Today is Dungeons & Dragon’s 40th birthday. While we can’t be %100 that the 26th is the exact date, as it was never announced, historian and author Jon Peterson presents some great research on his blog that really leaves little debate.
The approach to the birthday has been covered here on Geek Native. There’s been unofficial t-shirts. There was a Thunderclap (a social Kickstarter) set up to wish Happy Birthday to D&D. It needed 100 signatures and only got 40.
Only 40 gamers wanted to wish D&D happy birthday? Does no one care?
I don’t think that’s the case. Most likely the birthday will come as a surprise to many gamers. The Thunderclap may not have been a good mechanism to offer pen and paper gamers too.
People do care about the birthday. It can be argued that the birth of D&D was also the birth of the modern roleplaying hobby. USA Today has covered the story and the Gygax Magazine is supporting Jon Peterson’s Reddit AMA (1pm PST / 4pm EST). PC Mag is also noting the occasion.
What about the current owners of the game? What about Wizards of the Coast? This blogger did email their press team to ask about official plans at the start of the year. No response yet. As of this blog post going live there isn’t any recognition of the 26th on the official DnD site. There’s still time, though.
In fairness to Wizards, they are working on Dungeons & Dragons 5 (aka D&D Next) which will be launched this summer after nearly two years of playtesting.
GeekNative Happy Birthday D&D :)
I’ve still got all of these original books… kinda interesting to see how far D&D has come
If the current boom continues then I’m sure the 50th birthday bash will be a huge one :)