1983 - Dungeons & Dragons

[Tawmis]

[Rath Darkblade]

D&D ... a cross between a hobby and a cult? A cult of role-playing games?

I remember Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, and those fantasy books (Fighting Fantasy). I still have some of them.

I remember Joe Dever's books too.

Calling D&D "an empire" in 1983 is a bit of overreach. Was it an empire back then?

[Tawmis]

Calling D&D "an empire" in 1983 is a bit of overreach. Was it an empire back then?

First edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons came out in 1977. By 1983, D&D was very popular. (Not as popular, as it is today; that's mostly because all these movie stars have come forward talking about how they play D&D now/back then). But in 1983, in the United States, D&D was definitely very, very popular. I was 13 at the time, and knee deep in D&D - and so were many others I knew.
Not sure where their source is - but:
https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-sal ... 09/page-15

The 2nd edition of AD&D sold well when it was released. Combined, the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Player’s Handbook sold over 400,000 copies in their first year. That’s a lot of books. Not the most ever sold by TSR, but a lot. To give some historical comparison, the 1981 D&D Basic Rules Set sold over 650,000 copies in its first year. To compare to previous editions of AD&D, the 1st edition DMG and PHB together sold over 146,000 copies in 1979. Putting those numbers together makes AD&D 2nd edition look like a solid hit.

[goatmeal]

1983: How DUNGEONS & DRAGONS cast its spell (video)

How did AD&D cast its spell? I'm guessing it was a little fellow with a goatee and red complexion named Sa-Tan...

[Rath Darkblade]

Hold on. Why is this BBC interviewer talking to Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson? I'm confused. I know they did a series of books called Fighting Fantasy. But what did they have to do with D&D? Wasn't that created by a rather obscure chap called Gary Gygax?

[Tawmis]

Hold on. Why is this BBC interviewer talking to Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson? I'm confused. I know they did a series of books called Fighting Fantasy. But what did they have to do with D&D? Wasn't that created by a rather obscure chap called Gary Gygax?

Probably because they were local (being British and what not) - and because of this no doubt:

Steve Jackson began his career in games in 1974 as a freelance journalist with Games & Puzzles magazine. In early 1975, Jackson co-founded the company Games Workshop with school friends John Peake and Ian Livingstone. They started publishing with the monthly newsletter, Owl and Weasel, on which Jackson did most of the writing, and they sent copies of the first issue to subscribers of the Albion fanzine; Brian Blume, co-partner of American publisher TSR, received one of these copies and in return sent back a copy of TSR's new game Dungeons & Dragons. Jackson and Livingstone felt that this game was more imaginative than any other contemporary games being produced in the UK, and so worked out an arrangement with Blume for an exclusive deal to sell D&D in Europe.

[Rath Darkblade]

Ah, nice. Thanks, Tawm!