When the world of Dungeons & Dragons was first created in 1974, it brought together disparate elements of gaming to create an entirely new experience. The real achievement was in coming up with a system that could continue to evolve with the players, allowing them to make up their own adventures as they leveled up. When creators Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson sat down to come up with the initial setting, though, they had several sources in mind. Some of them might surprise you.
- Improvisational theatre dating back to Italian commedia dell’arte served as an inspiration for the role-playing element of the game, in which players took on the persona of their own fantasy adventurer.
- Early 20th-century wargaming was the first to simulate battle with rules that were published in “manuals,” such as Fred T. Jane’s Jane’s Fighting Ships (1905/6 ed.) or H.G. Wells’s Floor Games (1911). (read it All)