Guest Lecture

This talk explores how Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson ransacked aspects of the late 1960s and early 1970s occult revival in America to help conjure, in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons, known today as the world’s first tabletop role-playing game. Drawing from popular “as if” science-fiction and fantasy stories, comic books, and a countercultural fantasy medievalism, Gygax and Arneson’s creation, at first, made for an odd—and not entirely understood—miniature wargame. In a post-Vietnam America devoid of cosmic stories or larger-than-life heroes and villains, D&D nevertheless offered players an exciting way to imagine themselves as “superheroes.” As the 1970s rolled on and postmodern society entered a mystifying state in which the impermeability between fantasy and reality seemed to deconstruct, D&D’s popularity rose, encouraging not only variants and knockoffs but the crystallization of the very category of “role-playing games.” By the time of D&D’s codification in the late 1970s with the publication of Advanced Dungeons & Dungeons, a cultural movement was underway.

Date: 14 December, 2026
Time: 2.30 pm - 3.30 pm
Location: American Studies Foyer, EF 50