History of Dungeons & Dragons and TRPGs: The Root of Every RPG
How Dungeons & Dragons, born on a tabletop in 1974, created the tabletop RPG and shaped video game RPGs from MUD to Baldur's Gate 3.
Experience points, levels, hit points, character classes, dice rolls to decide whether an attack hits. Most of these concepts, now taken for granted in RPGs, began with a single rulebook: Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), published in 1974. Played not on a computer but with paper, pencils and dice, it created the tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) and left its mark on almost every branch of video game RPGs.
This article looks at how D&D split off from wargaming, how it changed over its editions, and how it influenced video games from MUD to Baldur's Gate 3.
Born from miniature wargames
D&D's direct ancestor is the miniature wargame: a hobby in which toy soldiers are set up on a table and units move and fight according to rules. In the United States it was played mostly through clubs in the 1960s and 70s.
In 1971 Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren released Chainmail, a set of rules for medieval combat. It included a supplement for fantasy elements such as wizards and dragons. Meanwhile, Dave Arneson was running games in his own fantasy world, Blackmoor, where each player controlled a single hero exploring a dungeon instead of a whole army.
D&D combined these ideas. It was first published in 1974 by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules), the company founded by Gygax and others. The first set still felt like a wargame, requiring the Chainmail rules for combat, but by the 1977 editions combat was mostly resolved verbally and could be played without miniatures.
How a TRPG is played
D&D looks like a board game, but it works quite differently.
- Dungeon Master (DM): one person runs the game, playing the world, events, monsters and townsfolk.
- Player characters: everyone else plays one character, such as a fighter, wizard or cleric, and describes in words what that character does.
- Dice rolls: actions whose outcome is uncertain are decided by rolling dice. The twenty-sided die (d20) became the symbol of D&D.
- Advancement: completing adventures earns experience points, and characters level up and grow stronger.
It is less a game of winning and losing than a way of building a story together. Because there is no fixed board, players can attempt any action they can think of, which is its biggest appeal.
A single meeting of a few hours is called a "session," and a long adventure that continues over many sessions with the same characters is called a "campaign." Groups that keep a campaign going with the same friends for months or even years are common. When a character dies or retires, the player rejoins with a new one, so the history of a world builds up in the players' memories.
Rules that changed edition by edition
Over 50 years, D&D has overhauled its rules several times.
| Period | Edition | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| 1974 | Original D&D | First published by TSR |
| 1977–1979 | Advanced D&D (AD&D) | Thick core rulebooks that organized the rules |
| 2000 | 3rd edition | Published by Wizards of the Coast, d20 System |
| 2008 | 4th edition | Emphasis on tactical combat |
| 2014 | 5th edition | Simple, easy-to-learn rules and huge popularity |
| 2024 | Revised 5th edition core rulebooks | Backward-compatible revision for the 50th anniversary |
Ownership changed too. In 1997 Wizards of the Coast, successful with Magic: The Gathering, bought the near-bankrupt TSR, and in 1999 toy company Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast.
The Open Game License (OGL), released with 3rd edition, also mattered. It let other publishers use the d20 System rules, leading to countless compatible rulebooks and spin-off games such as Pathfinder. In 2023, after a backlash against Wizards' attempt to change the license, the company released the 5th edition System Reference Document (SRD 5.1) under an irrevocable Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).
Game terms that D&D created
Even if you have never played D&D, you already use its vocabulary. Much of the basic grammar of video game RPGs came from D&D rulebooks.
| D&D concept | Meaning | In video games |
|---|---|---|
| Ability scores | Six values: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma | Stats on the character creation screen |
| Hit points (HP) | How much damage you can take before falling | Health bar |
| Armor Class (AC) | How hard you are to hit | Defense |
| Class | Roles such as fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric | Tank, damage dealer and healer roles |
| Experience and levels | Growth earned through adventure | Leveling up |
| Alignment | Personality split into good and evil, law and chaos | Moral choice systems |
The division of labor in particular, with a fighter holding the front, a wizard dealing heavy damage from behind and a cleric healing allies, carried straight over into party roles in online games. Even the rule that limits how many spells a wizard can cast per day survived in video games in other forms, such as mana and cooldowns.
The moral panic of the 1980s
D&D was not always welcome. In 1980s America, some religious groups and media outlets attacked D&D, linking it to Satanism and teen suicide. The claims had little basis, but for a while D&D carried the image of a "dangerous game." The episode is often compared to later controversies over violence in video games.
The dungeon moves to the computer
College students and programmers who played D&D soon began moving it onto computers.
- MUD: a multi-user text adventure created in the late 1970s by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at the University of Essex in England. It became a direct ancestor of online RPGs and MMORPGs.
- Gold Box series: Pool of Radiance, released by SSI in 1988, was the first official adaptation of AD&D rules for home computers.
- Baldur's Gate (1998): made by BioWare with AD&D rules and the Forgotten Realms setting, it opened a golden age of computer RPGs.
Games without a D&D license borrowed its structure as well. The skeleton of classes and stats, experience and levels and random checks spread to Western RPGs, Japanese RPGs and online games alike.
Baldur's Gate 3 and a new golden age
From the late 2010s, D&D entered a new golden age. The easy-to-learn 5th edition, online play over video calls and streams and videos of actual play all grew in popularity together.
In video games, Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 marked the peak. Built on D&D 5th edition rules, it launched first on PC on August 3, 2023, and became the first game to win Game of the Year at all five major video game award ceremonies. Its presentation, with dice rolls shown right on screen, shows how faithfully computer games inherited a tabletop pastime from 50 years earlier.
If you want to try a TRPG
TRPG rulebooks look thick and starting can feel daunting, but there are more ways in than you might think.
- Start with the free basic rules: Wizards of the Coast publishes the System Reference Document (SRD) for free.
- Short one-shot adventures: starting with a "one-shot" scenario that ends in three or four hours keeps the commitment small.
- Digital board games: board games like Gloomhaven, which bring the feel of TRPG combat to cards and a board, are also good starting points.
- Video game RPGs: many people learn the rules through Baldur's Gate 3 before moving to the table.
D&D was the first successful attempt to turn "imagining together" into rules. It is no exaggeration to say that even the level-up sound in the RPG you play today carries the echo of dice rolling across a table 50 years ago.