‘Dungeons & Dragons’ is not only a vital part of understanding pop culture in the last fifty years: it is also a game that, even after so much time, continues to be indestructible against all odds. And that is demonstrated thanks to a fifth edition that, combined with the Internet, has meant the definitive resurgence of role-playing games. However, there is a key piece of the million-dollar puzzle that is D&D that we thought we would never have in our hands to explore at will… Until now.
Gygaxtron
In reality, ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ didn’t start with the iconic red box that appeared in, for example, ‘Stranger Things’, and that has been portrayed so many times in movies and television. Actually, it all began with the famous “brown box” from TSR back in 1974, which contained three volumes intended for playing fantasy medieval war campaigns with pencil, paper, and miniature figurines. If you want an original one, be prepared to pay at least $13,000. And that’s in poor condition.
But there is something even earlier: the manuscript that gave rise to this book, the Holy Grail, the Rosetta Stone of role-playing games. Now, it will be reproduced in its entirety for the first time in history in a book about the evolution of D&D from 1970 to 1977. It all started when Gary Gygax, who had written the game ‘Chainmail’ (nothing like the role-playing you imagine today), discovered that another player, Dave Arneson, was running his own campaign called ‘Blackmoor’. They began to correspond, Arneson sent him the notes from his game and Gygax turned them into a 50-page outline for what would later become ‘Dungeons & Dragons’.
Afterwards, this 50-page document became a 100-page one when both of them started adding notes. Both writings, typed by Gygax, will be available in the book. In fact, according to its author, it is the only reason why it is going to be released. The world needed to see it because it is something that, no matter how much you search, you won’t find on the Internet (at least not in its original format). And, certainly, after reading it, D&D historians are going to go completely crazy. The fifth edition’s renewal? It can wait a bit.
