Friday Faction: Dungeons & Dragons Museum

2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, something that has been recognised and celebrated with any number of books and products. In addition to the Player’s Handbook for Dungeons & Dragons 2024, there was The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970 – 1977 and even LEGO Dungeons & Dragons, the former controversial, the latter fun. However, in all of the brouhaha following the release of The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970 – 1977, Wizards of the Coast—rather Hasbro International Inc.—published another book dedicated to the history of the world’s preeminent roleplaying game. Dungeons & Dragons Museum: Celebrate 50 years of the epic fantasy role-playing game promises to take us on a guided tour of Dungeons & Dragons’ history complete with rarely seen images, an examination of its evolution over multiple editions of the roleplaying game, and a wider look at its influence, such as on television series like Stranger Things and its expansion beyond the gaming table into computer games and big budget films.

From the outset, Dungeons & Dragons Museum feels like museum. It opens with a section called the ‘Entrance’ and from there, takes us into individual exhibits for each of the roleplaying game’s five editions. These are further broken down into various sections, almost like individual displays. In the ‘Entrance’, the reader is told about the beginnings of Dungeons & Dragons with ‘Roll for Initiative: The Origins of D&D’ which introduces both E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and the importance of the Braunstein wargame. This nicely illustrated with portraits of both men and of Chainmail, the forerunner to Dungeons & Dragons, each keyed with a decent description. It is followed by timeline which covers the broad history of Dungeons & Dragons and its publishers. There are some oddities here, such as describing the development of Basic Dungeons & Dragons as a splinter branch, but the timeline does acknowledge changes in the hobby as they affect the roleplaying game. For example, E. Gary Gygax leaving in 1985 when Lorraine Williams gains a controlling share of TSR, Inc. and the publication of the Pathfinder roleplaying game in 2008.

Each of the five editions of Dungeons & Dragons gets its own section, from Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Every edition gets its own ‘Knowledge Check’, an overview of the edition before Dungeons & Dragons Museum examines the developments which occurred during the period when the edition was in print and the developments which in turn affected Dungeons & Dragons during that period. For example, ‘Animated Dreams’ looks at the Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon of the eighties, followed by ‘Ware Identification’ which details some of the merchandise released in conjunction the cartoon series—both in the eighties and since, for the ‘First Edition’, whilst for ‘Second Edition, Dungeons & Dragons begins to find itself portrayed on screen in films like Mazes & Monsters and E.T. The Extraterrestrial, whilst Mazes & Monsters would contribute towards to the Satanic Panic backlash against Dungeons & Dragons that would see it undergo significant design changes that would not be undone for decades. This would continue for ‘Fifth Edition’ with the celebrity games portrayed on The Big Bang Theory and the games both played and underlying the various seasons of Stranger Things, and of course, not forgetting the influence of Critical Role.

This is where Dungeons & Dragons Museum is at its strongest. Whether it is discussing the first Dungeons & Dragons novels—Quag Keep by Andre Norton and Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first part of the Dragonlance Chronicles by Maragret Weis and Tract Hickman—in ‘Read Magic’ and R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’Urden novels in ‘Legend Lore’, Bioware’s original Baldur’s Gate computer game in ‘City Secrets’, and even acknowledging the disasters of the original Dungeons & Dragons film from the year 2000 in ‘Aetherial Archive’, Dungeons & Dragons Museum is far batter at exploring the corollaries of the roleplaying game rather than the game itself. Indeed, none of the five editions receive more than a page each in terms of description and impact, and Basic Dungeons & Dragons barely warrants a paragraph beyond its description of being a splinter to the main game. Given how influential Basic Dungeons & Dragons has been in the hobby, especially in the last decade with the rise of the Old School Renaissance, it reads as being particularly dismissive. There are interesting points made, such as ‘Comprehend Language’ for ‘Second Edition’ which explores how the language of Dungeons & Dragons with terms such as ‘NPC’ and ‘XP’—Non-Player Character and Experience Points—and others have proliferated through computer games and out into the wider lexicon, but these are far and few between.

Physically, Dungeons & Dragons Museum is well written and presented. The artwork is all well handled and serves to make for an attractive looking book. That said, the book is not illustrated with rarely-seen images as its description suggests. Many of them will be familiar to even casual adherents of the roleplaying game and even those that are not, will have previously appeared in books like Art & Arcana: A Visual History.

Dungeons & Dragons Museum is not a book for the hardcore fan of Dungeons & Dragons—and certainly not the hardcore player of Dungeons & Dragons. The book focuses too much upon the peripherals over the core rules, so its discussion of the game play and how it changes from one edition to the next is all too casual. Yet it does showcase how Dungeons & Dragonss has spread across different media and influenced wider culture that has then influenced Dungeons & Dragons in return. Overall, Dungeons & Dragons Museum: Celebrate 50 years of the epic fantasy role-playing game provides a decent overview of Dungeons & Dragons in a broader sense as an intellectual property rather than as the roleplaying game, which gets pushed to the side.