Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons

On the fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, a collection of essays that explores and celebrates the games legacy and its tremendous impact on gaming and popular culture.

In 2024, the enormously influential tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragonsalso known as D&Dcelebrates its fiftieth anniversary. To mark the occasion, editors Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and Jos Zagal have assembled an edited collection that celebrates and reflects on important parts of the games past, present, and future. Each chapter in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons explores why the nondigital game is more popular than everwith sales increasing 33 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite worldwide lockdownsand offers readers the opportunity to critically reflect on their own experiences, perceptions, and play of D&D.

Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons draws on fascinating research and insight from expert scholars in the field, including: Gary Alan Fine, whose 1983 book Shared Fantasy remains a canonical text in game studies; Jon Peterson, celebrated D&D historian; Daniel Justice, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture; and numerous leading and emerging scholars from the growing discipline of game studies, including Amanda Cote, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and Aaron Trammell. The chapters cover a diverse range of topicsfrom D&Ds adoption in local contexts and classrooms and by queer communities to speculative interpretations of what D&D might look like in one hundred yearsthat aim to deepen readers understanding of the game.