To me personally I think #1 would be 1979, the introduction of the Dungeon Masters Guide. To me the best role playing book of all time. There has never been a book that had that much information dropped at one time. Still to this day it’s the cornerstone of our 1e campaign. There has never been a book like it.
I guessed 77 and 89 would be on the list but not all the reasons. Agricole is definitely a bit challenging. I say as someone with a dozen or so bottles of rum…
Thank you so much for your generous support of the channel! I really appreciate it. And, thanks for chiming in with your guesses on the years! This was my first time drinking Agricole neat. I've only ever had it in cocktails. It was interesting and I look forward to sampling some other labels for comparison.
Martin glad to see you getting back into a rhythm with the videos and returning something resembling normal. I cannot imagine the last few months for you and your family. As someone who starting playing in 1981 and has his original basic, expert, and 1e hardcover books (sans a Deities and Demigods w/lovecraft and moorcock which disappeared from my horde during my 30+ year hiatus from playing), I appreciate your history videos and I have enjoyed Alchemy, Explosives, and Inventions; bringing some of that flavor to my own games. Thank you!
I always enjoy your releases - the kids in my family stated playing during the OD&D era when my oldest brother’s friend found a bag in the woods on the way home from school that contained a bunch of polyhedral dice. That led to questions and finding out about D&D. Not sure home long we tried to figure it out, but I remember when my brother brought home the newly released Holmes Basic set. Since I was born in 71 I took all my cues from older siblings and didn’t appreciate how rough the presentation was in the original boxed set.
I started with the red box, it was a Christmas gift from my aunt. Very formative, if you haven't done the solo adventure in that set Martin you should seek it out. I do read/play tgat theough in a series on my channel but you can just get a pdf for the true solo experience.
'83 all the way for me, mostly because that was when I first got into the game (maybe '84, I was super young). Related, the D&D Animated Series discs packaged in the style of a tiny Red Box is just adorable.
Thanks for the video! Writing this after your criteria but before you revealed your picks. I'd include all fifty years. My picks would be 1974 (O)D&D release, 1977 1E AD&D Monster Manual release, 1978 1E AD&D Players Handbook released, 1979 1E AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide release, and 2000 OGL 1.0a published. If I were to add an honorable mention, it would be 2014 5E D&D published. I'll add more to my reply tomorrow when I can listen to the full video but for now, just an off the cuff comment to please the TH-cam gods and help get the channel seen.
Those early years under unprecedented expansion... which ultimately kind of proved their undoing has nobody was a very experienced business person on the staff at the high levels..... are such a legendary ears for the hobby. I was very young and most of this predates my involvement in the early 80s but be on the tail end of some of this was just exhilarating so much great material coming out for the game things that have gone on to the legendary modules.. this is really a cool trip man. Thank you so much for what you do
@@MARSHOMEWORLD I think WotC quietly did away with a number of side ventures they could not understand. Holding on to Dragon Dice, some sort of knitting venture etc. When I looked at the company management, it's a bit too much of friend of a friend joining in on rather flimsy grounds. Both friends of Gygax, the Blumes etc. There was a really strange way TSR was creating credit for itself out of nothing.
Magazines were important here as well. But there was a mix of fanzines, the official magazine of the national association, in-house company magazines of varying quality, folders produced as club/convention newsletters.
We were just literally going through and saying, "Oh, this monster looks good. I'll put that in here." and "Oh, this magic item looks cool. I'll let them find that here." I never saw those tables back in the day! If I had, I'd probably have bought it, because to me back then that serpent would have looked cool! 😅
My guesses, without looking at anything, and not even knowing the years: 3: whenever non weapon proficiencies were introduced 2: D&D published for the first time 1: Greyhawk supplement was published I'm a 3e and onward baby (early middle ager at this point?) but I do like hearing your accounts of history
Thanks for giving some love to 1977, my favorite year obviously. Not sure why you brought up unearthed Arcana again. Enjoyed that car commercial too. 😅
Great video. Depending on your favorite edition, people have their own ideas about "when D&D started going downhill", or when "D&D's golden age" was. But if you're looking as D&D as a whole, as a phenomenon, I think 2014 is second only to 1974. D&D 5e has sold more than all previous editions combined. Everything changed after 2014. Not only is it the most popular TTRPG everm by far, but it boosted the TTRPG industry as a whole. Whole new inustries were built on it: actual play streams, RPG hubs, social media realms, etc. D&D had various waves as a niche hobby before, but after 2014 it become something bigger than at anytime before.
It’s funny that you gravitated to that album that was written when the artist was dealing with losing a parent. When my stepmom, mom, and dad all went into rapid decline close together in the course of only a couple of years, I spun Sting’s ‘Soul Cages’ album (written after the death of his father) and Rush’s Vapor Trails’ (written after Neil Peart lost both his only child and then his partner a couple of months apart.) It wasn’t anything conscious. I just started listening to them both on repeat… and it only dawned on me later what the connection was.
Yes, I probably didn't enunciate very well, but I did say Mystara with three syllables. As a kid I always used to pronounce it like my-STAR-uh ("my" rhyming with "eye") but then William W. Connors who worked on the setting at TSR said they always pronounced it like the word "Mystery."
Just an FYI, Zeb Cook confirmed 100% in an interview that TSR removed the Assassin class because of the letters D&D players sent in to the company. They were angry that edgelord players were using the Assassin class as a reason to kill fellow players. That is the true reason they removed the class.
@@OldHeadAlan I thought that was the core of the kender annoyance as well. You create a PC who will steal the others magic items and trade them for cotton candy. I think the attention-hogging edgelord can use any class though. You can be a basic fighter who makes a point to anger every street gang in the city and tries to drag all others into this. I managed to play a socially well-adjusted assassin. Some sort of Renaissance Italian marksman. She would just politely climb up somewhere and shoot monsters in the eye when asked to, no Evil drama.
@@AdlerMow I think that would have been how the first RPGs looked if the historical wargamers has been a greater part. Historical RPGs where you are swashbuckling musketeers or the Scarlet Pimpernell or South China Sea pirates etc. Absolutely no monsters and magic.
And for the record 1st Edition DMG was a game changer. Best DMG ever from D&D world, with the Castles & Crusades Castle Keepers Guide (assisted my Gary Gygax) best Game Masters guide all around. ❤. IMHO. 😊
Good one Martin! 1985 was a pivotal year, but it certainly wasn't a good one. UE turned people off (myself included). OA was good but it wasn't a hit. The Battlesystem flopped. Gary Gygax's name sold books and they gave that up. TSR appeared to be a ship without a captain. On top of all of that, September of 85 was when 60 Minutes did that hit piece on D&D. I wasn't directly effected by it, but a lot of people I used to game with suddenly became interested in other things. It was the end of the beginning. 1981 would be my pick for D&D's best year. So many good adventures were released. B/X was riding high. All of my favorite artists were still working for TSR. Flashier things would come after 1981 but it would never quite have the same energy as it did in that year.
Random thought for your giveaways - is the logic setup for the random pick excluding the first and last person on the list? Number between 1 and 126 to Alexa might mean (to the AI) a range of 2-125? If you have to do a third shot at it maybe try something like "give me a random number between zero and 127?"
@@daddyrolleda1 WFRP 1e had a similar sort of pseudo-skills/feats. You could get a skill that just increased your melee damage by +1. Or one that let you busk for money. AD&D had one that just increased your climbing speed. Sometimes WFRP skills are both skill and feat. Both NWPs and WFRP skills are rolls against attributes. Having the skill allows you to use the attribute in a new way. Weapon proficiency was part in both. In WFRP you needed a skill to use certain specialist weapons, but everyone could pick up a basic axe and use it with their WS. But in AD&D it meant fighters were now specialists. I am the spear dude. Or the axe man. Or the dread dart warrior. Some poor sap in the army also needs to figure out the polearm situation. We had no idea where that came from. I think we ended up shaking out heads and instituting a polearm proficiency.
@@daddyrolleda1 2e was also the time when thieves could allocate their skill points, I think. The start of the "I'm not that kind of thief." I had fun as a dwarf security engineer. Bloke could set traps, find them, bypass them but never scaled a single wall or hid from anything. It was like playing a civil engineer in a dungeon.
@@joshjames582 How did proficiency work there? I listened to some WoW players who described positive reinforcement. Instead of giving the player a penalty to do the thing, you shuffle the numbers so all actions except the ones you want to penalize has a bonus. If a system has allowed me to gain triple shot with bows and arrow guidance and target meditation and whatnot to the point where picking up a modern kalashnikov is a downgrade, such a system has succeeded.
Would be between 89 and 96. TSR was heavily into experimentation and letting creators just go wild with ideas. Nothing was too crazy, not to be published. Some of them were bad, and many of them were good but there was no shortage of something for everyone. It's easily the best years to be playing DnD. Also, the novels really hit their stride during that time, which gave us the most clear description of the worlds and settings that make up Dnd and gave most of our lore. Sadly, as great as those years were, it was also what killed it.
Just FYI, it's a small thing, but Lawrence Schick (and presumably Tom Moldvay, RIP) pronounces "Mystara" with an emphasis on the middle syllable. Like "Mist-ARE-uh."
So the Fiend Folio not getting redone - I know the purchase comes later, but I am now curious if WOTC's purchase of D&D included all the UK made stuff? Was that considered integral to the original TSR, or was that a separate entity?
Key dates IMO: 1974 the original release 1975 Supplements 1 and 2, esp Greyhawk: basically sets the template for all future editions 1977 The supplements are basically complete, Holmes comes out to rationalise 0e, also leading to 1e 1981 B/X released 2000 The OGL comes out
Great list! I think you'll find our lists are very similar, although I did leave one of yours off my list. It was a difficult choice considering that's the year I started playing!
@daddyrolleda1 I can't disagree with your choices either, sound reasons for why they were your key dates. I was tempted to add the year 2e came out, as for me that saw me less interested in the game. The OGL started my exploration of pre 1981 versions, partially due to all the OSR retro clones. These days I favour 1e or earlier editions, with a strong lean towards 0e and B/X.
It'd be cool but based on their very limited products and spectacle for the 50th anniversary of the game last year, I wouldn't count on it unfortunately. Thanks for watching and commenting.
77 Monster Manual AD&D 1st / 78 Players Handbook AD&D 1st / 79 Dungeon Masters Guide 1st was so getting the attention of all of us OD&D and Basic etc. edition people. I mean come on it was “Advanced” Dungeons and Dragons 🐉 Brother Martin. ❤😊😂
My list by chronological order: 1974 (OD&D) 1977 (Homes Basic & AD&D 1e) 1981 (Moldvay Basic) 1981 (AD&D 2e) 1991 (Rules Cyclopedia) 2000 (3e - no longer TSR's D&D, IMHO not D&D anymore. But yes, OGL was important, while is drenched the market with the D20 system, the open license in itself was genius, and it allowed OSR to flourish without reprisal. And that's why the legacy wasn't crushed).
I remember the Dragon mag drought. Sean K. Reynolds was the "web" guy back then (acting as a community person) and he was the Bagdad Bob of TSR at that time. Lying that "everything is fine" while the building is burning behind him. It's the reason I'll never buy anything with his name in it.
OK... 20 seconds in I'm not waiting till the end... I'm going straight in with "the most pivotal years were around the BECMI/2E AD&D period" let's see if Martin and I agree...
And having not waited I now see that he meant five SEPARATE years and their events rather than which five year period was the most pivotal..." Pay attention kids, never answer the test question till you read the question ALL the way through!
One small correction: ‘Oriental Adventures’ wasn’t just written by David ‘Zeb’ Cook. It was co-written with François Marcela-Froideval. Many of the rules that were most influential on D&D were Marcela-Froideval’s. A video looking at the non-US contributions to D&D and non-English language publications would be fascinating. As for most pivotal year for D&D, that’s difficult to say. For me, it’s more about the products rather than the timeline, but if I had to pick a period, it would be the years running up to D&D’s release in 1974. The very idea of an RPG and so many of D&D’s system fundamentals (classes, hit points, levels, armour class, that it’s a fantasy game etc) date back to pre-‘74, that you’d have to pick that time, no?
1:14:40 "Gary Gygax talks about it a lot in articles in Dragon Magazine. It implies that in the early 80s a movie script is in development and it should come out in the next year or two... ,,,The first D&D movie is not going to come out until, I think, 2000 and it was a disaster, if you've ever seen that." 🤨Going to have to disagree with you in this one. It was a great Dungeon & Dragons movie that captured the spirit of D&D ...in the early 80s. For someone like my that got into D&D in the mid-80s in middle school, Dungeons & Dragons (2000) was a straight-up old-school homebrew BECMI adventure and it was a fun enjoyable movie. The problem as to why most people didn't like the original D&D movie is because by the time it finally came out in 2000 there were fully established game worlds like Mystara for BECMI (started in 1987), along with Dragonlance (1987), Forgotten Realms (1987) and then World of Greyhawk (1988) for 1E, then the more exotic settings of Spelljammers (1989), Ravenloft (1990), Dark Sun (1991), Maztica (1991), Al-Qadim (1992), Forgotten Realms (1993) and Birthright (1995) from 2E. Third edition AD&D by WOTC also came out in 2000 and it had it's own feel that was different from the previous editions put out by TSR and the vast majority of D&D players had moved beyond BECMI and 1E long ago. The 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movies had no characters or settings that were familiar to any of the more popular realms established by first and second edition that many of the players were familiar with and it came across as a generic campy fantasy film. For those my age that remembered BECMI back in the day, hanging out with friends after school, and sometime joking around and acting goofy while playing D&D... that movie WAS a real D&D movie that captured the spirit of my old BECMI games and WASN'T a disaster as many claim it to be. It is still one of my favorite fantasy films along with Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, The Beast Master, Sword & The Sorcerer, Legend, and Willow that all came out during my original D&D playing days.
77 Monster Manual AD&D 1st / 78 Players Handbook AD&D 1st / 79 Dungeon Masters Guide 1st was so getting the attention of all of us OD&D and Basic etc. edition people. I mean come on it was “Advanced” Dungeons and Dragons 🐉 Brother Martin. ❤😊😂
To me personally I think #1 would be 1979, the introduction of the Dungeon Masters Guide. To me the best role playing book of all time. There has never been a book that had that much information dropped at one time. Still to this day it’s the cornerstone of our 1e campaign. There has never been a book like it.
Agree
Thank you, Martin for all you do for the hobby and community. ❤
I really appreciate your generosity and kind words so much. Thank you.
I guessed 77 and 89 would be on the list but not all the reasons. Agricole is definitely a bit challenging. I say as someone with a dozen or so bottles of rum…
Thank you so much for your generous support of the channel! I really appreciate it. And, thanks for chiming in with your guesses on the years! This was my first time drinking Agricole neat. I've only ever had it in cocktails. It was interesting and I look forward to sampling some other labels for comparison.
Martin glad to see you getting back into a rhythm with the videos and returning something resembling normal. I cannot imagine the last few months for you and your family. As someone who starting playing in 1981 and has his original basic, expert, and 1e hardcover books (sans a Deities and Demigods w/lovecraft and moorcock which disappeared from my horde during my 30+ year hiatus from playing), I appreciate your history videos and I have enjoyed Alchemy, Explosives, and Inventions; bringing some of that flavor to my own games. Thank you!
Very nice! I love to have an overview of all editions (at least up to current date) in one place. Kudos for doing great job! :)
Thank you so much! I'm really glad you enjoyed the video, and thanks for watching and commenting.
I remember buying the MM at a local bookshop . I remember the smell of the paper. I read it all the time for fun.
I always enjoy your releases - the kids in my family stated playing during the OD&D era when my oldest brother’s friend found a bag in the woods on the way home from school that contained a bunch of polyhedral dice. That led to questions and finding out about D&D.
Not sure home long we tried to figure it out, but I remember when my brother brought home the newly released Holmes Basic set.
Since I was born in 71 I took all my cues from older siblings and didn’t appreciate how rough the presentation was in the original boxed set.
I started with the red box, it was a Christmas gift from my aunt. Very formative, if you haven't done the solo adventure in that set Martin you should seek it out. I do read/play tgat theough in a series on my channel but you can just get a pdf for the true solo experience.
DRA1- thanks for everything that you do. I started playing in 1983 and love your take on everything historical with TSR/ D&D.
I really appreciate you saying that. Thank you so much for watching and commenting.
'83 all the way for me, mostly because that was when I first got into the game (maybe '84, I was super young). Related, the D&D Animated Series discs packaged in the style of a tiny Red Box is just adorable.
Thanks for the video! Writing this after your criteria but before you revealed your picks. I'd include all fifty years. My picks would be 1974 (O)D&D release, 1977 1E AD&D Monster Manual release, 1978 1E AD&D Players Handbook released, 1979 1E AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide release, and 2000 OGL 1.0a published. If I were to add an honorable mention, it would be 2014 5E D&D published. I'll add more to my reply tomorrow when I can listen to the full video but for now, just an off the cuff comment to please the TH-cam gods and help get the channel seen.
Those early years under unprecedented expansion... which ultimately kind of proved their undoing has nobody was a very experienced business person on the staff at the high levels..... are such a legendary ears for the hobby. I was very young and most of this predates my involvement in the early 80s but be on the tail end of some of this was just exhilarating so much great material coming out for the game things that have gone on to the legendary modules.. this is really a cool trip man. Thank you so much for what you do
@@MARSHOMEWORLD I think WotC quietly did away with a number of side ventures they could not understand. Holding on to Dragon Dice, some sort of knitting venture etc.
When I looked at the company management, it's a bit too much of friend of a friend joining in on rather flimsy grounds. Both friends of Gygax, the Blumes etc.
There was a really strange way TSR was creating credit for itself out of nothing.
Another fantastic video (also good to hear you are back home).
Thank you so much! I appreciate your kind thoughts! And, thanks for watching and commenting.
How much I soooooo miss the early 80’s😔😔😔
Magazines were important here as well. But there was a mix of fanzines, the official magazine of the national association, in-house company magazines of varying quality, folders produced as club/convention newsletters.
Thanks!
Thank you so much for generous support of the channel. I really appreciate it.
We were just literally going through and saying, "Oh, this monster looks good. I'll put that in here." and "Oh, this magic item looks cool. I'll let them find that here." I never saw those tables back in the day! If I had, I'd probably have bought it, because to me back then that serpent would have looked cool! 😅
Loved the public enemy reference!
My guesses, without looking at anything, and not even knowing the years:
3: whenever non weapon proficiencies were introduced
2: D&D published for the first time
1: Greyhawk supplement was published
I'm a 3e and onward baby (early middle ager at this point?) but I do like hearing your accounts of history
Thanks for all your hard work!
Thanks for giving some love to 1977, my favorite year obviously. Not sure why you brought up unearthed Arcana again. Enjoyed that car commercial too. 😅
Liked and Commenting for the TH-cam gods, saved to watch later so I can watch it all in one go
As someone studying the history of this game, this is gonna be interesting!
Fantastic! I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much for commenting!
Great video.
Depending on your favorite edition, people have their own ideas about "when D&D started going downhill", or when "D&D's golden age" was.
But if you're looking as D&D as a whole, as a phenomenon, I think 2014 is second only to 1974.
D&D 5e has sold more than all previous editions combined. Everything changed after 2014. Not only is it the most popular TTRPG everm by far, but it boosted the TTRPG industry as a whole. Whole new inustries were built on it: actual play streams, RPG hubs, social media realms, etc. D&D had various waves as a niche hobby before, but after 2014 it become something bigger than at anytime before.
The car brand in the D&D themed commercial was Peugeot.
It’s funny that you gravitated to that album that was written when the artist was dealing with losing a parent.
When my stepmom, mom, and dad all went into rapid decline close together in the course of only a couple of years, I spun Sting’s ‘Soul Cages’ album (written after the death of his father) and Rush’s Vapor Trails’ (written after Neil Peart lost both his only child and then his partner a couple of months apart.)
It wasn’t anything conscious. I just started listening to them both on repeat… and it only dawned on me later what the connection was.
Martin I love your videos. ❤
Lovely!
Thank you very much! I appreciate it.
May God bless your hearts, to you and your family. May your father find peace and rest, so your thoughts and heart be peaceful too!
The Setting is "Mystara". Mystra is the goddess of magic in Faerun, aka the Forgotten Realms.
Yes, I probably didn't enunciate very well, but I did say Mystara with three syllables. As a kid I always used to pronounce it like my-STAR-uh ("my" rhyming with "eye") but then William W. Connors who worked on the setting at TSR said they always pronounced it like the word "Mystery."
My 5 years... 75, 79, 80, 85, 89. Greyhawk, AD&D DMG, Greyhawk folio, Gary's exit, AD&D 2E.
Just an FYI, Zeb Cook confirmed 100% in an interview that TSR removed the Assassin class because of the letters D&D players sent in to the company. They were angry that edgelord players were using the Assassin class as a reason to kill fellow players. That is the true reason they removed the class.
What did the assassin class do at the time?
@@OldHeadAlan I thought that was the core of the kender annoyance as well. You create a PC who will steal the others magic items and trade them for cotton candy.
I think the attention-hogging edgelord can use any class though. You can be a basic fighter who makes a point to anger every street gang in the city and tries to drag all others into this.
I managed to play a socially well-adjusted assassin. Some sort of Renaissance Italian marksman. She would just politely climb up somewhere and shoot monsters in the eye when asked to, no Evil drama.
well done my liege
Dnd aesthetic : imagine if the classes were not fighter thief mage cleric, but... Slow fighter, quick fighter, bowman, shield man, commander man.
Then it would be a historical fighting game. They did it before, with Chainmail.
@@AdlerMowhistorical man on man fighting game... With experience levels, strength dexterity randomisation, dungeons, Monsters, prayers...
@@AdlerMow I think that would have been how the first RPGs looked if the historical wargamers has been a greater part.
Historical RPGs where you are swashbuckling musketeers or the Scarlet Pimpernell or South China Sea pirates etc. Absolutely no monsters and magic.
Wow, I was one away from winning the drawing!
And for the record 1st Edition DMG was a game changer. Best DMG ever from D&D world, with the Castles & Crusades Castle Keepers Guide (assisted my Gary Gygax) best Game Masters guide all around. ❤. IMHO. 😊
Good one Martin!
1985 was a pivotal year, but it certainly wasn't a good one. UE turned people off (myself included). OA was good but it wasn't a hit. The Battlesystem flopped. Gary Gygax's name sold books and they gave that up. TSR appeared to be a ship without a captain. On top of all of that, September of 85 was when 60 Minutes did that hit piece on D&D. I wasn't directly effected by it, but a lot of people I used to game with suddenly became interested in other things. It was the end of the beginning.
1981 would be my pick for D&D's best year. So many good adventures were released. B/X was riding high. All of my favorite artists were still working for TSR. Flashier things would come after 1981 but it would never quite have the same energy as it did in that year.
Random thought for your giveaways - is the logic setup for the random pick excluding the first and last person on the list? Number between 1 and 126 to Alexa might mean (to the AI) a range of 2-125? If you have to do a third shot at it maybe try something like "give me a random number between zero and 127?"
I think the ideas of character specialization started with weapon and non-weapon proficiencies in 2e. Like a proto-skill system.
Yes, I agree with that - I touch on it lightly in my section where I talk about 2E and the Complete Handbooks.
You could argue it goes back to Unearthed Arcana, or even back to the fan 'zines that inspired it.
@@daddyrolleda1 WFRP 1e had a similar sort of pseudo-skills/feats.
You could get a skill that just increased your melee damage by +1. Or one that let you busk for money. AD&D had one that just increased your climbing speed. Sometimes WFRP skills are both skill and feat.
Both NWPs and WFRP skills are rolls against attributes. Having the skill allows you to use the attribute in a new way.
Weapon proficiency was part in both. In WFRP you needed a skill to use certain specialist weapons, but everyone could pick up a basic axe and use it with their WS. But in AD&D it meant fighters were now specialists. I am the spear dude. Or the axe man. Or the dread dart warrior.
Some poor sap in the army also needs to figure out the polearm situation. We had no idea where that came from. I think we ended up shaking out heads and instituting a polearm proficiency.
@@daddyrolleda1 2e was also the time when thieves could allocate their skill points, I think. The start of the "I'm not that kind of thief."
I had fun as a dwarf security engineer. Bloke could set traps, find them, bypass them but never scaled a single wall or hid from anything. It was like playing a civil engineer in a dungeon.
@@joshjames582 How did proficiency work there?
I listened to some WoW players who described positive reinforcement. Instead of giving the player a penalty to do the thing, you shuffle the numbers so all actions except the ones you want to penalize has a bonus.
If a system has allowed me to gain triple shot with bows and arrow guidance and target meditation and whatnot to the point where picking up a modern kalashnikov is a downgrade, such a system has succeeded.
Would be between 89 and 96. TSR was heavily into experimentation and letting creators just go wild with ideas. Nothing was too crazy, not to be published. Some of them were bad, and many of them were good but there was no shortage of something for everyone. It's easily the best years to be playing DnD.
Also, the novels really hit their stride during that time, which gave us the most clear description of the worlds and settings that make up Dnd and gave most of our lore.
Sadly, as great as those years were, it was also what killed it.
Awesome! Thanks for weighing in with your thoughts. I'm sure you won't be surprised that at least one of those two years you picked is on my list. 😀
Just FYI, it's a small thing, but Lawrence Schick (and presumably Tom Moldvay, RIP) pronounces "Mystara" with an emphasis on the middle syllable. Like "Mist-ARE-uh."
I’m all ears!
So the Fiend Folio not getting redone - I know the purchase comes later, but I am now curious if WOTC's purchase of D&D included all the UK made stuff? Was that considered integral to the original TSR, or was that a separate entity?
Key dates IMO:
1974 the original release
1975 Supplements 1 and 2, esp Greyhawk: basically sets the template for all future editions
1977 The supplements are basically complete, Holmes comes out to rationalise 0e, also leading to 1e
1981 B/X released
2000 The OGL comes out
Great list! I think you'll find our lists are very similar, although I did leave one of yours off my list. It was a difficult choice considering that's the year I started playing!
@daddyrolleda1 I can't disagree with your choices either, sound reasons for why they were your key dates.
I was tempted to add the year 2e came out, as for me that saw me less interested in the game. The OGL started my exploration of pre 1981 versions, partially due to all the OSR retro clones. These days I favour 1e or earlier editions, with a strong lean towards 0e and B/X.
The most significant year was clearly 1983. That’s when I started playing.. 😂
Ha! I should've included 1981 for that same reason!
Wonder if they are going to do anything for the 25th anniversary of third?
It'd be cool but based on their very limited products and spectacle for the 50th anniversary of the game last year, I wouldn't count on it unfortunately. Thanks for watching and commenting.
77 Monster Manual AD&D 1st / 78 Players Handbook AD&D 1st / 79 Dungeon Masters Guide 1st was so getting the attention of all of us OD&D and Basic etc. edition people. I mean come on it was “Advanced” Dungeons and Dragons 🐉 Brother Martin. ❤😊😂
My list by chronological order:
1974 (OD&D)
1977 (Homes Basic & AD&D 1e)
1981 (Moldvay Basic)
1981 (AD&D 2e)
1991 (Rules Cyclopedia)
2000 (3e - no longer TSR's D&D, IMHO not D&D anymore. But yes, OGL was important, while is drenched the market with the D20 system, the open license in itself was genius, and it allowed OSR to flourish without reprisal. And that's why the legacy wasn't crushed).
I remember the Dragon mag drought. Sean K. Reynolds was the "web" guy back then (acting as a community person) and he was the Bagdad Bob of TSR at that time. Lying that "everything is fine" while the building is burning behind him. It's the reason I'll never buy anything with his name in it.
The basic red box got translated into many languages, including Finnish. What year first translations?
OK... 20 seconds in I'm not waiting till the end... I'm going straight in with "the most pivotal years were around the BECMI/2E AD&D period" let's see if Martin and I agree...
And having not waited I now see that he meant five SEPARATE years and their events rather than which five year period was the most pivotal..."
Pay attention kids, never answer the test question till you read the question ALL the way through!
One small correction: ‘Oriental Adventures’ wasn’t just written by David ‘Zeb’ Cook. It was co-written with François Marcela-Froideval. Many of the rules that were most influential on D&D were Marcela-Froideval’s. A video looking at the non-US contributions to D&D and non-English language publications would be fascinating.
As for most pivotal year for D&D, that’s difficult to say. For me, it’s more about the products rather than the timeline, but if I had to pick a period, it would be the years running up to D&D’s release in 1974. The very idea of an RPG and so many of D&D’s system fundamentals (classes, hit points, levels, armour class, that it’s a fantasy game etc) date back to pre-‘74, that you’d have to pick that time, no?
1:14:40 "Gary Gygax talks about it a lot in articles in Dragon Magazine. It implies that in the early 80s a movie script is in development and it should come out in the next year or two... ,,,The first D&D movie is not going to come out until, I think, 2000 and it was a disaster, if you've ever seen that." 🤨Going to have to disagree with you in this one. It was a great Dungeon & Dragons movie that captured the spirit of D&D ...in the early 80s. For someone like my that got into D&D in the mid-80s in middle school, Dungeons & Dragons (2000) was a straight-up old-school homebrew BECMI adventure and it was a fun enjoyable movie.
The problem as to why most people didn't like the original D&D movie is because by the time it finally came out in 2000 there were fully established game worlds like Mystara for BECMI (started in 1987), along with Dragonlance (1987), Forgotten Realms (1987) and then World of Greyhawk (1988) for 1E, then the more exotic settings of Spelljammers (1989), Ravenloft (1990), Dark Sun (1991), Maztica (1991), Al-Qadim (1992), Forgotten Realms (1993) and Birthright (1995) from 2E. Third edition AD&D by WOTC also came out in 2000 and it had it's own feel that was different from the previous editions put out by TSR and the vast majority of D&D players had moved beyond BECMI and 1E long ago. The 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movies had no characters or settings that were familiar to any of the more popular realms established by first and second edition that many of the players were familiar with and it came across as a generic campy fantasy film.
For those my age that remembered BECMI back in the day, hanging out with friends after school, and sometime joking around and acting goofy while playing D&D... that movie WAS a real D&D movie that captured the spirit of my old BECMI games and WASN'T a disaster as many claim it to be. It is still one of my favorite fantasy films along with Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, The Beast Master, Sword & The Sorcerer, Legend, and Willow that all came out during my original D&D playing days.
My guess before you go through it:
1974
1977
1981
1984
1987
2000 was the worst year for Dungeons & Dragons. It was the dawn of the power gamer. The evilest villains in the game.
Imo, the years from 1978 - 1983 were the most important
A few of those showed up on my list, either as honorable mentions or in my core list, as you might have seen.
77 Monster Manual AD&D 1st / 78 Players Handbook AD&D 1st / 79 Dungeon Masters Guide 1st was so getting the attention of all of us OD&D and Basic etc. edition people. I mean come on it was “Advanced” Dungeons and Dragons 🐉 Brother Martin. ❤😊😂