TIME Dungeons & Dragons

ON MARCH 5, 2008, EMMY AWARD–WINNING TELEVISION host and comedian Stephen Colbert closed his hit spoof news show, The Colbert Report, on an uncharacteristically somber note. “Before we go, nation, I have some sad news. Yesterday, Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away at age 69. Gary, you will be missed.… How much will you be missed?” Colbert asked in his signature deadpan. To the laughter of the studio audience, he revealed and rolled a 20-sided die. “Twenty. May your prismatic spray always bypass your target’s reflex saving throw.” It was an odd tribute, even for a fake news show that spent most of its time making light of mainstream topics and events. By 2008, D&D was far from mainstream. But what the longtime D&D fan and future…

IN 1987, EVANGELICAL THEOLOGIANS George Grant and Peter Leithart published a 17-page book called A Christian Response to Dungeons and Dragons: The Catechism of the New Age. The cover featured an illustration of an evil-looking dragon clutching one child in his fist while reaching menacingly toward another. The authors claimed that, among other evils, Dungeons & Dragons promoted witchcraft, devil worship, and magic and was corrupting the minds of America’s Christian youth. “Dungeons and Dragons is a dangerous game. It serves as an introduction to evil, a catechism of occultism, a primer for the ABCs of the New Age. It is a recruiting tool of Satan,” read the conclusion. But despite Grant and Leithart’s warnings, D&D’s popularity continued to grow—and grow and grow, until its themes didn’t seem particularly extreme…

1973 A NEW GAME Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson wrote a rulebook for Dungeons & Dragons, crafted on Gygax’s home typewriter. After they scraped together $2,400 for start-up costs, Gygax and Don Kaye founded Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) in October. 1974 RELEASE DAY TSR released original Dungeons and Dragons, or OD&D. There were three booklets, all written as if the player already knew how to play a similar game. The set introduced concepts that would become standard in later editions, including ability scores, armor class, and character classes. The first 1,000 hand-assembled copies sold quickly. 1975 BLACKMOOR BOUND TSR released Arneson’s Blackmoor, a supplementary rulebook for the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The supplement added two character subclasses (Assassin, a thief subclass, and Monk, which was then a cleric…

ENTER A BUZZING TAVERN, EAGER to partake in some drink and mingle with other patrons. On the way to partake in some drink and mingle with other patrons. On the way WI inside, a life-size mimic—with its menacing and toothy maw—is noticeable from across the room. Even with its monstrous denizens, the tavern is impeccably decorated with intricate wooden reliefs and carvings depicting dragon heads, owlbears, and battle axes. Along the ceiling’s beams, sigils carved into the wood spell out TOMOROW’S STORY IS STILL UNWRITTEN in Thorasta, a language more largely known as “Common” on the continent of Faerûn. As I settle into my seat with a tankard of wine, I clock a tiefling wizard entering from behind me on the arm of a paladin in full regalia (minus the…

EVERYONE’S TIRED ON THE SET OF Stranger Things. I’m visiting on a WE Friday in May, and a months-long, effects-heavy Season 2 shoot is grinding toward its end. “It’s going slow,” says Millie Bobby Brown, the 13-year-old Emmy nominee who plays the supernatural character Eleven. “Last season, it felt like we were rapid. Everything was fast,” she says. But now, “the anticipation from the fans scares everyone. It makes the Duffers stressed. It makes us stressed.” The Duffers are Matt and Ross, identical 33-year-old twins and the maestros of a show that was about the only thing everyone seemed able to agree on during the contentious summer of 2016. The Netflix series, whose eight-episode first season arrived with relatively little fanfare that July, was set in 1983 and told the story…

THERE WAS A NEW BIG BAD LURKING in the Upside Down in Season 4 of Stranger Things. As with the series’ previous villains—remember the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer?—the evil force that Eleven and the gang have to face this year takes its name from a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster. A being known as Vecna threatens Hawkins, Indiana, just as Vecna the evil archlich threatened D&D players for decades. While Stranger Things villains are not exact copies of the D&D monsters they take inspiration from, the characters on the show are avid players of the iconic tabletop game, as were the series’ creators, the Duffer Brothers. As a result, there are several parallels between D&D and Stranger Things, not least including Season 4’s addition of Vecna. Here’s what you…