer drawing.
:0
Nearly ten years later and it’s still growing, even if it’s in troubled times.