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Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons
On the fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons , a collection of essays that explores and celebrates the game’s legacy and its tremendous impact on gaming and popular culture.
In 2024, the enormously influential tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons —also known as D&D —celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. To mark the occasion, editors Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José Zagal have assembled an edited collection that celebrates and reflects on important parts of the game’s past, present, and future. Each chapter in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons explores why the nondigital game is more popular than ever—with sales increasing 33 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite worldwide lockdowns—and offers readers the opportunity to critically reflect on their own experiences, perceptions, and play of D&D .
Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons draws on fascinating research and insight from expert scholars in the field, Gary Alan Fine, whose 1983 book Shared Fantasy remains a canonical text in game studies; Jon Peterson, celebrated D&D historian; Daniel Justice, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture; and numerous leading and emerging scholars from the growing discipline of game studies, including Amanda Cote, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and Aaron Trammell. The chapters cover a diverse range of topics—from D&D ’s adoption in local contexts and classrooms and by queer communities to speculative interpretations of what D&D might look like in one hundred years—that aim to deepen readers’ understanding of the game.
In 2024, the enormously influential tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons —also known as D&D —celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. To mark the occasion, editors Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José Zagal have assembled an edited collection that celebrates and reflects on important parts of the game’s past, present, and future. Each chapter in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons explores why the nondigital game is more popular than ever—with sales increasing 33 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite worldwide lockdowns—and offers readers the opportunity to critically reflect on their own experiences, perceptions, and play of D&D .
Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons draws on fascinating research and insight from expert scholars in the field, Gary Alan Fine, whose 1983 book Shared Fantasy remains a canonical text in game studies; Jon Peterson, celebrated D&D historian; Daniel Justice, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture; and numerous leading and emerging scholars from the growing discipline of game studies, including Amanda Cote, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and Aaron Trammell. The chapters cover a diverse range of topics—from D&D ’s adoption in local contexts and classrooms and by queer communities to speculative interpretations of what D&D might look like in one hundred years—that aim to deepen readers’ understanding of the game.
392 pages, Paperback
First published May 14, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 7, 2025
This is a collection of 20 essays that look at the first 50 years of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. These essays cover a variety of subjects including the history of the game and how it has developed over the years. There are also essays looking at the impact D&D has had on society - both in general and with reference to specific areas of society, such as its impact on, and accessibility to the LGBTQ community.
With such a broad range of topics, it's unlikely that every essay will appeal to every reader - and, indeed, there were some essays that I had no real interest in, although I didn't consider any of them to be badly written. They all looked to be well researched (as one would expect from a publication by MIT Press) and each essay has a plethora of bibliographical footnotes, which may encourage further reading for anyone interested in a particular topic.
With such a broad range of topics, it's unlikely that every essay will appeal to every reader - and, indeed, there were some essays that I had no real interest in, although I didn't consider any of them to be badly written. They all looked to be well researched (as one would expect from a publication by MIT Press) and each essay has a plethora of bibliographical footnotes, which may encourage further reading for anyone interested in a particular topic.
August 1, 2024
This review originally appeared on my website at: https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blo...
We’re living through a particularly excellent time for scholarship on Dungeon’s and Dragons, and this latest edited volume from MIT Press is a real showcase for the vibrancy of that scholarship. I’ll confess that sometimes these edited volumes make me a little concerned – it’s a real challenge to keep a book like this on theme while simultaneously ensuring that each chapter (twenty in total in this case) is interesting to anyone who might pick it up. That’s not to say that other edited volumes I’ve read have been bad – but rather that I often find myself enjoying at most one-third of these kinds of books with many of the other articles just being okay or simply not relevant to my interests. Given the range of fields on display in Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons I expected to find parts of it to be a bit of a drag, and while I cannot claim that I loved them all equally I found myself enjoying every single one of the book’s chapters. This is an excellent edited volume with plenty to offer anyone interested in the history, study, and culture of Dungeons and Dragons.
Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons’ core theme is that it is a showcase for the current state of scholarship about the titular RPG. To that end, it is subdivided into four sections which are roughly classified as Histories, Influences, Analyses, and Futures. Reviewing these big edited books can be kind of tricky since every chapter is unique and it can be hard to group all the disparate contributions into one summary of quality. Instead, I plan on giving an overview of each section, including highlighting some of my favorite chapters.
As a historian, it’s no surprise that I liked the first section, on the history of D&D, best. I am continually impressed with Jon Peterson’s contributions to the field, and his chapter on the development of experience and the concept of leveling up is fascinating, but the chapter that probably stood out the most to me was the interview with Ryan Dancey on the development of the Open Game License (OGL). Far more attention has been paid in scholarship to the origins and early years of D&D, the TSR era as it were, rather than the more recent editions and this chapter helped to cement that Fifty Years of D&D would be a book on the full life of the game, not just its origins and earliest iterations. The development of the OGL happened more than 20 years ago, it is hardly new, and it was fascinating to hear about its origins and impact during D&D 3.0 and 3.5, especially with the separation of the decades since. The other history chapters are comparably excellent – the chapter on the origins of the Basic Set is great and Evan Torner’s critique of D&D’s emphasis on combat helps to cement the book’s tone that while the contributors by and large are D&D fans they will not let that stop them from critiquing it. Overall, a great selection of chapters, I hugely enjoyed every one of them.
The Influences section is much more social science, and to wear my heart on my sleeve I bear the classic historian’s mistrust of the social sciences. That’s not to say that this section is bad, these are still excellent chapters! Esther MacCallum-Stewart’s chapter on the “Mercer Effect”, which examines the impact of Matt Mercer and the Critical Role actual play series on how players and dungeon masters approach playing D&D. Critical Role and its ilk are probably the most impactful thing happening in D&D culture at the moment and it’s great to see it receive some serious academic attention. I also enjoyed Dimitra Nikolaidou’s discussion of the impact of D&D on contemporary speculative fiction, which doesn’t look for easy answers or draw simple conclusions. My minor critique of this section is that some of the chapters would be better served by being in a volume on roleplaying games generally, rather than about D&D specifically. For example, Premeet Sidhu’s chapter on D&D in the classroom is interesting but seems a little restricted by having to focus on D&D when arguably other (probably simpler and cheaper) RPGs might find a better application in classrooms. It’s a small criticism, all things considered, and while I preferred the history section this one has a lot to offer – especially for the more social science inclined out there.
The third section splits the difference with a mixture of history and more social science perspectives, as well as a dose of personal memoir, to form a wider cultural analysis. Daniel Heath Justice’s reflection on finding D&D while growing up in an almost abandoned mining town and how to relate his indigenous identity to the race politics of the game is fascinating, but to me the real standout chapter has to be Kellynn Wee’s analysis of the D&D scene in Singapore. There has been quite a bit written on how D&D handles race, including several chapters in this volume, but in Wee’s chapter that interplay of 1970s American conceptions of race with the complex racial order of Singapore brings something new and fresh to the scholarship. Singapore’s colonial history and the interplay of language, Chinese and South Asian cultures, and the specific tropes of D&D provide many avenues for analysis and most of them are in display in this chapter. While other chapters click better with my historian’s taste for the kind of niche stuff that I adore, I think that this may be the best one overall in the book.
The final section is a theoretical look at D&D’s future, considering what a similar book published in another fifty years would look like. In keeping with the spirit of D&D it includes tables for randomly generating potential futures. This is a fun homage to D&D and a novel idea. I’m not sure it totally works for me, but I do love to see experimentation within academic spaces, particularly around writing and communication.
Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons’ explicit goal was to showcase the impressive state of contemporary scholarship on D&D and in that it absolutely succeeds – I can say that without reservation. It also strikes a great balance between being academic and being readable by D&D’s fans. Some chapters suffer slightly from being a little too academic in their writing, but overall, the quality is high, and I never felt the tedium that plagues some of the worst academic works out there. This is a great volume, and I hope that many of the authors who provided chapters go on to write books of their own. The state of scholarship on RPGs and D&D is truly in a wonderful place, and based on the promise in this book will only go from strength to strength.
We’re living through a particularly excellent time for scholarship on Dungeon’s and Dragons, and this latest edited volume from MIT Press is a real showcase for the vibrancy of that scholarship. I’ll confess that sometimes these edited volumes make me a little concerned – it’s a real challenge to keep a book like this on theme while simultaneously ensuring that each chapter (twenty in total in this case) is interesting to anyone who might pick it up. That’s not to say that other edited volumes I’ve read have been bad – but rather that I often find myself enjoying at most one-third of these kinds of books with many of the other articles just being okay or simply not relevant to my interests. Given the range of fields on display in Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons I expected to find parts of it to be a bit of a drag, and while I cannot claim that I loved them all equally I found myself enjoying every single one of the book’s chapters. This is an excellent edited volume with plenty to offer anyone interested in the history, study, and culture of Dungeons and Dragons.
Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons’ core theme is that it is a showcase for the current state of scholarship about the titular RPG. To that end, it is subdivided into four sections which are roughly classified as Histories, Influences, Analyses, and Futures. Reviewing these big edited books can be kind of tricky since every chapter is unique and it can be hard to group all the disparate contributions into one summary of quality. Instead, I plan on giving an overview of each section, including highlighting some of my favorite chapters.
As a historian, it’s no surprise that I liked the first section, on the history of D&D, best. I am continually impressed with Jon Peterson’s contributions to the field, and his chapter on the development of experience and the concept of leveling up is fascinating, but the chapter that probably stood out the most to me was the interview with Ryan Dancey on the development of the Open Game License (OGL). Far more attention has been paid in scholarship to the origins and early years of D&D, the TSR era as it were, rather than the more recent editions and this chapter helped to cement that Fifty Years of D&D would be a book on the full life of the game, not just its origins and earliest iterations. The development of the OGL happened more than 20 years ago, it is hardly new, and it was fascinating to hear about its origins and impact during D&D 3.0 and 3.5, especially with the separation of the decades since. The other history chapters are comparably excellent – the chapter on the origins of the Basic Set is great and Evan Torner’s critique of D&D’s emphasis on combat helps to cement the book’s tone that while the contributors by and large are D&D fans they will not let that stop them from critiquing it. Overall, a great selection of chapters, I hugely enjoyed every one of them.
The Influences section is much more social science, and to wear my heart on my sleeve I bear the classic historian’s mistrust of the social sciences. That’s not to say that this section is bad, these are still excellent chapters! Esther MacCallum-Stewart’s chapter on the “Mercer Effect”, which examines the impact of Matt Mercer and the Critical Role actual play series on how players and dungeon masters approach playing D&D. Critical Role and its ilk are probably the most impactful thing happening in D&D culture at the moment and it’s great to see it receive some serious academic attention. I also enjoyed Dimitra Nikolaidou’s discussion of the impact of D&D on contemporary speculative fiction, which doesn’t look for easy answers or draw simple conclusions. My minor critique of this section is that some of the chapters would be better served by being in a volume on roleplaying games generally, rather than about D&D specifically. For example, Premeet Sidhu’s chapter on D&D in the classroom is interesting but seems a little restricted by having to focus on D&D when arguably other (probably simpler and cheaper) RPGs might find a better application in classrooms. It’s a small criticism, all things considered, and while I preferred the history section this one has a lot to offer – especially for the more social science inclined out there.
The third section splits the difference with a mixture of history and more social science perspectives, as well as a dose of personal memoir, to form a wider cultural analysis. Daniel Heath Justice’s reflection on finding D&D while growing up in an almost abandoned mining town and how to relate his indigenous identity to the race politics of the game is fascinating, but to me the real standout chapter has to be Kellynn Wee’s analysis of the D&D scene in Singapore. There has been quite a bit written on how D&D handles race, including several chapters in this volume, but in Wee’s chapter that interplay of 1970s American conceptions of race with the complex racial order of Singapore brings something new and fresh to the scholarship. Singapore’s colonial history and the interplay of language, Chinese and South Asian cultures, and the specific tropes of D&D provide many avenues for analysis and most of them are in display in this chapter. While other chapters click better with my historian’s taste for the kind of niche stuff that I adore, I think that this may be the best one overall in the book.
The final section is a theoretical look at D&D’s future, considering what a similar book published in another fifty years would look like. In keeping with the spirit of D&D it includes tables for randomly generating potential futures. This is a fun homage to D&D and a novel idea. I’m not sure it totally works for me, but I do love to see experimentation within academic spaces, particularly around writing and communication.
Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons’ explicit goal was to showcase the impressive state of contemporary scholarship on D&D and in that it absolutely succeeds – I can say that without reservation. It also strikes a great balance between being academic and being readable by D&D’s fans. Some chapters suffer slightly from being a little too academic in their writing, but overall, the quality is high, and I never felt the tedium that plagues some of the worst academic works out there. This is a great volume, and I hope that many of the authors who provided chapters go on to write books of their own. The state of scholarship on RPGs and D&D is truly in a wonderful place, and based on the promise in this book will only go from strength to strength.
May 27, 2025
A thoroughly enjoyable and interesting collection of essays about the first and arguably still the best role-playing game of all time. The essays range in subject and quality and delve into such aspects of the game as design, mechanics, history, cultural impact, and a variety of other subjects. Overall a great read.
December 28, 2025
After the introductory first chapter by the books editors, this book launches into Gary Allen Fine revisiting his groundbreaking work that was the first academic look at anything to do with tabletop roleplaying games. This is followed by an essay by Jon Peterson, probably the world’s foremost historian when it comes to D&D, which covers the importance of the concepts of exploration and experience that D&D introduced into gaming.
This is a strong start to this collection of 20 essays that cover a variety of topics covering the history of D&D and the influence it has had. This variety is very broad, which is going to result in the likelihood that no one is going to be extremely interested by them all, but I think anyone interested in the overall topic of the history and influence of D&D will find things to like here.
I do have a few specific criticisms and comments to make beyond what I already said about chapters 2 and 3 above.
There is an appendix that gives an intro into the different editions of D&D in which the editors make some interesting choices. Combining all the variations of Basic D&D is fine, but deciding to combine 1st and 2nd edition AD&D into one entry while providing separate ones for 3.0 and 3.5 is baffling to me.
In the seventh essay, Playing Custom, the author makes an assertion that Gary Gygax once expressed regret for including gender inequality in the game. I found this very interesting as there has been a lot of discussion about Gygax’s sexism over the years, and I’d never seen anything to indicate he had made such a statement.
The source cited for this assertion goes to an EN World forums post. Following the link leads to a post by Gygax that has nothing to do with the assertion. I did not check the entire thread (which is many hundreds, probably thousands, of posts long), but I did go back and forth several pages in case there had been some shifting in the way things were organized on the site.
I’d love to know for sure what source the author was citing, as at this point I don’t think there is anything to support the idea that Gygax ever said what the author is claiming he did.
In the eighth essay, the author makes a comment unrelated to D&D that I have to take exception to. He describes the Cold War as having “gone hot” in 1984. The term “going hot” has a specific meaning in relation to a “cold war”. It means open fighting between the forces of the nations concerned. In this case, what the author says would indicate that the US and the USSR went to open war with each other in 1984. Obviously, that did not happen, or we would likely not be here to talk about it. I recognize this as nitpicking, but I still think it’s worth pointing out.
On a more positive note, in the tenth essay, the author makes some interesting observations about the origins of the Cleric class that I’d never really considered. The author points out that of the three original classes (four if you include the early addition of thief), it is the only one not directly represented in any previously existing fiction. The author then goes into what they think are the inspirations for that class before going into the main subject of the essay.
I think this is an interesting book for anyone interested in the subject, but not essential reading.
This is a strong start to this collection of 20 essays that cover a variety of topics covering the history of D&D and the influence it has had. This variety is very broad, which is going to result in the likelihood that no one is going to be extremely interested by them all, but I think anyone interested in the overall topic of the history and influence of D&D will find things to like here.
I do have a few specific criticisms and comments to make beyond what I already said about chapters 2 and 3 above.
There is an appendix that gives an intro into the different editions of D&D in which the editors make some interesting choices. Combining all the variations of Basic D&D is fine, but deciding to combine 1st and 2nd edition AD&D into one entry while providing separate ones for 3.0 and 3.5 is baffling to me.
In the seventh essay, Playing Custom, the author makes an assertion that Gary Gygax once expressed regret for including gender inequality in the game. I found this very interesting as there has been a lot of discussion about Gygax’s sexism over the years, and I’d never seen anything to indicate he had made such a statement.
The source cited for this assertion goes to an EN World forums post. Following the link leads to a post by Gygax that has nothing to do with the assertion. I did not check the entire thread (which is many hundreds, probably thousands, of posts long), but I did go back and forth several pages in case there had been some shifting in the way things were organized on the site.
I’d love to know for sure what source the author was citing, as at this point I don’t think there is anything to support the idea that Gygax ever said what the author is claiming he did.
In the eighth essay, the author makes a comment unrelated to D&D that I have to take exception to. He describes the Cold War as having “gone hot” in 1984. The term “going hot” has a specific meaning in relation to a “cold war”. It means open fighting between the forces of the nations concerned. In this case, what the author says would indicate that the US and the USSR went to open war with each other in 1984. Obviously, that did not happen, or we would likely not be here to talk about it. I recognize this as nitpicking, but I still think it’s worth pointing out.
On a more positive note, in the tenth essay, the author makes some interesting observations about the origins of the Cleric class that I’d never really considered. The author points out that of the three original classes (four if you include the early addition of thief), it is the only one not directly represented in any previously existing fiction. The author then goes into what they think are the inspirations for that class before going into the main subject of the essay.
I think this is an interesting book for anyone interested in the subject, but not essential reading.
November 4, 2025
Some 45-years ago a friend in junior high school introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. He'd inherited a copy of the original boxed set from an older brother. Of course that boxed set in good condition today is worth a pretty penny. What ensued was about a decade of really active enjoyment of D&D and a host of other TTRPG's. Here I am now, another several decades later, meandering back into the hobby that was vitally important to that period of my life. Thanks to the 2015 revival of D&D my own children became interested in the game, and were amazed to learn that their own father had once played. Of course they were amazed to learn that in the 1980's when I was playing it was far from a hip pastime and that those of us playing tended to be more social pariahs than anything else. As part of the process of re-engaging with the game I've connected with various networks around the game. It was probably social media that dropped a link to an essay entitled "Hack the Orcs, Pillage the Tomb, Take the Land" into my attention. The essay, which is from this collection, was written by Daniel Heath Justice, a native American academic, author, and activist who reflected on playing the game in the context of his life and history and the game's history of racism and colonialism. As I contemplate doing something academic around the game I needed to re-read the essay, as well as the the rest of the essays in this collection. From the first essay, "Is this the Golden Age of D&D?" the reader is drawn into a variety of discussions, from the history of the game and its evolution to the current iteration, to sociological analysis of various cultural groups and their experiences. Anyone interested in playing D&D (or similar TTRPG's), or who already plays and wants to add depth to their understanding of the appeal of the game both personally and culturally, or wants to expand and diversify the gaming experience, this book is a great resource. Reading this collection will likely lead to further exploration, as the citations in each essay offer so many more potential readings, so many more authors who have explored these topics over the years.
January 29, 2025
Very interesting analysis of the history of D&D from its inception in 1974 through present. The author takes an interesting psychoanalysis, sociological and philosophical approach to understanding the development of the legacy surrounding the culture of D&D and why it's persisted for 50 years and what to expect in the future.
Various interpretations and understanding under the psychological and sociological lenses address the myriad of undertone notions of new and old players that influence story telling, gaming experiences and how this has contributed to the longevity and legacy of D&D.
It's a worth while read if you're someone who enjoys some history but also learning other components that don't always affect you personally, but how other players around the globe perceive the ever changing rules, inclusion, acceptance and attempt to foster new players every day let alone every year.
Various interpretations and understanding under the psychological and sociological lenses address the myriad of undertone notions of new and old players that influence story telling, gaming experiences and how this has contributed to the longevity and legacy of D&D.
It's a worth while read if you're someone who enjoys some history but also learning other components that don't always affect you personally, but how other players around the globe perceive the ever changing rules, inclusion, acceptance and attempt to foster new players every day let alone every year.
December 31, 2024
There is a good chapter
Chapter 3 by Jon Peterson is a great work of scholarship that hones in on exploration and experience as core features of D&D that made it as popular as it was. Supported by examples of related mechanics from earlier games. Well worth reading.
Chapter 3 by Jon Peterson is a great work of scholarship that hones in on exploration and experience as core features of D&D that made it as popular as it was. Supported by examples of related mechanics from earlier games. Well worth reading.
July 5, 2024
This book gives you details about Dungeons& Dragons and how it has developed over the last fifty ye ars. This book is a collection of essays and articles covering game theory and game mechanies.
November 28, 2025
Still wild to me to read about Critical Role in an academic context. Like how do YOU know about my Thursday night buddies what do you mean they’re notable enough for an academic study?
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