Fans Celebrate 30 Years of Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons players gathered in game stores around the country to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the grandfather of fantasy role-playing games -- a pop culture phenomenon that has influenced video games, books and movies.

An estimated 25,000 fans in 1,200 stores celebrated the anniversary, said Charles Ryan at Wizards of the Coast, a Renton, Wash., company that owns Dungeons & Dragons.

In 1974, 1,000 brown-and-white boxes filled with pamphlets for “Fantastic Medieval Wargames” were distributed. The game peaked in the 1980s, but there are plenty of fans left: 4 million play D&D; regularly.