Dungeons & Dragons 50-year Celebration in Finland – Mystara on display
by Ville Lähde from Threshold Magazine issue 3[Image: Display1]
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The Finnish Museum of Games, located in the Vapriikki Museum Centre in Tampere, has been operating since 2017. It is the first of its kind in Finland and even something special on the world stage. The people at the museum have a soft spot for classic RPGs in their hearts, especially old-school dungeon crawls. In the 2018–2019 exhibition on the history of role-playing in Finland, “You’re Caught in a Trap!”, original copies of Chainmail and the 1974 original edition had a pride of place in a glass display, marked with the familiar map symbol of an altar on the floor.
Thus, it was clear from the outset that the museum would have to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. Researcher Niklas Nylund began gathering material early on and approached me: Mystara deserved pride of place, of course. Niklas was familiar with Mystara, having played in an ongoing 800’s Mystara campaign which I am running, but in this case, he asked my older gaming group to contribute. Our continuous Mystaran campaign has been running since 1988, and we were asked to contribute materials and descriptions.
Into the glass display went my original copy of GAZ1, my Red Box DM Rulebook, my battered Expert Set Rulebook, my trusty B10, and my original Red Box dice set, with original wax crayon included. Also present were the two issues of the Finnish zine “Seikkailija” (“the Adventurer”) which contain our first adventures, my hand-drawn maps of Karameikos, Black Eagle and Sulescu, some coffee-stained “parchments” from a wizard’s tome I wrote for one of our players, a PC portrait drawn by a high school friend, the original miniatures, and even a partially destroyed handout from an Iron Ring agent. Each item was accompanied with a textual description, and an interview could be accessed by a QR code.
[Image: Display2]
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The exhibit was physically small but bigger on the inside. In addition to the Mystaran display, there were five other displays by other gaming groups, one older than us, four younger, covering a wide range of D&D editions, player generations, and gaming worlds. The backbone of the exhibit was formed by a cavalcade of D&D editions, modules, campaign settings, novels, and even computer games. On the opening night, the representatives of the six gaming groups discussed the decades of D&D, different gaming cultures, styles of play and other crucial questions. It was fun and strange to have a large and attentive audience to this. We were among our people.
Link: https://www.vapriikki.fi/en/exhibition/50-years-of-dungeons-dragons/