the Extra-Terrestrial to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Chevy Chase on Community, Stephen Colbert and Stranger Things.įrom the original Referees to today’s Dungeon Masters, D&D has a deep and layered history.
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Readers will revisit several eras, Dragonmagazine, digital expansion ( Intellivision cartridges and CD-ROMs, to Open Game Licenses and today’s MMPORGs), brown boxes to red boxes and back again, a return to miniature gameplay, an animated series and a movie (and another starring a very young Tom Hanks), plus great throwbacks like tie-in novels, Bally pinball, Shrinky Dinks, Colorforms, View-Master, and in the post-Hasbro era, even D&D Clue.ĭungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History even documents pop culture inclusion of the game and references illustrating an ongoing change to become more accepted by the mainstream and even something for the cool kids, from E.T. Why selling dice as an add-on helped the company, why Ents aren’t allowed, and why failure to educate the masses about D&D once the game got traction almost set the company back. You can learn what business models worked for D&D and what didn’t.
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The founders would pull in amateur artists and eventually professional artists, sprouting from a small headquarters in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, ultimately the source of Gen Con, the gaming convention that has been tied to D&D since the beginning.
Wells first penned a gaming rulebook for miniatures titled Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books, an influential book inspiring gaming to this day. It all started with creators Gary Gygax and David Arneson, and their efforts to build on miniature figure battle games from centuries past, and modern rules for gaming that had a historic source: sci-fi/fantasy author H.G. Possibly the best contribution is comparative images showing specific pop culture sources for many of the designs that made it into the early books and supplements, everything from Frank Frazetta Conan the Barbarian paintings to panels of comic book art from Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales.įrom Guidon Games’ Chainmail to TSR to Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro and the latest 5th Edition rule books, the D&D story is one of corporate takeovers, failures, successes and strategies, all to survive and ultimately consolidate with games including Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, World of Warcraft, and the entire Milton Bradley tabletop game catalog, all under one umbrella. You can find a side-by-side evolution and comparison of monsters and other characters, soak in old maps and character sheets, and compare the covers and key art across all editions. This… treatise… this behemoth of a book is smartly designed so readers can approach it for a quick burst of throwback fun or a detailed dive behind the creation and many changes of the game and the companies behind it. You’ll find a 14-page preview below courtesy of publisher Ten Speed Press. Released in two editions, fans old and new can choose from the standard 448-page hardcover alone or a special edition Hydro74-designed boxed set with some intriguing extras. Their sources include the archives at Wizards of the Coast, private collectors, and more than 40 designers and artists from every era of the game’s history. Boasting some 10-15 million active players today, D&D now features the results of writers/D&D celebrity fans Michael Witwer (D&D historian), Kyle Newman (director of the movie Fanboys), Jon Peterson (game historian) and Sam Witwer (actor, Being Human, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica) pulling together published images and source art from each edition of D&D’s core books, supplements, and modules, magazines, advertisements, tie-in products, sketches, and draft rules. If you grew up with the game you are certain to find both nostalgia and page-after-page of new information in its more than 700 color images from the past, images of heroes and villains, monsters and other creatures, that brought in some 40 million players over the years. Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History is a comprehensive, authoritative, and licensed look back at nearly 50 years of gaming, storytelling, and artwork. If you’re not a player of Dungeons & Dragons, a new journey through the hills and valleys of the roleplay game that started it all will get you up to speed quickly.