Tabletop Roots
Before anyone swung a foam sword: the wargaming lineage and the 1974 birth of Dungeons & Dragons, the imagination engine that made role-play a hobby.
Part of LARP
10 moments in this segment.
- - D&D: the Satanic Panic (NYT Retro Report). The 1980s moral panic that branded role-play as dangerous.
- - The history of D&D. The origin story of the game that made role-play mainstream.
- - A good-enough history of Dungeons & Dragons. How D&D grew from a 1974 wargame supplement into a cultural juggernaut.
- - "Quite Rich" - a D&D parody. Tabletop role-play, affectionately mocked.
- - TTRPG origins & Gary Gygax. Where tabletop role-playing games came from.
- - The rise and dominion of humans (D&D timeline). World-building lore, the fiction larpers step into.
- - How Dungeons & Dragons started. The official D&D story: how Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson invented the role-playing game in 1974.
- - How Gary Gygax built Greyhawk. The world-building that shaped tabletop role-play.
- - Gary Gygax: the origin of D&D dragons. The mythology the whole hobby was built on.
- - The complete history of the Forgotten Realms (D&D). The lore of D&D’s flagship world, the imaginative depth behind the hobby.

