Speaking of birthdays; I just had one as I mentioned in my last post, and sometime in 2024 is the actual 50th birthday of Dungeons & Dragons, which was released in 1974. By default, this also means it's the birthday of the entire hobby, since it effectively didn't exist until D&D created it. I believe June is when the first printed copies started shipping, but of course the "birthday" of a product isn't like the birthday of a person, so we'll celebrate the birth of the hobby under the tag 50th all year long in a series of posts. I'm not sure exactly how I want to celebrate this, or what I want to say about it yet, but I've got all year to think about it.
For now, let's just announce the anniversary, and say Happy 50th, D&D! I'd love to see you make it another 50 years, and if I live as long as Olivia de Haviland, who I mentioned in my last post, I'll actually be able to see it for another 50 years, which would be tremendous, not to mention statistically unlikely.
I think for my first post on this topic (after this one) I'll talk about the change in implicit setting over time in the game, from thud & blunder to extruded fantasy product, to Millennial wankery and the sometimes subtle changes over time that enveloped it. I'd say, for instance, that both 2e and 3e were characterized as extruded fantasy product, but they were also quite different; the first being inspired by forgettable high fantasy of the 70s and 80s like Terry Brooks or David Eddings, and the latter picking up a kind of Mad Max video game edgy vibe.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'll have to give that post some thought, and maybe do a bit of research even before I'm ready to write it.
Happy Birthday, TTRPG hobby!
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