Dungeons & Dragons is celebrating its fiftieth year anniversary of publishing in 2024. A worthy achievement of a game that has done so much to shape the last 50 years.
Virtually my entire “aware” life has been alongside this game – meaning that I came aware of the world, humanity and existence roughly the same time that D&D achieved a kind of life on its own, with the publishing of the first Basic set and release of AD&D. To me, those two releases mark the point where D&D went from a hobbyist/DIY game to a commercial enterprise that has become a major driver of humanity’s culture and mythology.
I say that deliberately, because I think role playing games have become a democratizing force for culture and mythos. Where, in the past, mythology was guided and shaped by stories passed down along roughly a similar thread, with the advent of RPGs, we saw how to create our own mythologies. And that creation has shaped our culture in innumerable ways.
I don’t know.. I’m sure there are people who will say these things with much better words and in more coherent ways. It’s just amazing that I’ve been able to witness this invention, much as I’ve witnessed the invention of microcomputers, the Internet and more. It makes me wonder what is being born now in a small, innocuous way that will grow to be as major of an impact on us as D&D.
On a personal note, I’ve kinda gone back to the future with my blog, podcast and content. The blog and podcast are now hosted on a small domain website that I’ve had for over a decade. My content and photos are off of Google Drive (except for things I’ve shared in the past) and now managed on my home network.
When I first came online, I hosted my own BBS, I dabbled in the beginnings of linux (0.98a! I remember the labels on the floppies I made…) and eventually I had a little website in the late 90s. And now look, I’m back to where I started. A linux machine hosting my private cloud, a website for communicating out. So it goes…