--- title: Discovering D&D In 1979 | daily.dev description: A personal account of discovering Dungeons & Dragons in 1979 at age 14, told by someone who went on to make games. The story covers the first session with Navy... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/discovering-d-d-in-1979-8rvgeo4wv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Discovering D&D In 1979 | daily.dev og:description: A personal account of discovering Dungeons & Dragons in 1979 at age 14, told by someone who went on to make games. The story covers the first session with Navy... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/discovering-d-d-in-1979-8rvgeo4wv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/8rVGEO4wV.png og:image:alt: Discovering D&D In 1979 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Discovering D&D In 1979 **[Cain on Games](https://daily.dev/sources/cainongames)** · 13 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A personal account of discovering Dungeons & Dragons in 1979 at age 14, told by someone who went on to make games. The story covers the first session with Navy officers, learning character creation from scratch with no prior context, buying the basic D&D box set, forming a friend group, self-teaching dungeon mastering, and growing the campaign over high school years from simple room-by-room combat to wilderness maps and planar adventures. Dragon Magazine is highlighted as the primary learning resource in a pre-internet era. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [What Dungeons & Dragons Taught Me About Managing Projects](https://daily.dev/posts/what-dungeons-dragons-taught-me-about-managing-projects-zhy3nlbha) · Atomic Spin · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Dungeon Master, the Premier Atari ST Game](https://daily.dev/posts/dungeon-master-the-premier-atari-st-game-gwtkbdrmp) · Two Stop Bits · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [I used Claude to create a campaign and my D&D sessions have never run smoother](https://daily.dev/posts/i-used-claude-to-create-a-campaign-and-my-d-d-sessions-have-never-run-smoother-tdqjnvj6a) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Indie Studio on Creating a Dungeons & Dragons-Inspired RPG](https://daily.dev/posts/indie-studio-on-creating-a-dungeons-dragons-inspired-rpg-snrtvzwio) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-design](https://daily.dev/tags/game-design) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/discovering-d-d-in-1979-8rvgeo4wv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Discovering D&D In 1979","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/discovering-d-d-in-1979-8rvgeo4wv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/discovering-d-d-in-1979-8rvgeo4wv"},"datePublished":"2026-07-19T07:58:51.705Z","dateModified":"2026-07-19T08:04:26.902Z","description":"A personal account of discovering Dungeons & Dragons in 1979 at age 14, told by someone who went on to make games. 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