I thought it would be fun to read through old issues of Dragon Magazine, starting with issue #1, published in June 1976, and with that i wanted to come back to the blog as a way to log my thoughts and findings for my future reference. This isn't really the "beginning" since it's a sort-of continuation of The Strategic Review, but Dragon #1 delineates the switch in focus from wargaming to D&D. One day it might be interesting to go back and read Strategic Review as well if I can find the pdfs.

June 1976 is before both 1st Editon AD&D and the "Basic" box sets were released (both in 1977 and i'll probably encounter issues that announce them).

The basic timeline (sourcing from a 2024 Time Magazine Special Edition on D&D which got a lot of quotes from wargaming historian Jon Peterson) is that circa 1970 there was already a scene devoted to medieval war game re-enactments using miniatures. But a single miniature generally represented an entire unit a friend of Gary Gygax, Jeff Perren, created Chainmail, which provided rules where each miniature represented a single character. Gary Gygax in 1971 then expanded on Chainmail with a "fantasy supplement" which added fantastic elements (which was controversial at the time). Through this, Gygax comes to know Dave Arneson, who had created a campaign using the Chainmail rules called Blackmoor. But Arneson used the rules more loosely and basically inventing DM-ing. Quoting from the Time article:

Unlike other wargaming campaigns of the time, the Blackmoor campaign was far less concerned with historical accuracy, and players didn't always stick to the rulebooks. As the leader of the game, Arneson also took on a role far more involved than that of a simple referee. He would set the scen with detailed descriptions of monsters and other fantastical beings as the players descended into a six-floor dungeon he had dreamed up... It was in Blackmoor where the idea of dungeon adventuring was born. "You would have to explore, and you would have to draw maps so you wouldn't get lost as you went through it", explains Peterson...

When Gygax heard about the campaign he reached out to see if he could incorporate some of the rules into a Chainmail supplement... [but] realized this was a much bigger idea than just something he was going to tack on to a new expansion to Chainmail"...

Peterson describes the differences between Gygax and Arneson:

"Arneson was definitely an idea guy, whereas Gygax was somebody who understood how to build consensus around a set of rules, socialize them...". Gygax wanted a rule for every situation, while Arneson wanted it to be more free-form, allowing people to use their imagination...

The above tension continues to be relevant. Every different release of D&D (as well as every other RPG), every difference in DM styles, comes down to finding a balance between those two tendencies. And they came together for the first time in 1974 to create the original version of D&D. Arneson will be forced out by 1977 with the releases of AD&D and the Basic boxset. And Dragon magazine starts just prior to that, so it'll be interesting to see how it evolves.