# The Birth of D&D *Umpires, toy soldiers and a castle in a Twin Cities basement* - Tour: Tour - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/tours/birth-of-dnd/ > A century and a half of play in twelve stops: from a Prussian staff exercise and H. G. Wells's toy cannons through Braunstein and Blackmoor to the white box, and the quarrel over who made it. **Why it matters:** The roleplaying game did not appear from nowhere. This tour shows the specific people, games and accidents that combined in the early 1970s to produce Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeons & Dragons was published in January 1974, but its ingredients took a century and a half to gather. This tour walks through them in order and shows where each piece came from. The oldest ingredient is the referee. [Kriegsspiel](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/kriegsspiel/), a Prussian army training game, put an umpire between the players and the battlefield, a person who knew more than they did and decided what happened. [H. G. Wells](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/h-g-wells/)'s [Little Wars](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/little-wars/) made wargaming a hobby for civilians. By the 1960s American wargamers had clubs, fanzines and conventions, [Gen Con](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/gen-con/) among them. The second ingredient is the individual role. In [David Wesely](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/david-wesely/)'s [Braunstein](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/braunstein/) games, players took on single characters in a town rather than commanding armies, and found the talking more interesting than the fighting. [Dave Arneson](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/dave-arneson/) was one of those players. When he started his own campaign, [Blackmoor](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/blackmoor/), he set it in a fantasy world, sent his players into a dungeon under a castle, and let them keep their characters from week to week. The third ingredient is the rulebook. [Gary Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/) and [Jeff Perren](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jeff-perren/)'s [Chainmail](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/chainmail/) had given wargamers fantasy creatures and rules for individual heroes. When Arneson showed Gygax Blackmoor, Gygax recognized something new and wrote it up. [Tactical Studies Rules](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/tsr/) published the result as [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/). The later stops show how quickly the game grew: through [magazines](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/dragon-magazine/), through the [Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-basic-set/) that took it to toy shops, and through [Advanced D&D](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/advanced-dungeons-and-dragons/), whose success led to a lawsuit over who deserved the credit. The tour ends on [The Gygax–Arneson Disputes](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/the-gygax-arneson-dispute/) because the question it raises is a real one: D&D was not the work of one inventor, but of a whole community of players, referees and rule-writers, working from ideas that were already more than a century old. ## Stops 1. [Kriegsspiel](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/kriegsspiel/) — Start in Prussia in 1812 and 1824, with a training game of painted blocks and staff maps. Its crucial invention is the umpire, a referee who hides what the players cannot see and decides the outcome of their orders. Every Dungeon Master descends from this figure. 2. [Little Wars](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/little-wars/) — In 1913 H. G. Wells brought wargaming to the nursery floor with toy soldiers and spring-loaded guns, and wrote rules anyone could buy. The hobby of recreational wargaming, which would produce D&D's authors, begins here. 3. [Gen Con](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/gen-con/) — In 1968 Gary Gygax helped launch a small wargaming convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Conventions, fanzines and clubs made up the network through which the people and ideas on this tour met. 4. [Braunstein](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/braunstein/) — In Minnesota around 1969 David Wesely gave each player a single townsperson, the mayor or the banker, with goals of their own. The players talked, schemed and dueled instead of fighting the battle. One player in these games was Dave Arneson. 5. [Chainmail](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/chainmail/) — Gygax and Jeff Perren's 1971 medieval wargame included a Fantasy Supplement with heroes, wizards, fireballs and dragons, and scaled combat down to single figures. D&D's 1974 rules would assume every player owned a copy. 6. [Blackmoor](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/blackmoor/) — The decisive stop. From 1971 Arneson ran a 'medieval Braunstein' in which each player kept one character across sessions, explored dungeons beneath a model castle and grew stronger. This was the kind of game D&D would describe. 7. [Dungeon!](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dungeon-board-game/) — A Blackmoor player, David Megarry, built a dungeon board game, and when he and Arneson took it to Lake Geneva, Arneson ran Gygax's group through Blackmoor. The board game and the roleplaying game were born from the same trip; compare the two to see where they differ. 8. [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) — January 1974: three booklets in a woodgrain box, written up by Gygax from his and Arneson's play and published by the new Tactical Studies Rules. It had a referee, characters, levels and no winner. The first printing was 1,000 copies. 9. [The Strategic Review & Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/dragon-magazine/) — The Strategic Review (1975), soon replaced by The Dragon (1976), carried new classes, monsters and rules debates to a scattered audience. Early D&D grew as much through magazines as through rulebooks. 10. [Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-basic-set/) — In 1977 TSR hired neurologist J. Eric Holmes to write an introduction for newcomers, boxed for toy and book stores. D&D was leaving the wargaming hobby for the general public. 11. [Advanced Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/advanced-dungeons-and-dragons/) — Gygax's hardcovers of 1977–79 codified the game into a canon. TSR treated AD&D as a new game and paid Arneson no royalties on it, which set up the last stop. 12. [The Gygax–Arneson Disputes](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/the-gygax-arneson-dispute/) — End with the argument. Arneson sued in 1979 and the 1981 settlement gave him a share of AD&D sales. The documentary record suggests neither man alone made D&D, and the credit question has been debated ever since. ## Facts - Kriegsspiel's units absorbed damage in points before being removed, making the Prussian game an ancestor of hit points. - Braunstein's referee, David Wesely, took his all-powerful umpire from Charles Totten's 1880 wargame Strategos. - Castle Blackmoor was a Kibri plastic model kit of Branzoll Castle in Italy. - The first printing of D&D, 1,000 copies, was hand-assembled in Lake Geneva and took about ten months to sell out. --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.