This Sunday we celebrate the 50th birthday of Dungeons and Dragons! At least, some do. You see, it’s not clear when exactly the game should be celebrated. We know the game was released in 1974, and we are fairly certain it was in January, but that is as specific as we can get. The game was a made by a couple of buddies, advertised with home made flyers, where you were invited to go to the creators house to try it out. There wasn’t the fanfare we are familiar with today, there was no formal company with clear records, we don’t even know the difference between the game being printed, being put in their local game shop, and the first copy sold. Were those on the same day, were they weeks apart? It’s unclear, so we have to estimate.
Author of Playing at the World, Jon Peterson, used a variety of sources to determine that the game was officially released and sold in late January, you can read his detective work here. In that article, he suggests that D&D’s birthday to be celebrated on the last Sunday of January, because Sunday is when Gary Gygax hosted his home game. This year, that would be the 28th.
That 1974 game not only is popularly played today, but spawned an entire network of hobbies across the world, as well as an entire subgenre of fantasy.
I started playing back in 2012, before 5e, and have been a DM since just before 5e came out in 2015. I’ve enjoyed the game, and over the years it’s become more and more my favorite hobby. Some of my favorite things of late include the products of MCDM (like Flee, Mortals! and their new RPG), the Netflix anime Delicious in Dungeon and it’s original manga Dungeon Meshi, and the #Dungeon23 challenge even though I didn’t keep up. Next week I hope to teach some of my coworkers how to play with some free pregenerated characters from DnDBeyond. Anyway, cheers to the following!
We’ve got a movie with actual movie stars in it!
We’ve got a Video Game of the Year, not to mention the other great games it’s inspired.
We’ve got great animated shows that can really emulate the genre.
We’ve got so many other great games in this hobby!
This game turns regular players into artists!
Let’s not forget that later this year we’ll get an updated version of 5e (which I’m still calling 5.5e) because the game has never been more popular!
I love this hobby, and I hope you’ll celebrate with my this Sunday.
The Nerdd 
I have played every edition (1 year older than the OFFICIAL game itself) but my most fond memory: a friends wife had never graduated high school, but because she loved the game it inspired her to read and learn (basic) math. When she finally went for her G.E.D. she ended up passing 100% and later her reading/writing/math skills were evaluated to being on par with a college grad. The lesson: gor being an “evil/devil worshipping ‘game’ ” it sure did (and I’m sure still does) inspire some to better themselves
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