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TVTranscript
00:08It began with imagination and a pair of dice.
00:11It was a social experience.
00:13A group of friends gathered to tell a story together.
00:16That's something that no one had ever seen before.
00:19And it merged our world with theirs.
00:22You've got action, you've got romance, you've got adventure, exploration.
00:26And it can go on like a soap opera for as long as you want it to go on.
00:31Some people would fight it.
00:32Dungeons & Dragons was heavy metal before heavy metal was heavy metal.
00:36It was the thing that people were really afraid of.
00:38And others would embrace it.
00:40Well, Baldur's Gate, wow, why was it so successful?
00:44You know, it just clicked on a lot of things and just did them right.
00:48So if you're a D&D fan, here was a great way to go in and play a game
00:52where you could basically test out some of your ideas about tactics and that sort of thing.
00:57But it altered the course of the gaming industry forever.
01:03This is the story of Dungeons & Dragons.
01:29The snowy winters of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin provide long hours for indoor entertainment.
01:34And in 1970, this perfect setting brings together two people and one incredibly unique idea.
01:41Dungeons & Dragons came out of a long line of war gaming.
01:46Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were two different figures who led their own kind of local war gaming clubs.
01:54Where they would play big games of miniatures with little toy soldiers on tables.
02:00Both Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were getting a little bit bored and they were both very creative people.
02:05And they were looking for kind of the next step.
02:07Both of them independently started doing games based on kind of medieval fantasy settings.
02:13Somebody decided to attack a castle with a small party by going up through the dungeon.
02:19And that somehow sparked this thought that you could run a game a little bit differently with one person being
02:28a dungeon master.
02:29And the game that will become known as Dungeons & Dragons begins to evolve.
02:33Between them came up with the idea of, hey, you know, it isn't just about how fast and far this
02:40guy can move and how far he can fire an arrow and how hard he can swing a sword.
02:44But how about if we give these people, these characters, these little lead miniatures, some personality and some opportunities to
02:51talk about stuff and talk to each other.
02:54And, you know, all of a sudden you've got a whole new, a whole new game, a whole new game
02:58type.
02:59Instead of playing armies, you played a single person.
03:03That was the real step.
03:04I mean, instead of, instead of, you know, moving pieces around a board, you became a person inside a world.
03:11It's all in their minds.
03:12You know, they were imagining everything as it happened, but it was really a world that they were wandering through.
03:18So it all started out as miniature stuff and then turned into something that I don't think anybody saw how
03:23big it was going to get.
03:36Gary Gygax sees an opportunity and decides to publish and sell the game himself.
03:41The early success of Dungeons & Dragons was very much a snowball effect.
03:46They published it locally.
03:48You know, they had some distribution, but it was really college students that spread it.
03:52People would go to college, come back at break and say, hey, this game, you know, I found this game,
03:56you guys have to play it.
03:57And it just, it really spread that word of mouth underground, but really, really strongly.
04:02I mean, by the end of the decade, you know, it was, it was a cultural phenomenon in a way
04:06that no, certainly no war game ever had been before.
04:10To satisfy a growing fan base, in 1979, Gary releases an update called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
04:18It took the game to a whole nother level and we all just went berserk when these books came out.
04:22Big hardcover books just packed full of just all sorts of cool stuff.
04:28And it, it, the game became more complicated.
04:31There was more options of things you could do to your character.
04:33While a new generation of gamers begin exploring D&D, a little invention known as the computer begins piquing interest
04:40across the country.
04:41Without D&D, there wouldn't be any computer games.
04:44Okay, there might be like Pong or something, you know, but, I mean, everybody who's driving a Ferrari in this
04:51business, and everybody who isn't driving a Ferrari, for that matter,
04:54ought to get down and, you know, turn northwards towards Wisconsin every day, you know, and just say a little
05:00prayer of thanks.
05:01You could do things with computers that, you know, you couldn't conceive of in the real world.
05:05They seemed simple, but it's like you had control over this new environment in a way that, you know, you
05:11didn't in your ordinary life.
05:12Here was a way to, you know, for us to realize all these fantasies that we had lived all those
05:16years, or that we had imagined, I guess.
05:18We were now able to live them.
05:21And when all these sort of, you know, geeky guys started programming, and all of a sudden, I mean, wow,
05:29Ultima, Might and Magic, you know, Bard's Tale, I mean, you name it.
05:36I mean, it all comes back to people recreating their D&D campaigns at some level.
05:42Dungeons and Dragons is one of three things that really sort of jump-started the game industry.
05:48I mean, you can't talk about D&D without going to Tolkien.
05:52So these kids read Tolkien, and then they created their own Tolkien-esque world with Dungeons and Dragons.
05:59It stands to reason, when you sort of stand back now and look at the line,
06:04that it was exactly these kinds of people who, when the new technology, when computers came along,
06:10it was them, it was these people that were playing these games.
06:13So naturally, since they had just created a paper game based on Tolkien,
06:16they're then going to try to create a digital game based on Dungeons and Dragons, which is based on Tolkien.
06:21And what you find, literally, from 1977 to 1995,
06:28is that everybody who was developing games, not everybody, but, you know, most of the people that we talked to,
06:36which was quite a few people, all said, love Tolkien, you know, love D&D, and then needed to recreate
06:42that on the computer.
06:44And it was just over and over and over and over and over again.
06:47Dungeons and Dragons continues to shape the future of gaming.
06:50But a tragedy will soon focus an angry public eye on this new pastime.
06:55Then, since it's a role-playing game, you'll see people dressed up in full garb.
07:00Well, then it gets creepy if you don't really understand, like, this is sort of part of, you know, this
07:05is part of the experience.
07:06And there was a hysteria about that. Dungeons and Dragons was heavy metal before heavy metal was heavy metal.
07:12And it was the thing that people were really afraid of.
07:35After a decade of relative obscurity, Dungeons and Dragons is about to reach new levels of exposure.
07:40But not all of it is good.
07:43Dungeons and Dragons has been the center point for a lot of anger throughout the years.
07:52I remember my mother was just unbelievably scared that I was playing this game that destroyed people's minds.
07:59It drove you mad. I mean, if you get that deep into your imagination and you start pretending you're someone
08:04else,
08:04and you start, you know, wielding a sword as you play this game and dressing up and speaking funny.
08:09I think people were worried that, you know, kids were gonna get caught up in, you know, demonic, you know,
08:16anti-religious stuff or go crazy.
08:20All of which is crazy.
08:23And then if you really understand that it's a game about stories, and it's a game of fantasy, and it's
08:28a game that essentially needs to be played with other people, you can't really play it by yourself and have
08:33fun.
08:35Some of that fear goes away because you realize your kid really isn't, you know, Lothar the pagan wizard.
08:42But the intense public scrutiny only helps Dungeons and Dragons find a new audience.
08:48I'd say the recognition of it as a potentially dangerous, you know, satanic thing probably helped it.
08:54I mean, if you're a kid or a young male, you know, anyone under 30 really, you know, having the
09:00establishment say, hey, this is dangerous, you know, you're gonna take another look.
09:04You know, it's like, if you can make your parents a little disturbed that you're playing a game, it's like,
09:08hey, that's cool, let's try it out.
09:10D&D is being played in imaginations everywhere.
09:21I remember when I started at TSR, I think the receiver wisdom was that we had something like 15 million
09:28active players on an ongoing basis at that time.
09:31That was back in the mid-80s, I guess. And that's a pretty big chunk of people.
09:36Due to its rising popularity, TSR, the company Gary Gygax used to publish Dungeons and Dragons, decides to license a
09:44series of computer games using the complex Dungeons and Dragons rule set.
09:48Strategic Simulations Incorporated, or SSI, takes players into a familiar adventure called the Pool of Radiance.
09:56I was working at TSR when the license got signed with SSI, and the games were certainly very successful.
10:04I thought they were such amazingly faithful recreations of the D&D experience.
10:09The game allows players to move a party of characters through a dungeon, just as if they were in a
10:14real game of Dungeons and Dragons, but without the need for a dungeon master.
10:18At the time the SSI games came out, I was just getting into computers, I was a teenager, and I
10:24started picking up the Gold Box games and a few of their other titles because it was just a lot
10:30of fun.
10:30The SSI games were nice because it was like playing a D&D module, because I would play for a
10:35few weeks or a month, and then I'd want to move on to something else.
10:40And here was a module just like a D&D module where there was a beginning, a middle, and an
10:44end.
10:45I could play my D&D party, and my friends would come over and they'd start their own parties, and
10:50we'd have our different save discs, and we would take notes and pass them on to each other.
10:56It was almost like being in an adventurers club where people would say, oh hey, when you get down to
11:02level 16, go behind the gold door, but don't attack the wizard because he'll blow you away.
11:09It was a lot of fun. It provided almost a sort of live gaming experience with a computer game.
11:16The computer allows users to focus more on the gaming and less on the logistics.
11:21The success of the Pool of Radiance leads to more D&D licensed games. Some of them take advantage of
11:27the power of the computer to provide unique methods of gameplay and perspective.
11:30I don't know what it was, but even then, it's like I immediately gravitated towards Hill's Flight, a game that
11:35no one remembers really. I mean, it's the forgotten golden box game.
11:39But it had this one little mechanic, it had a lockpicking mechanic, that wasn't driven by those stats, and that
11:44wasn't just a recreation of the paper role-playing experience.
11:47And even then, I guess, I mean, I just wanted to exploit what this piece of hardware and this medium
11:53does that other media don't. I mean, that just seemed important to me.
11:57A computer game offers different things to a gamer than a paper and pencil. Part of it is a sense
12:04of immediacy. Something is happening right now, right there.
12:09In a paper and pencil game, usually the DM will say something, and you'll get to talk with your friends
12:15in the party, or you'll think about it or whatever, and nothing's going to happen right this second unless the
12:22DM is really driving the action.
12:24The computer doesn't wait for you. You know, if there's a monster running down the hallway, unless you hit the
12:29pause button or something, it's still running down. You have to do something.
12:33Using new technology, SSI decides to let the character play in a first-person perspective.
12:38Every once in a while, they'd do something innovative, like Eye of the Beholder was, to me, the first time
12:43I remember what you would now call a third-person perspective,
12:47where instead of looking down at, essentially, representations of miniatures, you'd be looking at what you were fighting. And that
12:56was pretty cool.
12:57So, they would try different things, like the Eye of the Beholder series. It was a lot of fun.
13:09SSI continues to release games using the Dungeons & Dragons license, but the market wanes.
13:15I think the real answer, it isn't much of a mystery. I mean, I think it's just that after a
13:19while, any license needs to be arrested.
13:21I mean, you just, people just get tired of the same stuff. And I think it's just people, people were
13:25looking for novelty.
13:26They were looking for something new. I mean, it, it, it, they couldn't find it in D&D licensed games
13:31anymore, at least for a while.
13:44And improvements in technology lead to gameplay so immersive that it draws people away from the role-playing games of
13:50the past.
13:52I think Doom really sent Dungeons & Dragons-type games into decline. Doom-style games are addictive.
14:00You know, you sit down and you play and you get drawn in and, and they're fast and they're scary
14:05and, and, and they're, they're, they get your adrenaline going in a way that most role-playing games don't.
14:11Doom really changed the market. I mean, it was a, it was a turning point.
14:14And just as the Dungeons & Dragons computer games begin to lose their audience, TSR also begins a wobbly spiral
14:21that points to bankruptcy and a game that really does have an end.
14:28TSR found out it was in kind of financial trouble. And people were wondering what was going to happen next.
14:45Just as TSR, who 20 years earlier had first published Dungeons & Dragons, was going out of business, a company
14:52called Wizards of the Coast sweeps in and saves the day.
14:55Well, then along came Peter Atkinson and Wizards of the Coast. Peter and a man named Richard Garfield had created
15:02a card game called Magic the Gathering.
15:04It became enormously successful and Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR.
15:09Not only does work begin on a new rule set for the paper game, but a computer game is created
15:14that will bring Dungeons & Dragons back to monitors everywhere.
15:22Well, Greg and I have always been huge fans of role-playing games. There hadn't been a lot of role
15:26-playing games released for a number of years before BG came out in 98.
15:29And so that was pretty cool, because I was like, you know, games like Pool of Radiance were very inspiring
15:33to us.
15:33So the opportunity to work on a D&D game, Dungeons & Dragons RPG, like the next generation of it,
15:38was really exciting. So we just jumped on it.
15:40Baldur's Gate provided a unique game experience. It took the whole top-down perspective of the SSI Gold Box games
15:49to a new level.
15:50You had a much more fluid combat system. You had more options as to, like, spellcasting and character class and
15:59everything.
15:59And, of course, you had much better graphics and sounds. If the old SSI games were lacking in anything that
16:06they could have possibly had,
16:07they didn't have a lot of story or background. Baldur's Gate games did. You know, you had to solve a
16:13puzzle. You had to learn about the world.
16:15And they really conveyed that. Baldur's Gate is a story as much as it is a game.
16:21The game successfully replicates the D&D rule set, allowing players to focus on the story and characters that make
16:27up the world they explore.
16:30It clicked on a lot of things and just did them right. You could have a whole party of characters.
16:36You could pause the action. You could individually command what each character was doing.
16:40So if you're a D&D fan, here was a great way to go in and play a game where
16:45you could basically test out some of your ideas about tactics and that sort of thing.
16:50And we were really careful to remain true to the license. One of the things we're very careful about when
16:55we work on licenses like Dungeons & Dragons or Star Wars
16:58is that we want to make sure that we retain the original vision. The fans, they deserve to get what
17:04they're expecting.
17:05If they're expecting a game that's true to that original rule set or that universe, they should see it in
17:10the final title.
17:11The success of the game leads to several sequels, all of which become best sellers.
17:15It was also based on the Dungeons & Dragons license and I think that had a big part in getting
17:20the name recognition out for the title.
17:23It gave us a starting point that allowed us to kind of leap off and get more people knowing about
17:28it.
17:28And now, a new type of game lurks over the horizon. One that will bring the social element back.
17:33So, you know, the natural extension of taking D&D is to a computer, you combine that with the internet,
17:40and all of a sudden you have the opportunity for the massively multiplayer RPGs like EverQuest and Final Fantasy.
17:46And that just takes a coolness factor up a whole other level.
17:50Ultima Online and EverQuest paved the way for a steady stream of other massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
17:59They can play with those games and they can interact with each other even if it isn't quite the same
18:05as sitting across a table.
18:07You can still instant message your friend and you can talk out of character and you can go on an
18:11adventure together.
18:12It's great that there's that avenue.
18:14But some people still feel there are fundamental differences between these games and a true Dungeons & Dragons experience.
18:21Online games right now typically ask you to accept a world where everybody is a hero.
18:26And in a D&D campaign, it was you with five of your buddies going in and being heroes.
18:34And that's very different.
18:35It's when you're alone solving really big problems and acting heroically.
18:41That's very different than standing in line while the guy in front of you kills a dragon and gets the
18:46experience.
18:46And then you walk up and kill the dragon and get the experience.
18:50And then it, you know, rematerializes and the guy behind you does it.
18:52I mean, when everybody's killing that dragon, nobody's a hero.
18:56And D&D is all about being heroes.
18:58Despite the popularity of the online games, other companies continue to pursue the single player experience.
19:03Including a game that promises to allow players to create adventures for their friends and recreate their favorite adventures from
19:09the past.
19:11The more recent Dungeons & Dragons games are, if anything, even more faithful recreations of the original game.
19:17And you gotta respect the polish and professionalism with which they've been implemented.
19:23They're telling some really cool stories.
19:25They're letting players, you know, pick their roles in very traditional ways.
19:31And I love the fact that they're character driven, story based experiences.
19:36As we look back over the past 30 years, it's hard to find a game that hasn't been influenced by
19:41Dungeons & Dragons.
19:42Dungeons & Dragons has had an amazing impact on society that a lot of people, I don't think, are really
19:48aware of.
19:49And that effect is just being the game that laid out, this is what fantasy gaming is.
19:56The whole category of role playing games that are pen and paper based, all grows out of Dungeons & Dragons.
20:02And looking into the future, companies will continue to try and perfect the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons without
20:08actually playing.
20:10The idea of Dungeons & Dragons, I think, is driving the simulations like they're not coming.
20:15Ultimately, that may be what the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons is.
20:18Like, this is what started it, and it's this idea that drives this stuff.
20:23The future for Dungeons & Dragons, I think, is very bright.
20:26For one thing, I think that no matter how fancy the computers get, it's still fun to sit around a
20:32table with all your friends
20:33and play a game in kind of slow motion where everybody can see what everybody else has done.
20:38That experience is not going away.
20:39There's going to be the fusion of the best of both worlds, where you can get the fun of sitting
20:46around the table with your friends,
20:48but have the computer doing all the heavy lifting.
20:51Ready?
20:52Okay.
20:52Ready?
20:54Ready?
20:55Ready?
20:56Ready?
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