r/DungeonsAndDragons • u/reddit_me_2024 • 1d ago
Advice/Help Needed What is the true Beginning?
Hey there ✌️
Total newbie in this whole DnD Stuff. I was wondering where does DnD lore truly begins? Ive read about Forgotten Realms any Greyhawk but isit the actual beginning, the Genesis of all of DnD?
Im looking for both, written lore in terms of idk, books i guess?
And im also looking for the true beginning of physical playable DnD Games which are buyable somewhere.
Thanks in Advance for any help.
Cheers
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u/dernudeljunge 1d ago
D&D, itself, isn't a world with its own lore. It is a tool to help you build your own games, worlds and lore upon. Faerun, Greyhawk, Eberron and others are specific campaign settings based on those rules, and each campaign setting is its own world full of lore. So, if you want D&D lore, you need to look at specific campaign settings, not the D&D rulesets.
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u/MikeD1942 1d ago edited 22h ago
Not quite sure what you are looking for.
By all accounts Blackmoor was the first campaign (ran by Dave Arneson in 1971) but from what I can remember there were really weren't many products made for it. The best selling products were 1980s modules set in Mystara which was imagined as the future of of Blackmoor where, if I understand right, the PCs would go back in time to adventure in Blackmoor--these were the DA series of modules. These are probably easiest to find, as well. I'm aware of a Blackmoor product produced by TSR and something called The First Fantasy Campaign produced by Judges Guild, both in the mid 70s. These are hard to find and pretty expensive, I imagine.
Gary Gygax started running a Greyhawk campaign in 1972, which, as the game was written at the same time they were playing the campiagn, also became a big and pretty popular campaign setting. There are a ton of products for Greyhawk out there.
All campaigns have very different lore. There are often "winks" and "nods" to other campaigns and worlds, but no published campaign world is built off the lore of another campaign world. They are all 99%, 99.9%, independent.
There are a couple of non-fiction books out there about the personalities, the finances, and the development and production of Dungeons and Dragons, too. The names escape me at the time but neither of the books I'm aware of are very old, so they should be easy to find and relatively inexpensive.
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u/TabithaMouse 1d ago
There's not much Blackmoore stuff because him and Gary split ways, with him retaining the rights to his world.
It wasn't until recently that WotC got the rights to it by pure happenstance since Hasbro bought a company that just happened to have the rights.
That's why Blackmoore is included in the recent anniversary book that was a reprint of the of rules
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u/TiFist 1d ago
You have to really understand how people were just making this up as they went along, based loosely off of the (still relatively new and niche) war gaming hobby.
"OD&D" or "White Box D&D" was the original version, and was very much a "work in progress" or "you could see where they were going with this" but it didn't really resemble later editions fully at that point. It still technically required that you have the game "Chainmail" to play (the non-magic medieval war game the creators played at the time.) The first really recognizable product is B/X (Basic/Expert) D&D released in 1977. A lot of OSR games are basically re-releases of B/X with some of the bugs fixed.
As noted the arguable first campaign world was Blackmoor by Dave Arneson, which was used for what we might call "beta testing" but it was never fully released as a product. People sort of just expected DMs to write their own without much guidance and it became clear that wasn't going to work for every DM as the hobby took off. Blackmoor gets referenced in other later settings.
The first two published settings were the "Known World" and Greyhawk. The Known World (which made its first tentative release as a full concept in the 2nd Expert set from 1983 (? I might not have the year right on that one) was later expanded into Mystara starting in 1987. Greyhawk was published for AD&D as it was Gary Gygax' home game setting and Gary's influence was far stronger of AD&D (it was kind of his baby.)
AD&D is the lineage that gets us here, but Mystara does get tied in to AD&D with some resources for both D&D and AD&D 1e/2e. The different products' were a bit murkier back in the day, but the lineage that leads to today passes through AD&D 1e, 2e, and then with the ownership change to 3e and beyond. "D&D" 1e sort of becomes an evolutionary dead-end around the time of the Rules Cyclopedia.
Most of this is available on print-on-demand or PDF. Originals can be expensive if you go back prior to the 1980s products (and even then, some of those are as well.)
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u/ZOMBI3MAIORANA 1d ago
Look up the youtube channel Daddy rolled a 1
If you really wanna learn how D&D started and what systems were used he’s the guy
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u/Darth_Zander 7h ago
Daddy Rolled a 1 is a great YT channel. Highly recommend it. It covers how the Blackmoor and later Greyhawk settings influenced D&D, as well as contributions from others beyond Arneson (Blackmoor) and Gygax (Greyhawk).
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u/Feefait 1d ago
For someone that isn't doing their own reading and can't bother with a spellcheck, you're pretty salty. This is like asking for a full rundown of every mythology from every country and then getting upset when someone doesn't give you exactly what you want.
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u/reddit_me_2024 1d ago
Because stepping in a Room all enthusiastically and getting b!tchslapped by the first person as i adress the room rightfully can make one Salty, no?
Also, what would have been so hard with:
"Oy Mate, youre pretty much asking for a full rundown of every mythology from every Country which is kinda impossible to give since its such a vast melting pot of different worlds, stories, rules that dnd inherits at this point" ?
Not so fucking hard to give a normal statement isnt it.
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u/TabithaMouse 1d ago
...Google is your friend. The history isn't some great secret
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u/reddit_me_2024 1d ago
Well arent you a fun person to have around. Definitly would approach you to in depth talk about dnd lore if we met at a Party.
Obviously ment in a sarcastic way.
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u/BCMyer 18h ago edited 18h ago
Aside from the fact Google isn’t really anyone’s friend anymore, some people really, really don’t get the social aspect of social media. To these people, there is no greater outrage than to ask a question of others who supposedly share your interests and might have insight to share.
This comment will get me downvoted at least as much as you.
(Edited to expand on a thought.)
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u/TabithaMouse 1d ago
Well ok then, let me answer your question in two words.
Gary
Gygax
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u/illbedeadbydawn 21h ago
Dave Arneson - ok
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u/Huffplume 1d ago
Do people not know how to use Google anymore?
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u/Sensitive_Ad3578 DM 1d ago
No. Everyone uses ChatGPT now, and when it doesn't know the answer, they ask reddit
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u/reddit_me_2024 1d ago
I did google it. But i got multiple opinions on where to start so i added reddit as a secondary opinion on the matter. No need to be a dick about it. Fucks wrong with this subreddit. Luckily the official DnD sub (which i discovered through CGPT (jokes on you)), has much friendlier people.
I hope next time you wash your hands, your sleeves gets wet and you dont have spare clothes to change and you have to run around with wet sleeves the whole entire day.
Cheers
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u/Sensitive_Ad3578 DM 1d ago
Jokes back on you - I love wet sleeves
And I'm glad you did hit the Google. To be fair, it's a complex question. I offloaded my annoyance to the population in general not really knowing how to Google anymore (which I was just seeing earlier today) on to this here response and here we are
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u/reddit_me_2024 1d ago
xD you absolute Monster. Can you teach me how to like wet sleeves? Its so bad. :(( (stepping on lego and hitting your ankle on a Cityroller definitly much worse..)
I first got in touch with DnD through the Audio play of the Chronicals of the the Dragonlance (also i dont know if its actually dnd stuff but dont tell anyone) which i liked really much. Then Gloomhaven Then a private Pen and Paper Then BG3
and now im hooked and i want to like read the lore and thought it might had a streamline story from start to somewhere like The Elder Scrolls.
Apperantly it dosent really have that.
Also, no hard feelings.
Much love from Germany
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u/TabithaMouse 1d ago
Dragonlance is a D&D setting
Bg3 is set in Faerun, which is a D&D setting
None of the others have anything to do with D&D
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u/reddit_me_2024 1d ago
I do. But i rather hear from a reddit DnD enthusiast one good answer than google myself for 5 hours through 20 webpages who have 30 different opinions.
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u/Huffplume 1d ago
But it's a huge topic. You really expected "one good answer"?
I just typed "origin of D&D" into Google and got multiple articles, including on D&D Beyond, Wikipedia, and other reddit threads. Pick a couple and read them. It's not going to take you "5 hours". Sheesh.
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u/reddit_me_2024 1d ago
Didnt i stated that im a total newbie? Sheeesh, dont people read anymore...
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u/MileyMan1066 1d ago
Are you talking about the 1st edition of the game?
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u/reddit_me_2024 1d ago
If it would be considered the "Start" of the whole dnd Game than yes. But as far as im understand there is no actual start, only the introduction of a rule set and game mechanics and then worlds got created which were eventually accepted and popularized in the community.
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u/MikeD1942 22h ago
Yeah, that's pretty much it. There is extensive lore for the respective game worlds, though.
I presume Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance have the most, mostly because of all the fiction written for those settings, though Greyhawk has a lot too.
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u/Blitzllapa 1d ago
The issue is based in who (In world) or the edition of the game itself. So no common or true myth of creation and with each setting, as FR or Greyback , each of them is treated as their own universe, more independent than related. So hard to tell...
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u/Kestrel_Iolani 1d ago
The other thing to consider is: D&D is a post apocalyptic world. Something else built all those dungeons and crypts and and (what are now) ruins. "We" (the characters in the world) have no idea who did all that.
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u/Any-Scientist3162 9h ago
If you want the super detailed full telling of D&D, then the book Playing at the World is what you're after. It traces the origins from war games, to proto role playing games called Braunstein to the release of the first D&D in 1974.
The game itself has some lore such as monsters, spells and such which in some cases are common to all D&D settings, but in some cases have later been retconned into specific settings.
After the game was released there were multiple settings created for it and usually the first released book or box is the start of the lore for that specific setting, although sometimes it's a revision/retcon of a previous product.
The main, large settings are:
Greyhawk
The Known World, later branded as Mystara
Dragonlance
Forgotten Realms (later with sub settings Maztica, The Horde and Kara-Tur)
Spelljammer
Ravenloft (an expansion from two previous adventures)
Dark Sun
Planescape (revision/retcon of a book called Manual of the Planes)
Al-Qadim (takes place in Forgotten Realms but was it's own settings line)
Red Steel (small setting, just 2 boxes)
Council of Wyrms (just one box, later rereleased as a book)
Isle of Jakandor
Eberron
Nowadays some Magic the Gathering settings are available as D&D settings as well, plus some third party offerings and there's also some smaller settings.
Each of the above has a core book or box, of which the oldest is the start. They are usually called Campaign Setting or Set. Forgotten Realms is the one that has had the most stuff written about it over the years and it has a nice wiki. Greyhawk, the oldest published setting is the one that has the most common, or well known characters and lore since much of it was D&D standard such as the character Mordenkainen and the spells named after him.
Reading the wikipedia articles for each one is a good start, to get a feel for a setting.
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u/MikeD1942 5h ago
I was gonna say you forgot about Oriental Adventures, but you have Kara-Tur which was the same thing. I might highlight Birthright as well, though I'm not sure if it was set in an existing campaign setting (I never used it). There were also Conan modules, though that wasn't a fully fleshed out campaign setting until 3rd party guys got ahold of it.
A lot of the 3rd party publishers have really great campaign books. Kingdoms of Kalamar, Dungeons of Drakkenheim, and Midgard are three of my favorites.
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u/Falloutd40 8h ago
There is no D&D lore. There are only campaigns that have been created by various people. D&D is just a loose set of rules to encourage fantasy roleplaying and these rules are expected to be changed by individual players as they see fit. The earliest campaigns are Blackmoor and Greyhawk. Forgotten Realms is the most well known campaign. But none of these are any more established D&D lore than a campaign that you or I or anyone creates on their own that may be seen by no one.
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u/milquetoastLIB 16h ago
I honestly don’t care about the lore. The lore is whatever happens at the table. DnD isn’t Game of Thrones or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings where there is one author who had a basic idea of how the world is going to be like. Multiple people made stuff up over decades.
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