Dungeons & Dragons 30th Anniversary, Day One

GameSpy has begun unleashing a huge set of features to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, with today’s set of features including The History of Dungeons & Dragons Part 1, The History of D&D Videogames Part 1, An Interview With Gary Gygax Part 1, A Tour of Eberron, Dungeons & Dragons Online Preview, and Dungeons & Dragons Online Roundtable. They all make very good reads, but here’s a snip from the interview with Gary Gygax:

Q: So, how do you go from Chainmail with fantasy rules to something that eventually becomes Dungeons and Dragons?

A: Even when you’re playing miniatures, there’s still some role-playing aspect. You’ll pretend to be the commander of the group, and so forth. The one-to-one rules tended to make that aspect more prominent. It was Dave Arnenson, though, who started playing a Chainmail game where each of his players had just one figure on the table. That was the impetus for me (to put together what eventually became Dungeons & Dragons).